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1
He did not wear his scarlet coat,
2
For blood and wine are red,
3
And blood and wine were on his hands
4
When they found him with the dead,
5
The poor dead woman whom he loved,
6
And murdered in her bed.
7
He walked amongst the Trial Men
8
In a suit of shabby grey;
9
A cricket cap was on his head,
10
And his step seemed light and gay;
11
But I never saw a man who looked
12
So wistfully at the day.
13
I never saw a man who looked
14
With such a wistful eye
15
Upon that little tent of blue
16
Which prisoners call the sky,
17
And at every drifting cloud that went
18
With sails of silver by.
19
I walked, with other souls in pain,
21
And was wondering if the man had done
22
A great or little thing,
23
When a voice behind me whispered low,
24
"That fellow's got to swing."
25
Dear Christ! the very prison walls
26
Suddenly seemed to reel,
27
And the sky above my head became
28
Like a casque of scorching steel;
29
And, though I was a soul in pain,
30
My pain I could not feel.
31
I only knew what hunted thought
32
Quickened his step, and why
33
He looked upon the garish day
34
With such a wistful eye;
35
The man had killed the thing he loved
37
Yet each man kills the thing he loves
38
By each let this be heard,
39
Some do it with a bitter look,
40
Some with a flattering word,
41
The coward does it with a kiss,
42
The brave man with a sword!
43
Some kill their love when they are young,
44
And some when they are old;
45
Some strangle with the hands of Lust,
46
Some with the hands of Gold:
47
The kindest use a knife, because
48
The dead so soon grow cold.
49
Some love too little, some too long,
50
Some sell, and others buy;
51
Some do the deed with many tears,
52
And some without a sigh:
53
For each man kills the thing he loves,
54
Yet each man does not die.
55
He does not die a death of shame
56
On a day of dark disgrace,
57
Nor have a noose about his neck,
58
Nor a cloth upon his face,
59
Nor drop feet foremost through the floor
61
He does not sit with silent men
62
Who watch him night and day;
63
Who watch him when he tries to weep,
64
And when he tries to pray;
65
Who watch him lest himself should rob
66
The prison of its prey.
67
He does not wake at dawn to see
68
Dread figures throng his room,
69
The shivering Chaplain robed in white,
70
The Sheriff stern with gloom,
71
And the Governor all in shiny black,
72
With the yellow face of Doom.
73
He does not rise in piteous haste
74
To put on convict-clothes,
75
While some coarse-mouthed Doctor gloats, and notes
76
Each new and nerve-twitched pose,
77
Fingering a watch whose little ticks
78
Are like horrible hammer-blows.
79
He does not know that sickening thirst
80
That sands one's throat, before
81
The hangman with his gardener's gloves
82
Slips through the padded door,
83
And binds one with three leathern thongs,
84
That the throat may thirst no more.
85
He does not bend his head to hear
86
The Burial Office read,
87
Nor, while the terror of his soul
88
Tells him he is not dead,
89
Cross his own coffin, as he moves
90
Into the hideous shed.
91
He does not stare upon the air
92
Through a little roof of glass;
93
He does not pray with lips of clay
94
For his agony to pass;
95
Nor feel upon his shuddering cheek
1
Six weeks our guardsman walked the yard,
2
In a suit of shabby grey:
3
His cricket cap was on his head,
4
And his step seemed light and gay,
5
But I never saw a man who looked
6
So wistfully at the day.
7
I never saw a man who looked
8
With such a wistful eye
9
Upon that little tent of blue
10
Which prisoners call the sky,
11
And at every wandering cloud that trailed
12
Its raveled fleeces by.
13
He did not wring his hands, as do
14
Those witless men who dare
15
To try to rear the changeling Hope
16
In the cave of black Despair:
17
He only looked upon the sun,
18
And drank the morning air.
19
He did not wring his hands nor weep,
20
Nor did he peek or pine,
21
But he drank the air as though it held
22
Some healthful anodyne;
23
With open mouth he drank the sun
24
As though it had been wine!
25
And I and all the souls in pain,
26
Who tramped the other ring,
27
Forgot if we ourselves had done
28
A great or little thing,
29
And watched with gaze of dull amaze
30
The man who had to swing.
31
And strange it was to see him pass
32
With a step so light and gay,
33
And strange it was to see him look
34
So wistfully at the day,
35
And strange it was to think that he
36
Had such a debt to pay.
