Verse > Anthologies > James and Mary Ford, eds. > Every Day in the Year
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James and Mary Ford, eds.  Every Day in the Year.  1902.
 
September 9
Dreyfus
By John Hall Ingham (1860–1931)
 
        
The Second Condemnation
  The details of the Dreyfus case are too long to be given here. Let it suffice to say that after a five years’ imprisonment on Devil’s Island, Dreyfus was brought back to France and re-tried. His sentence, pronounced on Sept. 9, 1899, was “Guilty—with extenuating circumstances.” In French law this “with extenuating circumstances” is equivalent to our “with recommendation to mercy.” He was pardoned by the President ten days later.

O MARTYR-SOUL, the infamy they speak
Is of themselves alone, and not of thee!
They are condemned at last. Thou goest free
By the high court of Heaven. One lowly, meek,
A Jew, despised of Roman and Greek,        5
Hath once before turned doom to victory;
And God and Right will thwart eternally
The vengeance that these human devils seek.
 
The thunderbolt hath fallen! From lust to lust
France languished on her way, till her decrees,        10
Moulded by perjuries and forgeries,
Devote undying Justice to the dust,
Nor heed the awful writing on the wall
That she who loseth Honor loseth all!
 
 
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