IN LIBERTY'S CAUSE.

NZ Truth, Issue 71, 27 October 1906, Page 6

IN LIBERTY'S CAUSE.

(For "Truth.") ] 7 ' (By Mrs E. Colville.) Lines on the sufferings of Maria Spiridonova, a young Russian girl, for ridding the poor, starving peasants of a cold-blooded tyrant by shooting- him on his return from Tamboy, after forty days' shooting and flogging the peasants m a most atrocious manner. Hence the following verses. Long with their rifle butts, oh',, how they smashed her ! Long with their cruel whips, oh ■! howthey lashed her ! Long with the 'heavy boots trampled and crushed her ; And oft to the Cossacks her body they threw. Quite naked ..they strip 'd her, kicked • her, and bruised her, Like fiends of perdition they tore and abused her ; Blind, wounded and senseless, oh" ! how they used her ! And aye the red blood came oozing anew. * ♦ •. They danced on her bosom, they tramped on heir face.;. Till even hear mother no feature could trace. What a horrible sight when the soldiers of Mars Were burning her body with lighted cigars ! What anguish and torture she patiently bore, While the half burned skin from her body they tore. Cold, naked and bleeding, she lay as if dead ; With the beautiful hair torn out of her head. The more they would beat the more she would sigh : "Oh, liberty, for thee I priory to die," 0 cursed be the monsters who ruthless did hurl The tortures of hell on that poor little girl ! In the dungeon of horrors disfigured she lies, Till death sets her free from the kingdom of sighs ; For liberty's cause what a price she has given, Ah, surely she'll shine with the brightest m heaven. Lawrence, Oct., 1906.