III
In Debtors' Yard the stones are hard, And the dripping wall is high, Beneath the leaden sky, For fear the man might die. Or else he sat with those who watched His anguish night and day; And when he crouched to pray; Their scaffold of its prey. The Governor was strong upon The Regulations Act: A scientific fact: And left a little tract. And twice a day he smoked his pipe, And drank his quart of beer: No hiding-place for fear; The hangman's day was near. But why he said so strange a thing No warder dared to ask: Is given as his task, And make his face a mask. Or else he might be moved, and try To comfort or console: Pent up in Murderers' Hole? Could help a brother's soul? With slouch and swing around the ring We trod the Fools' Parade! The Devils' Own Brigade: Make a merry masquerade. We tore the tarry rope to shreds With blunt and bleeding nails; And cleaned the shining rails: And clattered with the pails. We sewed the sacks, we broke the stones, We turned the dusty drill: And sweated on the mill: Terror was lying still. So still it lay that every day Crawled like a weed-clogged wave: That waits for fool and knave, We passed an open grave. With yawning mouth the horrid hole Gaped for a living thing; To the thirsty asphalte ring: The fellow had to swing. Right in we went, with soul intent On Death and Dread and Doom: Went shuffling through the gloom: Into my numbered tomb. That night the empty corridors Were full of forms of Fear, Stole feet we could not hear, White faces seemed to peer. He lay as one who lies and dreams In a pleasant meadow-land, And could not understand With a hangman close at hand. But there is no sleep when men must weep Who never yet have wept: That endless vigil kept, Another's terror crept. Alas! it is a fearful thing To feel another's guilt! Pierced to its poisoned hilt, For the blood we had not spilt. The warders with their shoes of felt Crept by each padlocked door, Gray figures on the floor, Who never prayed before. All through the night we knelt and prayed, Mad mourners of a corse! Like the plumes upon a hearse: Was the savour of Remorse. The gray cock crew, the red cock crew, But never came the day: In the corners where we lay: Before us seemed to play. They glided past, the glided fast, Like travellers through a mist: Of delicate turn and twist, The phantoms kept their tryst. With mop and mow, we saw them go, Slim shadows hand in hand: They trod a saraband: Like the wind upon the sand! With the pirouettes of marionettes, They tripped on pointed tread: As their grisly masque they led, For they sang to wake the dead. "Oho!" they cried, "the world is wide, But fettered limbs go lame! Is a gentlemanly game, In the secret House of Shame." No things of air these antics were, That frolicked with such glee: And whose feet might not go free, Most terrible to see. Around, around, they waltzed and wound; Some wheeled in smirking pairs; Some sidled up the stairs: Each helped us at our prayers. The morning wind began to moan, But still the night went on: Crept till each thread was spun: Of the Justice of the Sun. The moaning wind went wandering round The weeping prison wall: We felt the minutes crawl: To have such a seneschal? At last I saw the shadowed bars, Like a lattice wrought in lead, That faced my three-plank bed, God's dreadful dawn was red. At six o'clock we cleaned our cells, At seven all was still, The prison seemed to fill, Had entered in to kill. He did not pass in purple pomp, Nor ride a moon-white steed. Are all the gallows' need: To do the secret deed. We were as men who through a fen Of filthy darkness grope: Or to give our anguish scope: And what was dead was Hope. For Man's grim Justice goes its way And will not swerve aside: It has a deadly stride: The monstrous parricide! We waited for the stroke of eight: Each tongue was thick with thirst: That makes a man accursed, For the best man and the worst. We had no other thing to do, Save to wait for the sign to come: Quiet we sat and dumb: Like a madman on a drum! With sudden shock the prison-clock Smote on the shivering air, Of impotent despair, From some leper in his lair. And as one sees most fearful things In the crystal of a dream, Hooked to the blackened beam, Strangled into a scream. And all the woe that moved him so That he gave that bitter cry, None knew so well as I: More deaths that one must die. ![]() |