The Ballad of Reading Gaol: III
- II
- The Ballad of Reading Gaol
- IV
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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?
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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 of every man
- Terror was lying still.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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 knave—
- That endless vigil kept,
- And through each brain on hands of pain
- Another’s terror crept.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- They glided past, they 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.
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- 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!
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- 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.
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- “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.”
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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?
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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!
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- 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.
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- 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!
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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 than one must die.
- II
- The Ballad of Reading Gaol
- IV
