Off With His Head

Ah… Ere centuries afore

Before the French revolution

Bloody messy decapitators

Wished for a slick solution

–

So 10 October 1789

Physician Joseph Guillotin

Stood before the French Assembly

And delivered a six-point plan

–

Said he, despite royal rank

Or nature of offence, the penalty,

To death shalt remain unchanged

Nay affect any in the family

–

Thus Louis XVI sensing discontent

Banned the painful Breaking Wheel

Appointed physician Antoine Louis

The head of Guillotining Committee

–

That designed a basic prototype

To engineer the instant death machine

So, ‘Off with their heads’ the King declared

With a newly instated ‘Guillotine’

–

A guillotine was thence decreed

The most humane form of execution

As the blade falling on the neck

Could not be ‘viewed’ with trepidation

–

But 1793-1794, thousands of innocents

During Robespierre’s reign of terror,

Were guillotined publicly by the Tribunal

Till the Convention returned him the favour

–

But not before the bloody messy revolution

Saw the incompentent Kings and Queens

Like Louis XVI with wife Marie Antoinette

Been “Offed With Their Heads” with a Guillotine

–

However, the fame of guillotine spread

And even Adolf Hitler was in veneration

It is said his personal guillotine beheaded

More than the whole French revolution!

– Akanksha Gupta