The Ballad of Reading Gaol: II
- I
- The Ballad of Reading Gaol
- III
-
- 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.
- I
- The Ballad of Reading Gaol
- III
