I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
He did not wince. Prison officials said he was "entirely co-operative" as he was taken from his final cell to the chair where he helped them to strap him down. Timothy McVeigh was determined to die as he saw himself, a soldier fighting a war.
Perhaps, though, there was a moment of doubt. Afraid that his voice might falter, he chose not to speak his final words and asked the warden to distribute instead the text of a melodramatic 19th-century hymn to the human spirit, William Henley's Invictus.
And although he has consistently refused spiritual advice, McVeigh did receive the last rites before the execution.
Media witnesses say the execution at the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, the first federal execution in 38 years, was as clinical as it was brief.
As the curtain in the execution room pulled back at 7.06 a.m., a silent McVeigh, wearing a white T-shirt, with a white sheet pulled up to his shoulders, lifted his head from the bed to make eye contact with and nod to each of his five witnesses and then the 10 journalists selected by ballot.
Finally he glanced at the tinted screen that hid the 10 representatives of his victims.
"There was no sign of suffering, no sign of discomfort, no sign of fear," CBS reporter Byron Pitts, one of the press pool, said later.
Then Warder Harley Lappin said: "Timothy McVeigh, you may make a last statement." There was no response.
Then he turned his head away, looking up to the camera in the ceiling that was relaying the execution to Oklahoma, where 232 other victims and their families watched over a secure link.
"That was the hardest moment," one of that group, Mrs Doris Jones, told journalists later. "We were looking in the face of evil."
At 7.10 a.m. the first of three injections was administered through a line attached to McVeigh's right leg. A rigid McVeigh appeared to gulp a couple of times before his taut lips relaxed and his eyes rolled back.
He would not move again. With the final drug administered at 7.13 a.m., his face became more pallid, his still-open eyes glassy.
At 7.14 a.m. Warder Lappin pronounced Timothy McVeigh dead.
His body will be handed over to his lawyer, Mr Robert Nigh, for cremation and then secret disposal.
Outside more than 1,000 accredited journalists crowded round a podium where their 10 colleagues described the scene in the death chamber moment by moment and victims queued to give their version to TV.
Ms Sue Ashford (58) struck a particularly strident note in saying she was elated. "It was wonderful for me," she said.
Others, however, were less triumphalist. Ms Fran Ferrari said she was "just satisfied it was over".
Mr Larry Whicher, whose brother died, said the execution was "not going to bring closure, but unless we had been through this we might never get closure." The justice system had been tough but fair with Timothy McVeigh, he said.
Segregated carefully from the families, a group of some 200 held a silent vigil in memory of the victims but in protest against the execution.
Death penalty supporters chanted "Die, McVeigh, die" and "This is for Oklahoma City".
In Oklahoma small crowds gathered at the outdoor memorial to the bombing, a field of 168 chairs, where families were able to remember individual loved ones.
