Pour la Liberté! Égalité! Fraternité! Ou la Mort.... (Translated: "For Liberty! Equality! Fraternity! Or Death....")

Pour la Liberté! Égalité! Fraternité! Ou la Mort....              October 11, 2013

"... In order then that the social compact may not be an empty formula, it tacitly includes the undertaking, which alone can give force to the rest, that whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be compelled to do so by the whole body. This means nothing less than he will be forced to be free; for this is the condition which, by giving each citizen to his country, secures him against all personal dependence."

- Jean Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract (1762)

A Condemned Man Ponders the Validity of a Revolution Towards Freedom

When the Citizens are Forced by The Sovereign to be Free:

My life hath liv'd 

Amid chance, circumstance,

A star-cross'd love 

Always in the midst,

And what do I, pray you ask,

 Say with each instance
When the partisans 

Conduct my trial against?

I am declar'd an enemy

To the people, mostly State,

Tho' be it obliged,

 I am but a collective of one,

And as I look 'cross

The square at His steeple,

I weep deep in my abysmal heart,

But display Pride before the sun.

O'! How shall I meet my demise

Upon the Madame's blade's wrath?

Liberté, égalité, fraternité for all

Hath been, through coercion, wrought!

The Bastille hath been tainted with atrocité

Symbolic only of a blood bath

Courtesy of Ambition and Avarices'

Prodigalité abjecte et la fraude!

God hath descend'd into the pit;

 The idols manifested, exalted,

Where shall the people turn

Upon incurring crises despotique et de malice?

O'! I should think that 

Dear France will be salted

Upon His wrath; for to drink

De la glace de l'enfer 

From the Eucharist's chalice!

From the Words of a Dead Father Walking, 

Facing the Wrath of Madame Guillotine,

A General Admonition to Your Sensibilities from His:

Till the day doth arise

 When the people again pray,

I will still within my heart 

Continue to mediate to Him,

And as my life hath reach'd

The conclusion of its sojourn, 

La fin de la journée,

I impart upon you, mes enfants,

 My Eternity shall never be grim.