Ballade of reading Gaol. Wilde Oscar

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!