The Ballad of Reading Gaol: V
- IV
- The Ballad of Reading Gaol
- VI
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- I know not whether Laws be right,
- Or whether Laws be wrong;
- All that we know who lie in gaol
- Is that the wall is strong;
- And that each day is like a year,
- A year whose days are long.
-
- But this I know, that every Law
- That men have made for Man,
- Since first Man took His brother’s life,
- And the sad world began,
- But straws the wheat and saves the chaff
- With a most evil fan.
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- This too I know—and wise it were
- If each could know the same—
- That every prison that men build
- Is built with bricks of shame,
- And bound with bars lest Christ should see
- How men their brothers maim.
-
- With bars they blur the gracious moon,
- And blind the goodly sun:
- And they do well to hide their Hell,
- For in it things are done
- That Son of things nor son of Man
- Ever should look upon!
-
- The vilest deeds like poison weeds
- Bloom well in prison-air:
- It is only what is good in Man
- That wastes and withers there:
- Pale Anguish keeps the heavy gate,
- And the warder is Despair.
-
- For they starve the little frightened child
- Till it weeps both night and day:
- And they scourge the weak, and flog the fool,
- And gibe the old and gray,
- And some grow mad, and all grow bad,
- And none a word may say.
-
- Each narrow cell in which we dwell
- Is a foul and dark latrine,
- And the fetid breath of living Death
- Chokes up each grated screen,
- And all, but Lust, is turned to dust
- In Humanity’s machine.
-
- The brackish water that we drink
- Creeps with a loathsome slime,
- And the bitter bread they weigh in scales
- Is full of chalk and lime,
- And Sleep will not lie down, but walks
- Wild-eyed, and cries to Time.
-
- But though lean Hunger and green Thirst
- Like asp with adder fight,
- We have little care of prison fare,
- For what chills and kills outright
- Is that every stone one lifts by day
- Becomes one’s heart by night.
-
- With midnight always in one’s heart,
- And twilight in one’s cell,
- We turn the crank, or tear the rope,
- Each in his separate Hell,
- And the silence is more awful far
- Than the sound of a brazen bell.
-
- And never a human voice comes near
- To speak a gentle word:
- And the eye that watches through the door
- Is pitiless and hard:
- And by all forgot, we rot and rot,
- With soul and body marred.
-
- And thus we rust Life’s iron chain
- Degraded and alone:
- And some men curse, and some men weep,
- And some men make no moan:
- But God’s eternal Laws are kind
- And break the heart of stone.
-
- And every human heart that breaks,
- In prison-cell or yard,
- Is as that broken box that gave
- Its treasure to the Lord,
- And filled the unclean leper’s house
- With the scent of costliest nard.
-
- Ah! happy they whose hearts can break
- And peace of pardon win!
- How else may man make straight his plan
- And cleanse his soul from Sin?
- How else but through a broken heart
- May Lord Christ enter in?
-
- And he of the swollen purple throat,
- And the stark and staring eyes,
- Waits for the holy hands that took
- The Thief to Paradise;
- And a broken and a contrite heart
- The Lord will not despise.
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- The man in red who reads the Law
- Gave him three weeks of life,
- Three little weeks in which to heal
- His soul of his soul’s strife,
- And cleanse from every blot of blood
- The hand that held the knife.
-
- And with tears of blood he cleansed the hand,
- The hand that held the steel:
- For only blood can wipe out blood,
- And only tears can heal:
- And the crimson stain that was of Cain
- Became Christ’s snow-white seal.
- IV
- The Ballad of Reading Gaol
- VI
