778 lines
27 KiB
Plaintext
778 lines
27 KiB
Plaintext
1898
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THE BALLAD OF READING GAOL
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by Oscar Wilde
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I
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He did not wear his scarlet coat,
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For blood and wine are red,
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And blood and wine were on his hands
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When they found him with the dead,
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The poor dead woman whom he loved,
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And murdered in her bed.
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He walked amongst the Trial Men
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In a suit of shabby gray;
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A cricket cap was on his head,
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And his step seemed light and gay;
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But I never saw a man who looked
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So wistfully at the day.
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I never saw a man who looked
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With such a wistful eye
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Upon that little tent of blue
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Which prisoners call the sky,
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And at every drifting cloud that went
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With sails of silver by.
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I walked, with other souls in pain,
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Within another ring,
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And was wondering if the man had done
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A great or little thing,
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When a voice behind me whispered low,
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"That fellow's got to swing."
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Dear Christ! the very prison walls
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Suddenly seemed to reel,
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And the sky above my head became
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Like a casque of scorching steel;
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And, though I was a soul in pain,
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My pain I could not feel.
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I only knew what haunted thought
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Quickened his step, and why
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He looked upon the garish day
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With such a wistful eye;
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The man had killed the thing he loved,
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And so he had to die.
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Yet each man kills the thing he loves,
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By each let this be heard,
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Some do it with a bitter look,
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Some with a flattering word,
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The coward does it with a kiss,
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The brave man with a sword!
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Some kill their love when they are young,
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And some when they are old;
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Some strangle with the hands of Lust,
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Some with the hands of Gold:
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The kindest use a knife, because
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The dead so soon grow cold.
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Some love too little, some too long,
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Some sell, and others buy;
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Some do the deed with many tears,
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And some without a sigh:
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For each man kills the thing he loves,
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Yet each man does not die.
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He does not die a death of shame
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On a day of dark disgrace,
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Nor have a noose about his neck,
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Nor a cloth upon his face,
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Nor drop feet foremost through the floor
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Into an empty space.
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He does not sit with silent men
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Who watch him night and day;
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Who watch him when he tries to weep,
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And when he tries to pray;
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Who watch him lest himself should rob
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The prison of its prey.
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He does not wake at dawn to see
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Dread figures throng his room,
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The shivering Chaplain robed in white,
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The Sheriff stern with gloom,
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And the Governor all in shiny black,
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With the yellow face of Doom.
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He does not rise in piteous haste
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To put on convict-clothes,
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While some coarse-mouthed Doctor gloats, and notes
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Each new and nerve-twitched pose,
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Fingering a watch whose little ticks
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Are like horrible hammer-blows.
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He does not feel that sickening thirst
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That sands one's throat, before
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The hangman with his gardener's gloves
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Comes through the padded door,
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And binds one with three leathern thongs,
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That the throat may thirst no more.
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He does not bend his head to hear
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The Burial Office read,
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Nor, while the anguish of his soul
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Tells him he is not dead,
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Cross his own coffin, as he moves
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Into the hideous shed.
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He does not stare upon the air
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Through a little roof of glass:
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He does not pray with lips of clay
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For his agony to pass;
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Nor feel upon his shuddering cheek
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The kiss of Caiaphas.
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II
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Six weeks the guardsman walked the yard,
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In the suit of shabby gray:
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His cricket cap was on his head,
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And his step was light and gay,
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But I never saw a man who looked
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So wistfully at the day.
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I never saw a man who looked
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With such a wistful eye
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Upon that little tent of blue
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Which prisoners call the sky,
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And at every wandering cloud that trailed
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Its ravelled fleeces by.
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He did not wring his hands, as do
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Those witless men who dare
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To try to rear the changeling Hope
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In the cave of black Despair:
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He only looked upon the sun,
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And drank the morning air.
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He did not wring his hands nor weep,
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Nor did he peek or pine,
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But he drank the air as though it held
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Some healthful anodyne;
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With open mouth he drank the sun
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As though it had been wine!
