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<h1> THE BALLAD OF READING GAOL </h1>
<br/><br/>
<h2> By Oscar Wilde </h2>
<br/><br/>
<h2> Version Two </h2>
I<br/>
<br/>
He did not wear his scarlet coat,<br/>
For blood and wine are red,<br/>
And blood and wine were on his hands<br/>
When they found him with the dead,<br/>
The poor dead woman whom he loved,<br/>
And murdered in her bed.<br/>
<br/>
He walked amongst the Trial Men<br/>
In a suit of shabby gray;<br/>
A cricket cap was on his head,<br/>
And his step seemed light and gay;<br/>
But I never saw a man who looked<br/>
So wistfully at the day.<br/>
<br/>
I never saw a man who looked<br/>
With such a wistful eye<br/>
Upon that little tent of blue<br/>
Which prisoners call the sky,<br/>
And at every drifting cloud that went<br/>
With sails of silver by.<br/>
<br/>
I walked, with other souls in pain,<br/>
Within another ring,<br/>
And was wondering if the man had done<br/>
A great or little thing,<br/>
When a voice behind me whispered low,<br/>
"That fellow's got to swing."<br/>
<br/>
Dear Christ! the very prison walls<br/>
Suddenly seemed to reel,<br/>
And the sky above my head became<br/>
Like a casque of scorching steel;<br/>
And, though I was a soul in pain,<br/>
My pain I could not feel.<br/>
<br/>
I only knew what haunted thought<br/>
Quickened his step, and why<br/>
He looked upon the garish day<br/>
With such a wistful eye;<br/>
The man had killed the thing he loved,<br/>
And so he had to die.<br/>
<br/>
Yet each man kills the thing he loves,<br/>
By each let this be heard,<br/>
Some do it with a bitter look,<br/>
Some with a flattering word,<br/>
The coward does it with a kiss,<br/>
The brave man with a sword!<br/>
<br/>
Some kill their love when they are young,<br/>
And some when they are old;<br/>
Some strangle with the hands of Lust,<br/>
Some with the hands of Gold:<br/>
The kindest use a knife, because<br/>
The dead so soon grow cold.<br/>
<br/>
Some love too little, some too long,<br/>
Some sell, and others buy;<br/>
Some do the deed with many tears,<br/>
And some without a sigh:<br/>
For each man kills the thing he loves,<br/>
Yet each man does not die.<br/>
<br/>
He does not die a death of shame<br/>
On a day of dark disgrace,<br/>
Nor have a noose about his neck,<br/>
Nor a cloth upon his face,<br/>
Nor drop feet foremost through the floor<br/>
Into an empty space.<br/>
<br/>
He does not sit with silent men<br/>
Who watch him night and day;<br/>
Who watch him when he tries to weep,<br/>
And when he tries to pray;<br/>
Who watch him lest himself should rob<br/>
The prison of its prey.<br/>
<br/>
He does not wake at dawn to see<br/>
Dread figures throng his room,<br/>
The shivering Chaplain robed in white,<br/>
The Sheriff stern with gloom,<br/>
And the Governor all in shiny black,<br/>
With the yellow face of Doom.<br/>
<br/>
He does not rise in piteous haste<br/>
To put on convict-clothes,<br/>
While some coarse-mouthed Doctor gloats, and notes<br/>
Each new and nerve-twitched pose,<br/>
Fingering a watch whose little ticks<br/>
Are like horrible hammer-blows.<br/>
<br/>
He does not feel that sickening thirst<br/>
That sands one's throat, before<br/>
The hangman with his gardener's gloves<br/>
Comes through the padded door,<br/>
And binds one with three leathern thongs,<br/>
That the throat may thirst no more.<br/>
<br/>
He does not bend his head to hear<br/>
The Burial Office read,<br/>
Nor, while the anguish of his soul<br/>
Tells him he is not dead,<br/>
Cross his own coffin, as he moves<br/>
Into the hideous shed.<br/>
<br/>
He does not stare upon the air<br/>
Through a little roof of glass:<br/>
