Selected Poems of Oscar Wilde. Wilde Oscar

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 watchers 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 corse!

      The troubled plumes of midnight were

         The plumes upon a hearse:

      And bitter wine upon a sponge

         Was the savour of Remorse.

      The grey cock crew, the red cock crew,

         But never came the day:

      And crooked shapes 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 travellers 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 long 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.’

      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 a 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’