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And I and all the souls in pain,
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Who tramped the other ring,
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Forgot if we ourselves had done
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A great or little thing,
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And watched with gaze of dull amaze
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The man who had to swing.
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For strange it was to see him pass
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With a step so light and gay,
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And strange it was to see him look
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So wistfully at the day,
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And strange it was to think that he
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Had such a debt to pay.
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The oak and elm have pleasant leaves
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That in the spring-time shoot:
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But grim to see is the gallows-tree,
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With its alder-bitten root,
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And, green or dry, a man must die
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Before it bears its fruit!
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The loftiest place is the seat of grace
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For which all worldlings try:
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But who would stand in hempen band
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Upon a scaffold high,
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And through a murderer's collar take
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His last look at the sky?
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It is sweet to dance to violins
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When Love and Life are fair:
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To dance to flutes, to dance to lutes
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Is delicate and rare:
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But it is not sweet with nimble feet
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To dance upon the air!
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So with curious eyes and sick surmise
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We watched him day by day,
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And wondered if each one of us
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Would end the self-same way,
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For none can tell to what red Hell
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His sightless soul may stray.
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At last the dead man walked no more
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Amongst the Trial Men,
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And I knew that he was standing up
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In the black dock's dreadful pen,
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And that never would I see his face
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For weal or woe again.
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Like two doomed ships that pass in storm
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We had crossed each other's way:
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But we made no sign, we said no word,
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We had no word to say;
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For we did not meet in the holy night,
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But in the shameful day.
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A prison wall was round us both,
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Two outcast men we were:
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The world had thrust us from its heart,
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And God from out His care:
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And the iron gin that waits for Sin
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Had caught us in its snare.
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III
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In Debtors' Yard the stones are hard,
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And the dripping wall is high,
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So it was there he took the air
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Beneath the leaden sky,
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And by each side a warder walked,
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For fear the man might die.
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Or else he sat with those who watched
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His anguish night and day;
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Who watched him when he rose to weep,
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And when he crouched to pray;
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Who watched him lest himself should rob
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Their scaffold of its prey.
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The Governor was strong upon
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The Regulations Act:
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The Doctor said that Death was but
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A scientific fact:
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And twice a day the Chaplain called,
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And left a little tract.
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And twice a day he smoked his pipe,
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And drank his quart of beer:
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His soul was resolute, and held
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No hiding-place for fear;
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He often said that he was glad
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The hangman's day was near.
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But why he said so strange a thing
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No warder dared to ask:
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For he to whom a watcher's doom
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Is given as his task,
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Must set a lock upon his lips,
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And make his face a mask.
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Or else he might be moved, and try
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To comfort or console:
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And what should Human Pity do
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Pent up in Murderers' Hole?
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What word of grace in such a place
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Could help a brother's soul?
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With slouch and swing around the ring
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We trod the Fools' Parade!
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We did not care: we knew we were
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The Devils' Own Brigade:
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And shaven head and feet of lead
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Make a merry masquerade.
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We tore the tarry rope to shreds
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With blunt and bleeding nails;
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We rubbed the doors, and scrubbed the floors,
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And cleaned the shining rails:
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And, rank by rank, we soaped the plank,
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And clattered with the pails.
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We sewed the sacks, we broke the stones,
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We turned the dusty drill:
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We banged the tins, and bawled the hymns,
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And sweated on the mill:
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But in the heart of every man
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Terror was lying still.
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So still it lay that every day
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Crawled like a weed-clogged wave:
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And we forgot the bitter lot
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That waits for fool and knave,
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Till once, as we tramped in from work,
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We passed an open grave.
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With yawning mouth the horrid hole
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Gaped for a living thing;
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The very mud cried out for blood
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To the thirsty asphalte ring:
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And we knew that ere one dawn grew fair
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The fellow had to swing.