37
For oak and elm have pleasant leaves
38
That in the spring-time shoot:
39
But grim to see is the gallows-tree,
40
With its adder-bitten root,
41
And, green or dry, a man must die
42
Before it bears its fruit!
43
The loftiest place is that seat of grace
44
For which all worldlings try:
45
But who would stand in hempen band
47
And through a murderer's collar take
48
His last look at the sky?
49
It is sweet to dance to violins
50
When Love and Life are fair:
51
To dance to flutes, to dance to lutes
53
But it is not sweet with nimble feet
54
To dance upon the air!
55
So with curious eyes and sick surmise
56
We watched him day by day,
57
And wondered if each one of us
58
Would end the self-same way,
59
For none can tell to what red Hell
60
His sightless soul may stray.
61
At last the dead man walked no more
62
Amongst the Trial Men,
63
And I knew that he was standing up
64
In the black dock's dreadful pen,
65
And that never would I see his face
66
In God's sweet world again.
67
Like two doomed ships that pass in storm
68
We had crossed each other's way:
69
But we made no sign, we said no word,
70
We had no word to say;
71
For we did not meet in the holy night,
72
But in the shameful day.
73
A prison wall was round us both,
74
Two outcast men were we:
75
The world had thrust us from its heart,
76
And God from out His care:
77
And the iron gin that waits for Sin
78
Had caught us in its snare.
79
In Debtors' Yard the stones are hard,
80
And the dripping wall is high,
81
So it was there he took the air
82
Beneath the leaden sky,
83
And by each side a Warder walked,
84
For fear the man might die.
85
Or else he sat with those who watched
86
His anguish night and day;
87
Who watched him when he rose to weep,
88
And when he crouched to pray;
89
Who watched him lest himself should rob
90
Their scaffold of its prey.
91
The Governor was strong upon
93
The Doctor said that Death was but
95
And twice a day the Chaplain called
96
And left a little tract.
97
And twice a day he smoked his pipe,
98
And drank his quart of beer:
99
His soul was resolute, and held
100
No hiding-place for fear;
101
He often said that he was glad
102
The hangman's hands were near.
103
But why he said so strange a thing
104
No Warder dared to ask:
105
For he to whom a watcher's doom
106
Is given as his task,
107
Must set a lock upon his lips,
108
And make his face a mask.
109
Or else he might be moved, and try
110
To comfort or console:
111
And what should Human Pity do
112
Pent up in Murderers' Hole?
113
What word of grace in such a place
114
Could help a brother's soul?
115
With slouch and swing around the ring
116
We trod the Fool's Parade!
117
We did not care: we knew we were
118
The Devil's Own Brigade:
119
And shaven head and feet of lead
120
Make a merry masquerade.
121
We tore the tarry rope to shreds
122
With blunt and bleeding nails;
123
We rubbed the doors, and scrubbed the floors,
124
And cleaned the shining rails:
125
And, rank by rank, we soaped the plank,
126
And clattered with the pails.
127
We sewed the sacks, we broke the stones,
128
We turned the dusty drill:
129
We banged the tins, and bawled the hymns,
130
And sweated on the mill:
131
But in the heart of every man
132
Terror was lying still.
133
So still it lay that every day
134
Crawled like a weed-clogged wave:
135
And we forgot the bitter lot
136
That waits for fool and knave,
137
Till once, as we tramped in from work,
138
We passed an open grave.
139
With yawning mouth the yellow hole
140
Gaped for a living thing;
141
The very mud cried out for blood
142
To the thirsty asphalte ring:
143
And we knew that ere one dawn grew fair
144
Some prisoner had to swing.
145
Right in we went, with soul intent
146
On Death and Dread and Doom:
147
The hangman, with his little bag,
148
Went shuffling through the gloom
149
And each man trembled as he crept
150
Into his numbered tomb.
151
That night the empty corridors
152
Were full of forms of Fear,
153
And up and down the iron town
154
Stole feet we could not hear,
155
And through the bars that hide the stars
156
White faces seemed to peer.
157
He lay as one who lies and dreams
158
In a pleasant meadow-land,
159
The watcher watched him as he slept,
160
And could not understand
161
How one could sleep so sweet a sleep
162
With a hangman close at hand?
163
But there is no sleep when men must weep
164
Who never yet have wept:
165
So we—the fool, the fraud, the knave—
166
That endless vigil kept,
167
And through each brain on hands of pain
168
Another's terror crept.
169
Alas! it is a fearful thing
170
To feel another's guilt!