He does not pray with lips of clay<br/>
For his agony to pass;<br/>
Nor feel upon his shuddering cheek<br/>
The kiss of Caiaphas.<br/><br/>
II<br/>
<br/>
Six weeks the guardsman walked the yard,<br/>
In the suit of shabby gray:<br/>
His cricket cap was on his head,<br/>
And his step was light and gay,<br/>
But I never saw a man who looked<br/>
So wistfully at the day.<br/>
<br/>
I never saw a man who looked<br/>
With such a wistful eye<br/>
Upon that little tent of blue<br/>
Which prisoners call the sky,<br/>
And at every wandering cloud that trailed<br/>
Its ravelled fleeces by.<br/>
<br/>
He did not wring his hands, as do<br/>
Those witless men who dare<br/>
To try to rear the changeling Hope<br/>
In the cave of black Despair:<br/>
He only looked upon the sun,<br/>
And drank the morning air.<br/>
<br/>
He did not wring his hands nor weep,<br/>
Nor did he peek or pine,<br/>
But he drank the air as though it held<br/>
Some healthful anodyne;<br/>
With open mouth he drank the sun<br/>
As though it had been wine!<br/>
<br/>
And I and all the souls in pain,<br/>
Who tramped the other ring,<br/>
Forgot if we ourselves had done<br/>
A great or little thing,<br/>
And watched with gaze of dull amaze<br/>
The man who had to swing.<br/>
<br/>
For strange it was to see him pass<br/>
With a step so light and gay,<br/>
And strange it was to see him look<br/>
So wistfully at the day,<br/>
And strange it was to think that he<br/>
Had such a debt to pay.<br/>
<br/>
The oak and elm have pleasant leaves<br/>
That in the spring-time shoot:<br/>
But grim to see is the gallows-tree,<br/>
With its alder-bitten root,<br/>
And, green or dry, a man must die<br/>
Before it bears its fruit!<br/>
<br/>
The loftiest place is the seat of grace<br/>
For which all worldlings try:<br/>
But who would stand in hempen band<br/>
Upon a scaffold high,<br/>
And through a murderer's collar take<br/>
His last look at the sky?<br/>
<br/>
It is sweet to dance to violins<br/>
When Love and Life are fair:<br/>
To dance to flutes, to dance to lutes<br/>
Is delicate and rare:<br/>
But it is not sweet with nimble feet<br/>
To dance upon the air!<br/>
<br/>
So with curious eyes and sick surmise<br/>
We watched him day by day,<br/>
And wondered if each one of us<br/>
Would end the self-same way,<br/>
For none can tell to what red Hell<br/>
His sightless soul may stray.<br/>
<br/>
At last the dead man walked no more<br/>
Amongst the Trial Men,<br/>
And I knew that he was standing up<br/>
In the black dock's dreadful pen,<br/>
And that never would I see his face<br/>
For weal or woe again.<br/>
<br/>
Like two doomed ships that pass in storm<br/>
We had crossed each other's way:<br/>
But we made no sign, we said no word,<br/>
We had no word to say;<br/>
For we did not meet in the holy night,<br/>
But in the shameful day.<br/>
<br/>
A prison wall was round us both,<br/>
Two outcast men we were:<br/>
The world had thrust us from its heart,<br/>
And God from out His care:<br/>
And the iron gin that waits for Sin<br/>
Had caught us in its snare.<br/>
III<br/>
<br/>
In Debtors' Yard the stones are hard,<br/>
And the dripping wall is high,<br/>
So it was there he took the air<br/>
Beneath the leaden sky,<br/>
And by each side a warder walked,<br/>
For fear the man might die.<br/>
<br/>
Or else he sat with those who watched<br/>
His anguish night and day;<br/>
Who watched him when he rose to weep,<br/>
And when he crouched to pray;<br/>
Who watched him lest himself should rob<br/>
Their scaffold of its prey.<br/>
<br/>
The Governor was strong upon<br/>
The Regulations Act:<br/>
The Doctor said that Death was but<br/>