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Right in we went, with soul intent
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On Death and Dread and Doom:
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The hangman, with his little bag,
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Went shuffling through the gloom:
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And I trembled as I groped my way
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Into my numbered tomb.
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That night the empty corridors
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Were full of forms of Fear,
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And up and down the iron town
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Stole feet we could not hear,
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And through the bars that hide the stars
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White faces seemed to peer.
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He lay as one who lies and dreams
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In a pleasant meadow-land,
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The watchers watched him as he slept,
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And could not understand
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How one could sleep so sweet a sleep
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With a hangman close at hand.
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But there is no sleep when men must weep
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Who never yet have wept:
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So we- the fool, the fraud, the knave-
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That endless vigil kept,
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And through each brain on hands of pain
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Another's terror crept.
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Alas! it is a fearful thing
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To feel another's guilt!
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For, right within, the sword of Sin
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Pierced to its poisoned hilt,
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And as molten lead were the tears we shed
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For the blood we had not spilt.
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The warders with their shoes of felt
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Crept by each padlocked door,
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And peeped and saw, with eyes of awe,
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Gray figures on the floor,
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And wondered why men knelt to pray
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Who never prayed before.
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All through the night we knelt and prayed,
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Mad mourners of a corse!
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The troubled plumes of midnight shook
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Like the plumes upon a hearse:
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And as bitter wine upon a sponge
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Was the savour of Remorse.
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The gray cock crew, the red cock crew,
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But never came the day:
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And crooked shapes of Terror crouched,
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In the corners where we lay:
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And each evil sprite that walks by night
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Before us seemed to play.
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They glided past, the glided fast,
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Like travellers through a mist:
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They mocked the moon in a rigadoon
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Of delicate turn and twist,
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And with formal pace and loathsome grace
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The phantoms kept their tryst.
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With mop and mow, we saw them go,
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Slim shadows hand in hand:
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About, about, in ghostly rout
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They trod a saraband:
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And the damned grotesques made arabesques,
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Like the wind upon the sand!
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With the pirouettes of marionettes,
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They tripped on pointed tread:
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But with flutes of Fear they filled the ear,
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As their grisly masque they led,
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And loud they sang, and long they sang,
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For they sang to wake the dead.
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"Oho!" they cried, "the world is wide,
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But fettered limbs go lame!
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And once, or twice, to throw the dice
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Is a gentlemanly game,
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But he does not win who plays with Sin
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In the secret House of Shame."
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No things of air these antics were,
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That frolicked with such glee:
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To men whose lives were held in gyves,
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And whose feet might not go free,
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Ah! wounds of Christ! they were living things,
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Most terrible to see.
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Around, around, they waltzed and wound;
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Some wheeled in smirking pairs;
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With the mincing step of a demirep
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Some sidled up the stairs:
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And with subtle sneer, and fawning leer,
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Each helped us at our prayers.
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The morning wind began to moan,
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But still the night went on:
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Through its giant loom the web of gloom
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Crept till each thread was spun:
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And, as we prayed, we grew afraid
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Of the Justice of the Sun.
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The moaning wind went wandering round
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The weeping prison wall:
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Till like a wheel of turning steel
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We felt the minutes crawl:
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O moaning wind! what had we done
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To have such a seneschal?
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At last I saw the shadowed bars,
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Like a lattice wrought in lead,
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Move right across the whitewashed wall
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That faced my three-plank bed,
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And I knew that somewhere in the world
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God's dreadful dawn was red.
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At six o'clock we cleaned our cells,
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At seven all was still,
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But the sough and swing of a mighty wing
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The prison seemed to fill,
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For the Lord of Death with icy breath
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Had entered in to kill.
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He did not pass in purple pomp,
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Nor ride a moon-white steed.
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Three yards of cord and a sliding board
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Are all the gallows' need:
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So with rope of shame the Herald came
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To do the secret deed.
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We were as men who through a fen
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Of filthy darkness grope:
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We did not dare to breathe a prayer,
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Or to give our anguish scope:
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Something was dead in each of us,
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And what was dead was Hope.
