Ballad of Reading Gaol | Page 5

or twice, to throw the dice?Is a gentlemanly game,?But he does not win who plays with Sin?In the secret House of Shame."?No things of air these antics were?That frolicked with such glee:?To men whose lives were held in gyves,?And whose feet might not go free,?Ah! wounds of Christ! they were living things,?Most terrible to see.?Around, around, they waltzed and wound;?Some wheeled in smirking pairs:?With the mincing step of demirep?Some sidled up the stairs:?And with subtle sneer, and fawning leer,?Each helped us at our prayers.?___?The morning wind began to moan,?But still the night went on:?Through its giant loom the web of gloom?Crept till each thread was spun:?And, as we prayed, we grew afraid?Of the Justice of the Sun.
The moaning wind went wandering round?The weeping prison-wall:?Till like a wheel of turning-steel?We felt the minutes crawl:?O moaning wind! what had we done?To have such a seneschal?
At last I saw the shadowed bars?Like a lattice wrought in lead,?Move right across the whitewashed wall?That faced my three-plank bed,?And I knew that somewhere in the world?God's dreadful dawn was red.?___?At six o'clock we cleaned our cells,?At seven all was still,?But the sough and swing of a mighty wing?The prison seemed to fill,?For the Lord of Death with icy breath?Had entered in to kill.
He did not pass in purple pomp,?Nor ride a moon-white steed.?Three yards of cord and a sliding board?Are all the gallows' need:?So with rope of shame the Herald came?To do the secret deed.
We were as men who through a fen?Of filthy darkness grope:?We did not dare to breathe a prayer,?Or give our anguish scope:?Something was dead in each of us,?And what was dead was Hope.
For Man's grim Justice goes its way,?And will not swerve aside:?It slays the weak, it slays the strong,?It has a deadly stride:?With iron heel it slays the strong,?The monstrous parricide!
We waited for the stroke of eight:?Each tongue was thick with thirst:?For the stroke of eight is the stroke of Fate?That makes a man accursed,?And Fate will use a running noose?For the best man and the worst.
We had no other thing to do,?Save to wait for the sign to come:?So, like things of stone in a valley lone,?Quiet we sat and dumb:?But each man's heart beat thick and quick?Like a madman on a drum!
With sudden shock the prison-clock?Smote on the shivering air,?And from all the gaol rose up a wail?Of impotent despair,?Like the sound that frightened marshes hear?From a leper in his lair.
And as one sees most fearful things?In the crystal of a dream,?We saw the greasy hempen rope?Hooked to the blackened beam,?And heard the prayer the hangman's snare?Strangled into a scream.
And all the woe that moved him so?That he gave that bitter cry,?And the wild regrets, and the bloody sweats,?None knew so well as I:?For he who live more lives than one?More deaths than one must die.
IV.
There is no chapel on the day?On which they hang a man:?The Chaplain's heart is far too sick,?Or his face is far to wan,?Or there is that written in his eyes?Which none should look upon.
So they kept us close till nigh on noon,?And then they rang the bell,?And the Warders with their jingling keys?Opened each listening cell,?And down the iron stair we tramped,?Each from his separate Hell.
Out into God's sweet air we went,?But not in wonted way,?For this man's face was white with fear,?And that man's face was grey,?And I never saw sad men who looked?So wistfully at the day.
I never saw sad men who looked?With such a wistful eye?Upon that little tent of blue?We prisoners called the sky,?And at every careless cloud that passed?In happy freedom by.
But their were those amongst us all?Who walked with downcast head,?And knew that, had each go his due,?They should have died instead:?He had but killed a thing that lived?Whilst they had killed the dead.
For he who sins a second time?Wakes a dead soul to pain,?And draws it from its spotted shroud,?And makes it bleed again,?And makes it bleed great gouts of blood?And makes it bleed in vain!
Like ape or clown, in monstrous garb?With crooked arrows starred,?Silently we went round and round?The slippery asphalte yard;?Silently we went round and round,?And no man spoke a word.
Silently we went round and round,?And through each hollow mind?The memory of dreadful things?Rushed like a dreadful wind,?An Horror stalked before each man,?And terror crept behind.?___?The Warders strutted up and down,?And kept their herd of brutes,?Their uniforms were spick and span,?And they wore their Sunday suits,?But we knew the work they had been at?By the quicklime on their boots.
For where a grave had opened wide,?There was no grave at all:?Only a stretch of mud and sand?By the hideous prison-wall,?And a little heap of burning lime,?That the man should have his pall.
For he has a pall, this wretched man,?Such as few men can claim:?Deep down below a prison-yard,?Naked for greater shame,?He lies, with fetters on