[Verse 1] Cheapside at noon, not Tyburn's usual ground, the Council moved the gibbet — the gallows — right downtown, set beside the Standard, that stone fountain gone quite dry, a dry spout for a warning: come and watch your neighbors die. The Sheriff cuts the crowd apart, halberds raised up tall, those long axes on their poles are fencing off the wall. [Chorus] This is the hour obedience gets weighed, a private hand on justice, and the bill that must be paid, mercy's riding hard but the road is long and thin, watch how close too late can come to catching up to him. [Verse 2] Lincoln climbs up first, no curse left in his chest, he turns his final breath into the city's harshest test: "That Lincoln should be hanged for London's sake," he says, no riddle for the scholars, just the plainest of his days. He warns the crowd that private hands can't seize the law and run — "Obedience is the best in each degree," he's done, asking pardon of his God before he asks the air, a rioter who broke the peace now begging someone's care. [Verse 3] Doll won't let her husband wait and watch her in the line, she begs to climb the ladder first — surrendering her time, kisses him up there like it's a doorway, not a drop, leaves her two children to kind friends before the rope can stop. No stranger ever brought her down — that's the pride she keeps, "I do owe God a death, and I must pay him," no one weeps louder than this woman climbing fearless toward the end. [Chorus] This is the hour obedience gets weighed, a private hand on justice, and the bill that must be paid, mercy's riding hard but the road is long and thin, watch how close too late can come to catching up to him. [Bridge] A cry of pardon breaks wide open across the square, Surrey's horse comes thundering but the news dies in the air — "It is too late, my lord; he's dead already," the Sheriff's flat reply. More had knelt before the king for every neck set to die, made Lord High Chancellor now, his kneeling bought their breath, the rest walk free while Lincoln only earned himself a death. [Verse 4] The other gallows standing empty up and down the town, Aldgate, Leadenhall, and Newgate, ropes all taken down, men cut loose mid-sentence when the royal word rode in, their necks still bruised but breathing, given back their kin. The city keeps two stories now, both true beneath the sky: one where mercy rode in time, and one where no one could untie the knot already finished, the lesson learned too slow — that pardons chase the living, but the dead don't get to know. [Outro] Fifteen-seventeen, the year this echo's drawn from true: John Lincoln hanged for it, while the king's pardon pulled hundreds through. History keeps rhyming with the lesson carved in stone — a king can mean pure mercy and still arrive too late, alone.
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