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Oscar Wilde - The Ballad of Reading Gaol
Oscar Wilde - The Ballad of Reading Gaol
With slouch and swing around the ring That night the empty corridors
We trod the Fool’s Parade! Were full of forms of Fear,
We did not care: we knew we were And up and down the iron town
The Devil’s Own Brigade: Stole feet we could not hear,
And shaven head and feet of lead And through the bars that hide the stars
Make a merry masquerade. White faces seemed to peer.
We tore the tarry rope to shreds He lay as one who lies and dreams
With blunt and bleeding nails; In a pleasant meadow-land,
We rubbed the doors, and scrubbed the The watcher watched him as he slept,
floors, And could not understand
And cleaned the shining rails: How one could sleep so sweet a sleep
And, rank by rank, we soaped the plank, With a hangman close at hand?
And clattered with the pails.
But there is no sleep when men must weep
We sewed the sacks, we broke the stones, Who never yet have wept:
We turned the dusty drill: So we—the fool, the fraud, the knave—
We banged the tins, and bawled the hymns, That endless vigil kept,
And sweated on the mill: And through each brain on hands of pain
But in the heart of every man Another’s terror crept.
Terror was lying still.
Alas! it is a fearful thing
So still it lay that every day To feel another’s guilt!
Crawled like a weed-clogged wave: For, right within, the sword of Sin
And we forgot the bitter lot Pierced to its poisoned hilt,
That waits for fool and knave, And as molten lead were the tears we shed
Till once, as we tramped in from work, For the blood we had not spilt.
We passed an open grave.
The Warders with their shoes of felt
With yawning mouth the yellow hole Crept by each padlocked door,
Gaped for a living thing; And peeped and saw, with eyes of awe,
The very mud cried out for blood Grey figures on the floor,
To the thirsty asphalte ring: And wondered why men knelt to pray
And we knew that ere one dawn grew fair Who never prayed before.
Some prisoner had to swing.
All through the night we knelt and prayed,
Right in we went, with soul intent Mad mourners of a corpse!
On Death and Dread and Doom: The troubled plumes of midnight were
The hangman, with his little bag, The plumes upon a hearse:
Went shuffling through the gloom And bitter wine upon a sponge
And each man trembled as he crept Was the savior of Remorse.
Most terrible to see.
The cock crew, the red cock crew,
But never came the day: Around, around, they waltzed and wound;
And crooked shape of Terror crouched, Some wheeled in smirking pairs:
In the corners where we lay: With the mincing step of demirep
And each evil sprite that walks by night Some sidled up the stairs:
Before us seemed to play. And with subtle sneer, and fawning leer,
Each helped us at our prayers.
They glided past, they glided fast,
Like travelers through a mist: The morning wind began to moan,
They mocked the moon in a rigadoon But still the night went on:
Of delicate turn and twist, Through its giant loom the web of gloom
And with formal pace and loathsome grace Crept till each thread was spun:
The phantoms kept their tryst. And, as we prayed, we grew afraid
Of the Justice of the Sun.
With mop and mow, we saw them go,
Slim shadows hand in hand: The moaning wind went wandering round
About, about, in ghostly rout The weeping prison-wall:
They trod a saraband: Till like a wheel of turning-steel
And the damned grotesques made We felt the minutes crawl:
arabesques, O moaning wind! what had we done
Like the wind upon the sand! To have such a seneschal?
“Oho!” they cried, “The world is wide, At six o’clock we cleaned our cells,
But fettered limbs go lame! At seven all was still,
And once, or twice, to throw the dice But the sough and swing of a mighty wing
Is a gentlemanly game, The prison seemed to fill,
But he does not win who plays with Sin For the Lord of Death with icy breath
In the secret House of Shame.” Had entered in to kill.
No things of air these antics were He did not pass in purple pomp,
That frolicked with such glee: Nor ride a moon-white steed.
To men whose lives were held in gyves, Three yards of cord and a sliding board
And whose feet might not go free, Are all the gallows’ need:
Ah! wounds of Christ! they were living So with rope of shame the Herald came
things, To do the secret deed.
And all the woe that moved him so
We were as men who through a fen That he gave that bitter cry,
Of filthy darkness grope: And the wild regrets, and the bloody sweats,
We did not dare to breathe a prayer, None knew so well as I:
Or give our anguish scope: For he who lives more lives than one
Something was dead in each of us, More deaths than one must die.
And what was dead was Hope.