Ballad of Reading Gaol | Page 7

heart by night.
With midnight always in one's heart,

And twilight in one's cell,
We
turn the crank, or tear the rope,
Each in his separate Hell,
And the
silence is more awful far
Than the sound of a brazen bell.
And never a human voice comes near
To speak a gentle word:
And
the eye that watches through the door
Is pitiless and hard:
And by
all forgot, we rot and rot,
With soul and body marred.
And thus we rust Life's iron chain
Degraded and alone:
And some
men curse, and some men weep,
And some men make no moan:

But God's eternal Laws are kind
And break the heart of stone.
___


And every human heart that breaks,
In prison-cell or yard,
Is as
that broken box that gave
Its treasure to the Lord,
And filled the
unclean leper's house
With the scent of costliest nard.
Ah! happy day they whose hearts can break
And peace of pardon win!

How else may man make straight his plan
And cleanse his soul
from Sin?
How else but through a broken heart
May Lord Christ
enter in?
___
And he of the swollen purple throat.
And the stark
and staring eyes,
Waits for the holy hands that took
The Thief to
Paradise;
And a broken and a contrite heart
The Lord will not
despise.
The man in red who reads the Law
Gave him three weeks of life,

Three little weeks in which to heal
His soul of his soul's strife,
And
cleanse from every blot of blood
The hand that held the knife.
And with tears of blood he cleansed the hand,
The hand that held the
steel:
For only blood can wipe out blood,
And only tears can heal:

And the crimson stain that was of Cain
Became Christ's
snow-white seal.
VI.
In Reading gaol by Reading town
There is a pit of shame,
And in it
lies a wretched man
Eaten by teeth of flame,
In burning
winding-sheet he lies,
And his grave has got no name.
And there, till Christ call forth the dead,
In silence let him lie:
No
need to waste the foolish tear,
Or heave the windy sigh:
The man
had killed the thing he loved,
And so he had to die.
And all men kill the thing they love,
By all 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!
End of the first Project Gutenberg Etext of
The Ballad of Reading Gaol.
***
Second Version
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 gray;
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 fellow's 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 haunted 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 space.
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 feel