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The Ballad of Reading Gaol

I

 
He did not wear his scarlet coat,
     For blood and wine are red,
And blood and wine were on his hands
     When they found him with the dead,
The poor dead woman whom he loved,
     And murdered in her bed.
 
He walked amongst the Trial Men
     In a suit of shabby gray;
A cricket cap was on his head,
     And his step seemed 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 drifting cloud that went
     With sails of silver by.
 
I walked, with other souls in pain,
     Within another ring,
And was wondering if the man had done
     A great or little thing,
When a voice behind me whispered low,
     “That fellow’s got to swing.”
 
Dear Christ! the very prison walls
     Suddenly seemed to reel,
And the sky above my head became
     Like a casque of scorching steel;
And, though I was a soul in pain,
     My pain I could not feel.
 
I only knew what hunted thought
     Quickened his step, and why
He looked upon the garish day
     With such a wistful eye;
The man had killed the thing he loved,
     And so he had to die.
 
Yet each man kills the thing he loves,
     By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
     Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
     The brave man with a sword!
 
Some kill their love when they are young,
     And some when they are old;
Some strangle with the hands of Lust,
     Some with the hands of Gold:
The kindest use a knife, because
     The dead so soon grow cold.
 
Some love too little, some too long,
     Some sell, and others buy;
Some do the deed with many tears,
     And some without a sigh:
For each man kills the thing he loves,
     Yet each man does not die.
 
He does not die a death of shame
     On a day of dark disgrace,
Nor have a noose about his neck,
     Nor a cloth upon his face,
Nor drop feet foremost through the floor
     Into an empty space.
 
He does not sit with silent men
     Who watch him night and day;
Who watch him when he tries to weep,
     And when he tries to pray;
Who watch him lest himself should rob
     The prison of its prey.
 
He does not wake at dawn to see
     Dread figures throng his room,
The shivering Chaplain robed in white,
     The Sheriff stern with gloom,
And the Governor all in shiny black,
     With the yellow face of Doom.
 
He does not rise in piteous haste
     To put on convict—clothes,
While some coarse—mouthed Doctor gloats, and notes
     Each new and nerve—twitched pose,
Fingering a watch whose little ticks
     Are like horrible hammer—blows.
 
He does not know that sickening thirst
     That sands one’s throat, before
The hangman with his gardener’s gloves
     Slips through the padded door,
And binds one with three leathern thongs,
That the throat may thirst no more.
 
He does not bend his head to hear
     The Burial Office read,
Nor while the terror of his soul
     Tells him he is not dead,
Cross his own coffin, as he moves
     Into the hideous shed.
 
He does not stare upon the air
     Through a little roof of glass:
He does not pray with lips of clay
     For his agony to pass;
Nor feel upon his shuddering cheek
     The kiss of Caiaphas.
 

II

 
Six weeks the guardsman walked the yard,
     In the suit of shabby gray:
His cricket cap was on his head,
     And his step seemed 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.
 
For 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 that 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
     In God’s sweet world 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.
 

III

 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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 hands were near.
 
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.
 
Or else he might be moved, and try
     To comfort or console:
And what should Human Pity do
     Pent up in Murderer’s Hole?
What word of grace in such a place
     Could help a brother’s soul?
 
With slouch and swing around the ring
     We trod the Fools’ Parade!
We did not care: we knew we were
     The Devil’s Own Brigade:
And shaven head and feet of lead
     Make a merry masquerade.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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 yellow 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
     Some prisoner 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 each man trembled as he crept
     Into his 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 knave—
     That 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 were
     The plumes upon a hearse:
And 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, 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.
 
With mop and mow, we saw them go,
     Slim shadows hand in hand:
About, about, in ghostly rout
     They trod a saraband:
And 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 than 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 saw sad men who looked
     With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue
     We prisoners called the sky,
And at every careless cloud that passed
     In happy freedom by.
 
But there were those amongst us all
     Who walked with downcast head,
And knew that, had each got his due,
     They should have died instead:
He had but killed a thing that lived,
     Whilst they had killed the dead.
 