171
For, right within, the sword of Sin
172
Pierced to its poisoned hilt,
173
And as molten lead were the tears we shed
174
For the blood we had not spilt.
175
The Warders with their shoes of felt
176
Crept by each padlocked door,
177
And peeped and saw, with eyes of awe,
178
Grey figures on the floor,
179
And wondered why men knelt to pray
180
Who never prayed before.
181
All through the night we knelt and prayed,
182
Mad mourners of a corpse!
183
The troubled plumes of midnight were
184
The plumes upon a hearse:
185
And bitter wine upon a sponge
186
Was the savior of Remorse.
187
The cock crew, the red cock crew,
188
But never came the day:
189
And crooked shape of Terror crouched,
190
In the corners where we lay:
191
And each evil sprite that walks by night
192
Before us seemed to play.
193
They glided past, they glided fast,
194
Like travelers through a mist:
195
They mocked the moon in a rigadoon
196
Of delicate turn and twist,
197
And with formal pace and loathsome grace
198
The phantoms kept their tryst.
199
With mop and mow, we saw them go,
200
Slim shadows hand in hand:
201
About, about, in ghostly rout
202
They trod a saraband:
203
And the damned grotesques made arabesques,
204
Like the wind upon the sand!
205
With the pirouettes of marionettes,
206
They tripped on pointed tread:
207
But with flutes of Fear they filled the ear,
208
As their grisly masque they led,
209
And loud they sang, and loud they sang,
210
For they sang to wake the dead.
211
"Oho!" they cried, "The world is wide,
212
But fettered limbs go lame!
213
And once, or twice, to throw the dice
214
Is a gentlemanly game,
215
But he does not win who plays with Sin
216
In the secret House of Shame."
217
No things of air these antics were
218
That frolicked with such glee:
219
To men whose lives were held in gyves,
220
And whose feet might not go free,
221
Ah! wounds of Christ! they were living things,
222
Most terrible to see.
223
Around, around, they waltzed and wound;
224
Some wheeled in smirking pairs:
225
With the mincing step of demirep
226
Some sidled up the stairs:
227
And with subtle sneer, and fawning leer,
228
Each helped us at our prayers.
229
The morning wind began to moan,
230
But still the night went on:
231
Through its giant loom the web of gloom
232
Crept till each thread was spun:
233
And, as we prayed, we grew afraid
234
Of the Justice of the Sun.
235
The moaning wind went wandering round
236
The weeping prison-wall:
237
Till like a wheel of turning-steel
238
We felt the minutes crawl:
239
O moaning wind! what had we done
240
To have such a seneschal?
241
At last I saw the shadowed bars
242
Like a lattice wrought in lead,
243
Move right across the whitewashed wall
244
That faced my three-plank bed,
245
And I knew that somewhere in the world
246
God's dreadful dawn was red.
247
At six o'clock we cleaned our cells,
248
At seven all was still,
249
But the sough and swing of a mighty wing
250
The prison seemed to fill,
251
For the Lord of Death with icy breath
252
Had entered in to kill.
253
He did not pass in purple pomp,
254
Nor ride a moon-white steed.
255
Three yards of cord and a sliding board
256
Are all the gallows' need:
257
So with rope of shame the Herald came
258
To do the secret deed.
259
We were as men who through a fen
260
Of filthy darkness grope:
261
We did not dare to breathe a prayer,
262
Or give our anguish scope:
263
Something was dead in each of us,
264
And what was dead was Hope.
265
For Man's grim Justice goes its way,
266
And will not swerve aside:
267
It slays the weak, it slays the strong,
268
It has a deadly stride:
269
With iron heel it slays the strong,
270
The monstrous parricide!
271
We waited for the stroke of eight:
272
Each tongue was thick with thirst:
273
For the stroke of eight is the stroke of Fate
274
That makes a man accursed,
275
And Fate will use a running noose
276
For the best man and the worst.
277
We had no other thing to do,
278
Save to wait for the sign to come:
279
So, like things of stone in a valley lone,
280
Quiet we sat and dumb:
281
But each man's heart beat thick and quick
282
Like a madman on a drum!
283
With sudden shock the prison-clock
284
Smote on the shivering air,
285
And from all the gaol rose up a wail
287
Like the sound that frightened marshes hear
288
From a leper in his lair.
289
And as one sees most fearful things
290
In the crystal of a dream,
291
We saw the greasy hempen rope
292
Hooked to the blackened beam,
293
And heard the prayer the hangman's snare
294
Strangled into a scream.
