Ballad of Reading Gaol | Page 3

Money should be paid to "Project Gutenberg Association /
Illinois Benedictine College".
*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN
ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*

In Memoriam
C.T.W.
Sometime Trooper of the Royal Horse
Guards.
Obiit H.M. Prison, Reading, Berkshire,
July 7th, 1896

Presented by Project Gutenberg on the 99th Anniversary.
First version prepared by:
Faith Knowles
[email protected]

The Ballad of Reading Gaol
I.
He did not wear his scarlet coat,
For blood and wine are red,
And
blood and wine were on his hands
When they found him with the
dead,
The poor dead woman whom he loved,
And murdered in her
bed.
He walked amongst the Trial Men
In a suit of shabby grey;
A
cricket cap was on his head,
And his step seemed light and gay;
But
I never saw a man who looked
So wistfully at the day.
I never saw a man who looked
With such a wistful eye
Upon that
little tent of blue
Which prisoners call the sky,
And at every drifting
cloud that went
With sails of silver by.
I walked, with other souls in pain,
Within another ring,
And was
wondering if the man had done
A great or little thing,
When a voice
behind me whispered low,
"That fellows got to swing."
Dear Christ! the very prison walls
Suddenly seemed to reel,
And
the sky above my head became
Like a casque of scorching steel;

And, though I was a soul in pain,
My pain I could not feel.
I only knew what hunted thought
Quickened his step, and why
He
looked upon the garish day
With such a wistful eye;
The man had
killed the thing he loved
And so he had to die.
___
Yet each man

kills the thing he loves
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a
bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a
kiss,
The brave man with a sword!
Some kill their love when they are young,
And some when they are
old;
Some strangle with the hands of Lust,
Some with the hands of
Gold:
The kindest use a knife, because
The dead so soon grow cold.
Some love too little, some too long,
Some sell, and others buy;

Some do the deed with many tears,
And some without a sigh:
For
each man kills the thing he loves,
Yet each man does not die.
___

He does not die a death of shame
On a day of dark disgrace,
Nor
have a noose about his neck,
Nor a cloth upon his face,
Nor drop
feet foremost through the floor
Into an empty place
He does not sit with silent men
Who watch him night and day;
Who
watch him when he tries to weep,
And when he tries to pray;
Who
watch him lest himself should rob
The prison of its prey.
He does not wake at dawn to see
Dread figures throng his room,

The shivering Chaplain robed in white,
The Sheriff stern with gloom,

And the Governor all in shiny black,
With the yellow face of
Doom.
He does not rise in piteous haste
To put on convict-clothes,
While
some coarse-mouthed Doctor gloats, and notes
Each new and
nerve-twitched pose,
Fingering a watch whose little ticks
Are like
horrible hammer-blows.
He does not know that sickening thirst
That sands one's throat, before

The hangman with his gardener's gloves
Slips through the padded
door,

And binds one with three leathern thongs,
That the throat may
thirst no more.
He does not bend his head to hear
The Burial Office read,
Nor,

while the terror of his soul
Tells him he is not dead,
Cross his own
coffin, as he moves
Into the hideous shed.
He does not stare upon the air
Through a little roof of glass;
He
does not pray with lips of clay
For his agony to pass;
Nor feel upon
his shuddering cheek
The kiss of Caiaphas.
II.
Six weeks our guardsman walked the yard,
In a suit of shabby grey:

His cricket cap was on his head,
And his step seemed light and gay,

But I never saw a man who looked
So wistfully at the day.
I never saw a man who looked
With such a wistful eye
Upon that
little tent of blue
Which prisoners call the sky,
And at every
wandering cloud that trailed
Its raveled fleeces by.
He did not wring his hands, as do
Those witless men who dare
To
try to rear the changeling Hope
In the cave of black Despair:
He
only looked upon the sun,
And drank the morning air.
He did not wring his hands nor weep,
Nor did he peek or pine,
But
he drank the air as though it held
Some healthful anodyne;
With
open mouth he drank the sun
As though it had been wine!
And I and all the souls in pain,
Who tramped the other ring,
Forgot
if we ourselves had done
A great or little thing,
And watched with
gaze of dull amaze
The man who had to swing.
And strange it was to see him pass
With a step so light and gay,

And strange it was to see him look
So wistfully at the day,
And
strange it was to think that he
Had such a debt to pay.
___
For oak
and elm have pleasant leaves
That in the spring-time shoot:
But
grim to see is the gallows-tree,
With its adder-bitten root,
And,
green or dry, a man must die
Before it bears its fruit!

The loftiest place is that seat of grace
For which all