Ballad of Reading Gaol | Page 9

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 horrid 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
The fellow 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 I trembled as I groped my way
Into my 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
watchers 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 knaveThat
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,
Gray 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 corse!

The troubled plumes of midnight shook
Like the plumes upon a
hearse:
And as bitter wine upon a sponge
Was the savour of
Remorse.
The gray cock crew, the red cock crew,

But never came the day:

And crooked shapes 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, the glided fast,
Like travellers through a mist:

They mocked the moon in a rigadoon
Of delicate turn and twist,

And with formal pace and loathsome grace
The phantoms kept their
tryst.
With mop and mow, we saw them go,
Slim shadows hand in hand:

About, about, in ghostly rout
They trod a saraband:
And the
damned grotesques made arabesques,
Like the wind upon the sand!
With the pirouettes of marionettes,
They tripped on pointed tread:

But with flutes of Fear they filled the ear,
As their grisly masque they
led,
And loud they sang, and long they sang,
For they sang to wake
the dead.
"Oho!" they cried, "the world is wide,
But fettered limbs go lame!

And once, or twice, to throw the dice
Is a gentlemanly game,
But he
does not win who plays with Sin
In the secret House of Shame."
No things of air these antics were,
That frolicked with such glee:
To
men whose lives were held in gyves,
And whose feet might not go
free,
Ah! wounds of Christ! they were living things,
Most terrible to
see.
Around, around, they waltzed and wound;
Some wheeled in smirking
pairs;
With the mincing step of a demirep
Some sidled up the stairs:

And with subtle sneer, and fawning leer,
Each helped us at our
prayers.
The morning wind began to moan,
But still the night went on:

Through its giant loom the web of gloom
Crept till each thread was
spun:
And, as we prayed, we grew afraid
Of the Justice of the Sun.
The moaning wind went wandering round
The weeping prison wall:


Till like a wheel of turning steel
We felt the minutes crawl:
O
moaning wind! what had we done
To have such a seneschal?
At last I saw the shadowed bars,
Like a lattice wrought in lead,

Move right across the whitewashed wall
That faced my three-plank
bed,
And I knew that somewhere in the world
God's dreadful dawn
was red.
At six o'clock we cleaned our cells,
At seven all was still,
But the
sough and swing of a mighty wing
The prison seemed to fill,
For
the Lord of Death with icy breath
Had entered in to kill.
He did not pass in purple pomp,
Nor ride a moon-white steed.

Three yards of cord and a sliding board
Are all the gallows' need:

So with rope of shame the Herald came
To do the secret deed.
We were as men who through a fen
Of filthy darkness grope:
We
did not dare to breathe a prayer,
Or to give our anguish scope:

Something was dead in each of us,
And what was dead was Hope.
For Man's grim Justice goes its way
And will not swerve aside:
It
slays the weak, it slays the strong,
It has a deadly stride:
With iron
heel it slays the strong
The monstrous parricide!
We waited for the stroke of eight:
Each tongue was thick with thirst:

For the stroke of eight is the stroke of Fate
That makes a man
accursed,
And Fate will use a running noose
For the best man and
the worst.
We had no other thing to do,
Save to wait for the sign to come:
So,
like things of stone in a