Socrates' Sacrifice
In the agora or out on the street
Wherever public figures I did meet
In conversation I loved to engage
Only to find my questions would enrage
I chipped and chipped at their exterior
Their words hollow with no interior
My young disciples would heartily laugh
At my victims' unease and ev'ry gaffe
My deft manner of the question quizzical
Drove them to plot a bitter reprisal
My daemon urged me to expose deceit
My mission became to puncture conceit
Fake news my furious foes spread about
And brought me to court my campaign to rout
Charged with corrupting Athenian youth
In defence I spoke nothing but the truth
They turned a deaf ear and they paid no heed
So inflamed were they by this irksome deed
The verdict of guilty came as no shock
My sentence-to die by drinking hemlock
They hoped I would flee this condemnation
I chose to keep the laws of my nation
To the shame of Athens, I preferred death
Affirming my content with my last breath
In my drinking of the draught down, they saw
How much I honoured the virtue of law.
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