The Ballad of Reading Gaol: III

  1. II
  2. The Ballad of Reading Gaol
  3. IV
    • 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 day was 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 Murderers’ 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 Devils’ 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 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.
    • 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.

    • 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 shook
    • Like the plumes upon a hearse:
    • And as 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 the 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.
  1. II
  2. The Ballad of Reading Gaol
  3. IV