Ballad of Reading Gaol | Page 6

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 each foot,
Wrapt in a sheet of flame!
And all the while the burning lime
Eats flesh and bone away,
It eats
the brittle bone by night,
And the soft flesh by the day,
It eats the
flesh and bones by turns,
But it eats the heart alway.
___
For three
long years they will not sow
Or root or seedling there:
For three
long years the unblessed spot
Will sterile be and bare,
And look
upon the wondering sky
With unreproachful stare.
They think a murderer's heart would taint
Each simple seed they sow.

It is not true! God's kindly earth
Is kindlier than men know,
And
the red rose would but blow more red,
The white rose whiter blow.
Out of his mouth a red, red rose!
Out of his heart a white!
For who

can say by what strange way,
Christ brings his will to light,
Since
the barren staff the pilgrim bore
Bloomed in the great Pope's sight?
But neither milk-white rose nor red
May bloom in prison air;
The
shard, the pebble, and the flint,
Are what they give us there:
For
flowers have been known to heal
A common man's despair.
So never will wine-red rose or white,
Petal by petal, fall
On that
stretch of mud and sand that lies
By the hideous prison-wall,
To tell
the men who tramp the yard
That God's Son died for all.
Yet though the hideous prison-wall
Still hems him round and round,

And a spirit man not walk by night
That is with fetters bound,

And a spirit may not weep that lies
In such unholy ground,
He is at peace--this wretched man--
At peace, or will be soon:

There is no thing to make him mad,
Nor does Terror walk at noon,

For the lampless Earth in which he lies
Has neither Sun nor Moon.

___
They hanged him as a beast is hanged:
They did not even toll

A reguiem that might have brought
Rest to his startled soul,
But
hurriedly they took him out,
And hid him in a hole.
They stripped him of his canvas clothes,
And gave him to the flies;

They mocked the swollen purple throat
And the stark and staring eyes:

And with laughter loud they heaped the shroud
In which their
convict lies.
The Chaplain would not kneel to pray
By his dishonored grave:
Nor
mark it with that blessed Cross
That Christ for sinners gave,

Because the man was one of those
Whom Christ came down to save.
Yet all is well; he has but passed
To Life's appointed bourne:
And
alien tears will fill for him

Pity's long-broken urn,
For his mourner
will be outcast men,
And outcasts always mourn.
V.
I know not whether Laws be right,
Or whether Laws be wrong;
All
that we know who lie in goal
Is that the wall is strong;
And that
each day is like a year,
A year whose days are long.
But this I know, that every Law
That men have made for Man,

Since first Man took his brother's life,
And the sad world began,


But straws the wheat and saves the chaff
With a most evil fan.
This too I know--and wise it were
If each could know the same--

That every prison that men build
Is built with bricks of shame,
And
bound with bars lest Christ should see
How men their brothers maim.
With bars they blur the gracious moon,
And blind the goodly sun:

And they do well to hide their Hell,
For in it things are done
That
Son of God nor son of Man
Ever should look upon!
___
The
vilest deeds like poison weeds
Bloom well in prison-air:
It is only
what is good in Man
That wastes and withers there:
Pale Anguish
keeps the heavy gate,
And the Warder is Despair
For they starve the little frightened child
Till it weeps both night and
day:
And they scourge the weak, and flog the fool,
And gibe the old
and grey,
And some grow mad, and all grow bad,
And none a word
may say.
Each narrow cell in which we dwell
Is foul and dark latrine,
And
the fetid breath of living Death
Chokes up each grated screen,
And
all, but Lust, is turned to dust
In Humanity's machine.
The brackish water that we drink
Creeps with a loathsome slime,

And the bitter bread they weigh in scales
Is full of chalk and lime,

And Sleep will not lie down, but walks
Wild-eyed and cries to Time.

___
But though lean Hunger and green Thirst
Like asp with
adder fight,
We have little care of prison fare,
For what chills and
kills outright
Is that every stone one lifts by day
Becomes one's