For he who sins a second time
     Wakes a dead soul to pain,
And draws it from its spotted shroud,
     And makes it bleed again,
And makes it bleed great gouts of blood,
     And makes it bleed in vain!
 
Like ape or clown, in monstrous garb
     With crooked arrows starred,
Silently we went round and round
     The slippery asphalte yard;
Silently we went round and round,
     And no man spoke a word.
 
Silently we went round and round,
     And through each hollow mind
The Memory of dreadful things
     Rushed like a dreadful wind,
And Horror stalked before each man,
     And Terror crept behind.
 
The Warders strutted up and down,
     And kept their herd of brutes,
Their uniforms were spick and span,
     And they wore their Sunday suits,
But we knew the work they had been at,
     By the quicklime on their boots.
 
For where a grave had opened wide,
     There was no grave at all:
Only a stretch of mud and sand
     By the hideous prison—wall,
And a little heap of burning lime,
     That the man should have his pall.
 
For he has a pall, this wretched man,
     Such as few men can claim:
Deep down below a prison—yard,
     Naked for greater shame,
He lies, with fetters on each foot,
     Wrapt in a sheet of flame!
 
And all the while the burning lime
     Eats flesh and bone away,
It eats the brittle bone by night,
     And the soft flesh by day,
It eats the flesh and bone by turns,
     But it eats the heart alway.
 
For three long years they will not sow
     Or root or seedling there:
For three long years the unblessed spot
     Will sterile be and bare,
And look upon the wondering sky
     With unreproachful stare.
 
They think a murderer’s heart would taint
     Each simple seed they sow.
It is not true! God’s kindly earth
     Is kindlier than men know,
And the red rose would but glow more red,
     The white rose whiter blow.
 
Out of his mouth a red, red rose!
     Out of his heart a white!
For who can say by what strange way,
     Christ brings His will to light,
Since the barren staff the pilgrim bore
     Bloomed in the great Pope’s sight?
 
But neither milk—white rose nor red
     May bloom in prison air;
The shard, the pebble, and the flint,
     Are what they give us there:
For flowers have been known to heal
     A common man’s despair.
 
So never will wine—red rose or white,
     Petal by petal, fall
On that stretch of mud and sand that lies
     By the hideous prison—wall,
To tell the men who tramp the yard
     That God’s Son died for all.
 
Yet though the hideous prison—wall
     Still hems him round and round,
And a spirit may not walk by night
     That is with fetters bound,
And a spirit may but weep that lies
     In such unholy ground,
 
He is at peace—this wretched man—
     At peace, or will be soon:
There is no thing to make him mad,
     Nor does Terror walk at noon,
For the lampless Earth in which he lies
     Has neither Sun nor Moon.
 
They hanged him as a beast is hanged:
     They did not even toll
A requiem that might have brought
     Rest to his startled soul,
But hurriedly they took him out,
     And hid him in a hole.
 
They stripped him of his canvas clothes,
     And gave him to the flies:
They mocked the swollen purple throat,
     And the stark and staring eyes:
And with laughter loud they heaped the shroud
     In which their convict lies.
 
The Chaplain would not kneel to pray
     By his dishonoured grave:
Nor mark it with that blessed Cross
     That Christ for sinners gave,
Because the man was one of those
     Whom Christ came down to save.
 
Yet all is well; he has but passed
     To Life’s appointed bourne:
And alien tears will fill for him
     Pity’s long—broken urn,
For his mourners will be outcast men,
     And outcasts always mourn.
 

V

 
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.
 
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 God 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.
 
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.
 

VI

 
In Reading gaol by Reading town
     There is a pit of shame,
And in it lies a wretched man
     Eaten by teeth of flame,
In a burning winding—sheet he lies,
     And his grave has got no name.
 
And there, till Christ call forth the dead,
     In silence let him lie:
No need to waste the foolish tear,
     Or heave the windy sigh:
The man had killed the thing he loved,
     And so he had to die.
 
And all men kill the thing they love,
     By all let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
     Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
     The brave man with a sword.
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