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+The Project Gutenberg Etext Wilde's The Ballad of Reading Gaol
+
+[Two Versions Included In This File]
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+The Ballad of Reading Gaol
+
+by
+
+Oscar Wilde
+
+July, 1995  [Etext #301]
+
+
+In Memoriam
+C.T.W.
+Sometime Trooper of the Royal Horse Guards.
+Obiit H.M. Prison, Reading, Berkshire,
+July 7th, 1896
+Presented by Project Gutenberg on the 99th Anniversary.
+
+
+The Project Gutenberg Etext Wilde's The Ballad of Reading Gaol
+*****This file should be named rgaol10.txt or rgaol10.zip******
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+
+In Memoriam
+C.T.W.
+Sometime Trooper of the Royal Horse Guards.
+Obiit H.M. Prison, Reading, Berkshire,
+July 7th, 1896
+Presented by Project Gutenberg on the 99th Anniversary.
+
+
+
+
+First version prepared by:
+
+Faith Knowles
+faith@wile.thetech.org
+
+
+
+
+
+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 grey;
+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 fellows 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 place
+
+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 our guardsman walked the yard,
+  In a suit of shabby grey:
+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 raveled 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.
+
+And 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 adder-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 were we:
+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.
+
+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 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 Fool's 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 watcher 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,
+  Grey 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 corpse! 
+The troubled plumes of midnight were
+  The plumes upon a hearse:
+And bitter wine upon a sponge
+  Was the savior of Remorse.
+___
+The cock crew, the red cock crew,
+  But never came the day:
+And crooked shape 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 travelers 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 loud 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 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 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 that frightened marshes hear
+  From a 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 live 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 to 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 grey,
+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 their were those amongst us all
+  Who walked with downcast head,
+And knew that, had each go 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,
+An 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 the day,
+It eats the flesh and bones 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 blow 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 man not walk by night
+  That is with fetters bound,
+And a spirit may not 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 reguiem 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 dishonored 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 mourner 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 goal
+  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 grey,
+And some grow mad, and all grow bad,
+And none a word may say.
+
+Each narrow cell in which we dwell
+  Is 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 day 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 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!
+
+
+
+
+End of the first Project Gutenberg Etext of
+
+The Ballad of Reading Gaol.
+
+
+***
+
+
+Second Version
+
+
+                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 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.
+
+
+
+                II
+
+Six weeks the guardsman walked the yard,
+  In the suit of shabby gray:
+His cricket cap was on his head,
+  And his step was 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.
+
+The 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 the 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
+  For weal or woe 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 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, the 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 that 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 happy cloud that passed
+  In such strange 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 watched 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 bones 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.
+
+The warders stripped him of his 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 the 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 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 the 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.
+                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!
+
+                         C. 3. 3.
+
+
+             THE END
+
+
+End of the second Project Gutenberg Etext of
+The Ballad of Reading Gaol.
+
+
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