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For Man's grim Justice goes its way
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And will not swerve aside:
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It slays the weak, it slays the strong,
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It has a deadly stride:
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With iron heel it slays the strong
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The monstrous parricide!
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We waited for the stroke of eight:
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Each tongue was thick with thirst:
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For the stroke of eight is the stroke of Fate
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That makes a man accursed,
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And Fate will use a running noose
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For the best man and the worst.
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We had no other thing to do,
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Save to wait for the sign to come:
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So, like things of stone in a valley lone,
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Quiet we sat and dumb:
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But each man's heart beat thick and quick,
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Like a madman on a drum!
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With sudden shock the prison-clock
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Smote on the shivering air,
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And from all the gaol rose up a wail
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Of impotent despair,
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Like the sound the frightened marshes hear
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From some leper in his lair.
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And as one sees most fearful things
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In the crystal of a dream,
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We saw the greasy hempen rope
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Hooked to the blackened beam,
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And heard the prayer the hangman's snare
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Strangled into a scream.
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And all the woe that moved him so
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That he gave that bitter cry,
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And the wild regrets, and the bloody sweats,
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None knew so well as I:
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For he who lives more lives than one
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More deaths that one must die.
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IV
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There is no chapel on the day
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On which they hang a man:
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The Chaplain's heart is far too sick,
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Or his face is far too wan,
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Or there is that written in his eyes
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Which none should look upon.
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So they kept us close till nigh on noon,
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And then they rang the bell,
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And the warders with their jingling keys
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Opened each listening cell,
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And down the iron stair we tramped,
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Each from his separate Hell.
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Out into God's sweet air we went,
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But not in wonted way,
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For this man's face was white with fear,
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And that man's face was gray,
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And I never saw sad men who looked
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So wistfully at the day.
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I never saw sad men who looked
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With such a wistful eye
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Upon that little tent of blue
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We prisoners called the sky,
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And at every happy cloud that passed
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In such strange freedom by.
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But there were those amongst us all
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Who walked with downcast head,
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And knew that, had each got his due,
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They should have died instead:
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He had but killed a thing that lived,
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Whilst they had killed the dead.
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For he who sins a second time
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Wakes a dead soul to pain,
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And draws it from its spotted shroud
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And makes it bleed again,
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And makes it bleed great gouts of blood,
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And makes it bleed in vain!
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Like ape or clown, in monstrous garb
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With crooked arrows starred,
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Silently we went round and round
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The slippery asphalte yard;
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Silently we went round and round,
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And no man spoke a word.
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Silently we went round and round,
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And through each hollow mind
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The Memory of dreadful things
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Rushed like a dreadful wind,
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And Horror stalked before each man,
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And Terror crept behind.
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The warders strutted up and down,
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And watched their herd of brutes,
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Their uniforms were spick and span,
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And they wore their Sunday suits,
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But we knew the work they had been at,
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By the quicklime on their boots.
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For where a grave had opened wide,
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There was no grave at all:
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Only a stretch of mud and sand
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By the hideous prison-wall,
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And a little heap of burning lime,
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That the man should have his pall.
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For he has a pall, this wretched man,
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Such as few men can claim:
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Deep down below a prison-yard,
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Naked, for greater shame,
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He lies, with fetters on each foot,
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Wrapt in a sheet of flame!
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And all the while the burning lime
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Eats flesh and bone away,
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It eats the brittle bones by night,
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And the soft flesh by day,
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It eats the flesh and bone by turns,
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But it eats the heart alway.
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For three long years they will not sow
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Or root or seedling there:
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For three long years the unblessed spot
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Will sterile be and bare,
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And look upon the wondering sky
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With unreproachful stare.
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They think a murderer's heart would taint
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Each simple seed they sow.
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It is not true! God's kindly earth
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Is kindlier than men know,
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And the red rose would but glow more red,
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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
|
|
.
|