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The Ballad of Reading Gaol

               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."

III

   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 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,
               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,