295
And all the woe that moved him so
296
That he gave that bitter cry,
297
And the wild regrets, and the bloody sweats,
298
None knew so well as I:
299
For he who live more lives than one
300
More deaths than one must die.
1
There is no chapel on the day
2
On which they hang a man:
3
The Chaplain's heart is far too sick,
4
Or his face is far to wan,
5
Or there is that written in his eyes
6
Which none should look upon.
7
So they kept us close till nigh on noon,
8
And then they rang the bell,
9
And the Warders with their jingling keys
10
Opened each listening cell,
11
And down the iron stair we tramped,
12
Each from his separate Hell.
13
Out into God's sweet air we went,
14
But not in wonted way,
15
For this man's face was white with fear,
16
And that man's face was grey,
17
And I never saw sad men who looked
18
So wistfully at the day.
19
I never saw sad men who looked
20
With such a wistful eye
21
Upon that little tent of blue
22
We prisoners called the sky,
23
And at every careless cloud that passed
25
But there were those amongst us all
26
Who walked with downcast head,
27
And knew that, had each got his due,
28
They should have died instead:
29
He had but killed a thing that lived
30
Whilst they had killed the dead.
31
For he who sins a second time
32
Wakes a dead soul to pain,
33
And draws it from its spotted shroud,
34
And makes it bleed again,
35
And makes it bleed great gouts of blood
36
And makes it bleed in vain!
37
Like ape or clown, in monstrous garb
38
With crooked arrows starred,
39
Silently we went round and round
40
The slippery asphalte yard;
41
Silently we went round and round,
42
And no man spoke a word.
43
Silently we went round and round,
44
And through each hollow mind
45
The memory of dreadful things
46
Rushed like a dreadful wind,
47
An Horror stalked before each man,
48
And terror crept behind.
49
The Warders strutted up and down,
50
And kept their herd of brutes,
51
Their uniforms were spick and span,
52
And they wore their Sunday suits,
53
But we knew the work they had been at
54
By the quicklime on their boots.
55
For where a grave had opened wide,
56
There was no grave at all:
57
Only a stretch of mud and sand
58
By the hideous prison-wall,
59
And a little heap of burning lime,
60
That the man should have his pall.
61
For he has a pall, this wretched man,
62
Such as few men can claim:
63
Deep down below a prison-yard,
64
Naked for greater shame,
65
He lies, with fetters on each foot,
66
Wrapt in a sheet of flame!
67
And all the while the burning lime
68
Eats flesh and bone away,
69
It eats the brittle bone by night,
70
And the soft flesh by the day,
71
It eats the flesh and bones by turns,
72
But it eats the heart alway.
73
For three long years they will not sow
74
Or root or seedling there:
75
For three long years the unblessed spot
76
Will sterile be and bare,
77
And look upon the wondering sky
78
With unreproachful stare.
79
They think a murderer's heart would taint
80
Each simple seed they sow.
81
It is not true! God's kindly earth
82
Is kindlier than men know,
83
And the red rose would but blow more red,
84
The white rose whiter blow.
85
Out of his mouth a red, red rose!
86
Out of his heart a white!
87
For who can say by what strange way,
88
Christ brings his will to light,
89
Since the barren staff the pilgrim bore
90
Bloomed in the great Pope's sight?
91
But neither milk-white rose nor red
92
May bloom in prison air;
93
The shard, the pebble, and the flint,
94
Are what they give us there:
95
For flowers have been known to heal
96
A common man's despair.
97
So never will wine-red rose or white,
99
On that stretch of mud and sand that lies
100
By the hideous prison-wall,
101
To tell the men who tramp the yard
102
That God's Son died for all.
103
Yet though the hideous prison-wall
104
Still hems him round and round,
105
And a spirit may not walk by night
106
That is with fetters bound,
107
And a spirit may but weep that lies
108
In such unholy ground,
109
He is at peace—this wretched man—
110
At peace, or will be soon:
111
There is no thing to make him mad,
112
Nor does Terror walk at noon,
113
For the lampless Earth in which he lies
114
Has neither Sun nor Moon.
115
They hanged him as a beast is hanged:
116
They did not even toll
117
A requiem that might have brought
118
Rest to his startled soul,
119
But hurriedly they took him out,
120
And hid him in a hole.
121
They stripped him of his canvas clothes,
122
And gave him to the flies;
123
They mocked the swollen purple throat
124
And the stark and staring eyes:
125
And with laughter loud they heaped the shroud
126
In which their convict lies.
