The Ballad of Reading Gaol: I
- The Ballad of Reading Gaol
- II
-
- 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 haunted 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 feel that sickening thirst
- That sands one’s throat, before
- The hangman with his gardener’s gloves
- Comes 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 anguish 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.
- The Ballad of Reading Gaol
- II
