The Ballad of Reading Gaol: V

  1. IV
  2. The Ballad of Reading Gaol
  3. VI
    • 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 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.
    • 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.
  1. IV
  2. The Ballad of Reading Gaol
  3. VI