The 21 Coptic martyrs (one from Ghana) kneeling down before execution by ISIS in 2015. These martyrs were of course not executed with a sword but knives were used with them; however, their experience must have been similar to Christian martyrs who had been classically executed by a sword.
How many times I wished to know,
How a Christian martyr felt and thought,
As he was hurriedly taken,
To the beheading ground,
And made to kneel down,
And bend his neck for the executioner’s sword;
When the sword was drawn out of its scabbard,
Unleashing that cruel chilling sound,
And then whistled as it cut through the air,
And quickly fell with its cold heavy metal,
On the martyr’s neck with a thump,
Smashing and crushing his cervical vertebral bones,
And slashing through the flesh of his own,
Cutting through jugulars and carotids with blood everywhere flown;
When the martyr’s head was flung to the ground with a thud and rolled,
And light flashed in his eyes as in thunderbolt,
As the last flickers of life glimmered in his mind,
Before he gave up the ghost,
With his eternal soul leaving his dead body behind.
What dominated the Christian martyr’s thoughts,
In his last moments in this life of sorts,
Must have been Himalayan faith and courage,
As he met evil head on and as he fought,
The anti-Christian tyrant scourge.
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