Ballad of Reading Gaol | Page 8

that sickening thirst
That sands one's throat, before

The hangman with his gardener's gloves
Comes 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 anguish 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 the guardsman walked the yard,
In the suit of shabby gray:

His cricket cap was on his head,
And his step was 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 ravelled 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.

For 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.
The oak and elm have pleasant leaves
That in the spring-time shoot:

But grim to see is the gallows-tree,
With its alder-bitten root,

And, green or dry, a man must die
Before it bears its fruit!
The loftiest place is the seat of grace
For which all 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
For weal or woe 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 we were:
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.
III
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 day was 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 Fools' Parade!

We did not care: we knew we were
The Devils' 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