Ballad of Reading Gaol | Page 9

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 valley lone,?Quiet we sat and dumb:?But each man's heart beat thick and quick,?Like a madman on a drum!
With sudden shock the prison-clock?Smote on the shivering air,?And from all the gaol rose up a wail?Of impotent despair,?Like the sound the frightened marshes hear?From some leper in his lair.
And as one sees most fearful things?In the crystal of a dream,?We saw the greasy hempen rope?Hooked to the blackened beam,?And heard the prayer the hangman's snare?Strangled into a scream.
And all the woe that moved him so?That he gave that bitter cry,?And the wild regrets, and the bloody sweats,?None knew so well as I:?For he who lives more lives than one?More deaths that one must die.
IV
There is no chapel on the day?On which they hang a man:?The Chaplain's heart is far too sick,?Or his face is far too wan,?Or there is that written in his eyes?Which none should look upon.
So they kept us close till nigh on noon,?And then they rang the bell,?And the warders with their jingling keys?Opened each listening cell,?And down the iron stair we tramped,?Each from his separate Hell.
Out into God's sweet air we went,?But not in wonted way,?For this man's face was white with fear,?And that man's face was gray,?And I never saw sad men who looked?So wistfully at the day.
I never