127
The Chaplain would not kneel to pray
128
By his dishonored grave:
129
Nor mark it with that blessed Cross
130
That Christ for sinners gave,
131
Because the man was one of those
132
Whom Christ came down to save.
133
Yet all is well; he has but passed
134
To Life's appointed bourne:
135
And alien tears will fill for him
136
Pity's long-broken urn,
137
For his mourner will be outcast men,
138
And outcasts always mourn.
1
I know not whether Laws be right,
2
Or whether Laws be wrong;
3
All that we know who lie in gaol
4
Is that the wall is strong;
5
And that each day is like a year,
6
A year whose days are long.
7
But this I know, that every Law
8
That men have made for Man,
9
Since first Man took his brother's life,
10
And the sad world began,
11
But straws the wheat and saves the chaff
13
This too I know—and wise it were
14
If each could know the same—
15
That every prison that men build
16
Is built with bricks of shame,
17
And bound with bars lest Christ should see
18
How men their brothers maim.
19
With bars they blur the gracious moon,
20
And blind the goodly sun:
21
And they do well to hide their Hell,
22
For in it things are done
23
That Son of God nor son of Man
24
Ever should look upon!
25
The vilest deeds like poison weeds
26
Bloom well in prison-air:
27
It is only what is good in Man
28
That wastes and withers there:
29
Pale Anguish keeps the heavy gate,
30
And the Warder is Despair
31
For they starve the little frightened child
32
Till it weeps both night and day:
33
And they scourge the weak, and flog the fool,
34
And gibe the old and grey,
35
And some grow mad, and all grow bad,
36
And none a word may say.
37
Each narrow cell in which we dwell
38
Is a foul and dark latrine,
39
And the fetid breath of living Death
40
Chokes up each grated screen,
41
And all, but Lust, is turned to dust
42
In Humanity's machine.
43
The brackish water that we drink
44
Creeps with a loathsome slime,
45
And the bitter bread they weigh in scales
46
Is full of chalk and lime,
47
And Sleep will not lie down, but walks
48
Wild-eyed and cries to Time.
49
But though lean Hunger and green Thirst
50
Like asp with adder fight,
51
We have little care of prison fare,
52
For what chills and kills outright
53
Is that every stone one lifts by day
54
Becomes one's heart by night.
55
With midnight always in one's heart,
56
And twilight in one's cell,
57
We turn the crank, or tear the rope,
58
Each in his separate Hell,
59
And the silence is more awful far
60
Than the sound of a brazen bell.
61
And never a human voice comes near
62
To speak a gentle word:
63
And the eye that watches through the door
65
And by all forgot, we rot and rot,
66
With soul and body marred.
67
And thus we rust Life's iron chain
69
And some men curse, and some men weep,
70
And some men make no moan:
71
But God's eternal Laws are kind
72
And break the heart of stone.
73
And every human heart that breaks,
74
In prison-cell or yard,
75
Is as that broken box that gave
76
Its treasure to the Lord,
77
And filled the unclean leper's house
78
With the scent of costliest nard.
79
Ah! happy day they whose hearts can break
80
And peace of pardon win!
81
How else may man make straight his plan
82
And cleanse his soul from Sin?
83
How else but through a broken heart
84
May Lord Christ enter in?
85
And he of the swollen purple throat.
86
And the stark and staring eyes,
87
Waits for the holy hands that took
88
The Thief to Paradise;
89
And a broken and a contrite heart
90
The Lord will not despise.
91
The man in red who reads the Law
92
Gave him three weeks of life,
93
Three little weeks in which to heal
94
His soul of his soul's strife,
95
And cleanse from every blot of blood
96
The hand that held the knife.
97
And with tears of blood he cleansed the hand,
98
The hand that held the steel:
99
For only blood can wipe out blood,
100
And only tears can heal:
101
And the crimson stain that was of Cain
102
Became Christ's snow-white seal.
1
In Reading gaol by Reading town
2
There is a pit of shame,
3
And in it lies a wretched man
4
Eaten by teeth of flame,
5
In burning winding-sheet he lies,
6
And his grave has got no name.
7
And there, till Christ call forth the dead,
8
In silence let him lie:
9
No need to waste the foolish tear,
10
Or heave the windy sigh:
11
The man had killed the thing he loved,
13
And all men kill the thing they love,
14
By all let this be heard,
15
Some do it with a bitter look,
16
Some with a flattering word,
17
The coward does it with a kiss,
18
The brave man with a sword!
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