Ballad of Reading Gaol | Page 4

worldlings try:

But who would stand in hempen band
Upon a scaffold high,
And
through a murderer's collar take
His last look at the sky?
It is sweet to dance to violins
When Love and Life are fair:
To
dance to flutes, to dance to lutes
Is delicate and rare:
But it is not
sweet with nimble feet
To dance upon the air!
So with curious eyes and sick surmise
We watched him day by day,

And wondered if each one of us
Would end the self-same way,

For none can tell to what red Hell
His sightless soul may stray.
At last the dead man walked no more
Amongst the Trial Men,
And
I knew that he was standing up
In the black dock's dreadful pen,

And that never would I see his face
In God's sweet world again.
Like two doomed ships that pass in storm
We had crossed each
other's way:
But we made no sign, we said no word,
We had no
word to say;
For we did not meet in the holy night,
But in the
shameful day.
A prison wall was round us both,
Two outcast men were we:
The
world had thrust us from its heart,
And God from out His care:
And
the iron gin that waits for Sin
Had caught us in its snare.
In Debtors' Yard the stones are hard,
And the dripping wall is high,

So it was there he took the air
Beneath the leaden sky,
And by each
side a Warder walked,
For fear the man might die.
Or else he sat with those who watched
His anguish night and day;

Who watched him when he rose to weep,
And when he crouched to
pray;
Who watched him lest himself should rob
Their scaffold of its
prey.
The Governor was strong upon

The Regulations Act:
The Doctor

said that Death was but
A scientific fact:
And twice a day the
Chaplain called
And left a little tract.
And twice a day he smoked his pipe,
And drank his quart of beer:

His soul was resolute, and held
No hiding-place for fear;
He often
said that he was glad
The hangman's hands were near.
But why he said so strange a thing
No Warder dared to ask:
For he
to whom a watcher's doom
Is given as his task,
Must set a lock
upon his lips,
And make his face a mask.
Or else he might be moved, and try
To comfort or console:
And
what should Human Pity do
Pent up in Murderers' Hole?
What
word of grace in such a place
Could help a brother's soul?
With slouch and swing around the ring
We trod the Fool's Parade!

We did not care: we knew we were
The Devil's Own Brigade:
And
shaven head and feet of lead
Make a merry masquerade.
We tore the tarry rope to shreds
With blunt and bleeding nails;
We
rubbed the doors, and scrubbed the floors,
And cleaned the shining
rails:
And, rank by rank, we soaped the plank,
And clattered with
the pails.
We sewed the sacks, we broke the stones,
We turned the dusty drill:

We banged the tins, and bawled the hymns,
And sweated on the
mill:
But in the heart of every man
Terror was lying still.
So still it lay that every day
Crawled like a weed-clogged wave:

And we forgot the bitter lot
That waits for fool and knave,
Till once,
as we tramped in from work,
We passed an open grave.
With yawning mouth the yellow hole
Gaped for a living thing;
The
very mud cried out for blood
To the thirsty asphalte ring:
And we
knew that ere one dawn grew fair
Some prisoner had to swing.

Right in we went, with soul intent
On Death and Dread and Doom:

The hangman, with his little bag,
Went shuffling through the gloom

And each man trembled as he crept
Into his numbered tomb.

That night the empty corridors
Were full of forms of Fear,
And up and down the iron town
Stole feet we could not hear,
And through the bars that hide the stars
White faces seemed to peer.
He lay as one who lies and dreams
In a pleasant meadow-land,
The
watcher watched him as he slept,
And could not understand
How
one could sleep so sweet a sleep
With a hangman close at hand?
But there is no sleep when men must weep
Who never yet have wept:

So we--the fool, the fraud, the knave--
That endless vigil kept,

And through each brain on hands of pain
Another's terror crept.
___

Alas! it is a fearful thing
To feel another's guilt!
For, right within,
the sword of Sin
Pierced to its poisoned hilt,
And as molten lead
were the tears we shed
For the blood we had not spilt.
The Warders with their shoes of felt
Crept by each padlocked door,

And peeped and saw, with eyes of awe,
Grey figures on the floor,

And wondered why men knelt to pray
Who never prayed before.
All through the night we knelt and prayed,
Mad mourners of a corpse!

The troubled plumes of midnight were
The plumes upon a hearse:

And bitter wine upon a sponge
Was the savior of Remorse.
___

The cock crew, the red cock crew,
But never came the day:
And
crooked shape of Terror crouched,
In the corners where we lay:

And each evil sprite that walks by night
Before us seemed to play.
They glided past, they glided fast,
Like travelers