A scientific fact:<br/>
And twice a day the Chaplain called,<br/>
And left a little tract.<br/>
<br/>
And twice a day he smoked his pipe,<br/>
And drank his quart of beer:<br/>
His soul was resolute, and held<br/>
No hiding-place for fear;<br/>
He often said that he was glad<br/>
The hangman's day was near.<br/>
<br/>
But why he said so strange a thing<br/>
No warder dared to ask:<br/>
For he to whom a watcher's doom<br/>
Is given as his task,<br/>
Must set a lock upon his lips,<br/>
And make his face a mask.<br/>
<br/>
Or else he might be moved, and try<br/>
To comfort or console:<br/>
And what should Human Pity do<br/>
Pent up in Murderers' Hole?<br/>
What word of grace in such a place<br/>
Could help a brother's soul?<br/>
<br/>
With slouch and swing around the ring<br/>
We trod the Fools' Parade!<br/>
We did not care: we knew we were<br/>
The Devils' Own Brigade:<br/>
And shaven head and feet of lead<br/>
Make a merry masquerade.<br/>
<br/>
We tore the tarry rope to shreds<br/>
With blunt and bleeding nails;<br/>
We rubbed the doors, and scrubbed the floors,<br/>
And cleaned the shining rails:<br/>
And, rank by rank, we soaped the plank,<br/>
And clattered with the pails.<br/>
<br/>
We sewed the sacks, we broke the stones,<br/>
We turned the dusty drill:<br/>
We banged the tins, and bawled the hymns,<br/>
And sweated on the mill:<br/>
But in the heart of every man<br/>
Terror was lying still.<br/>
<br/>
So still it lay that every day<br/>
Crawled like a weed-clogged wave:<br/>
And we forgot the bitter lot<br/>
That waits for fool and knave,<br/>
Till once, as we tramped in from work,<br/>
We passed an open grave.<br/>
<br/>
With yawning mouth the horrid hole<br/>
Gaped for a living thing;<br/>
The very mud cried out for blood<br/>
To the thirsty asphalte ring:<br/>
And we knew that ere one dawn grew fair<br/>
The fellow had to swing.<br/>
<br/>
Right in we went, with soul intent<br/>
On Death and Dread and Doom:<br/>
The hangman, with his little bag,<br/>
Went shuffling through the gloom:<br/>
And I trembled as I groped my way<br/>
Into my numbered tomb.<br/>
<br/>
That night the empty corridors<br/>
Were full of forms of Fear,<br/>
And up and down the iron town<br/>
Stole feet we could not hear,<br/>
And through the bars that hide the stars<br/>
White faces seemed to peer.<br/>
<br/>
He lay as one who lies and dreams<br/>
In a pleasant meadow-land,<br/>
The watchers watched him as he slept,<br/>
And could not understand<br/>
How one could sleep so sweet a sleep<br/>
With a hangman close at hand.<br/>
<br/>
But there is no sleep when men must weep<br/>
Who never yet have wept:<br/>
So we- the fool, the fraud, the knave-<br/>
That endless vigil kept,<br/>
And through each brain on hands of pain<br/>
Another's terror crept.<br/>
<br/>
Alas! it is a fearful thing<br/>
To feel another's guilt!<br/>
For, right within, the sword of Sin<br/>
Pierced to its poisoned hilt,<br/>
And as molten lead were the tears we shed<br/>
For the blood we had not spilt.<br/>
<br/>
The warders with their shoes of felt<br/>
Crept by each padlocked door,<br/>
And peeped and saw, with eyes of awe,<br/>
Gray figures on the floor,<br/>
And wondered why men knelt to pray<br/>
Who never prayed before.<br/>
<br/>
All through the night we knelt and prayed,<br/>
Mad mourners of a corse!<br/>
The troubled plumes of midnight shook<br/>
Like the plumes upon a hearse:<br/>
And as bitter wine upon a sponge<br/>
Was the savour of Remorse.<br/>
<br/>
The gray cock crew, the red cock crew,<br/>
But never came the day:<br/>
And crooked shapes of Terror crouched,<br/>
In the corners where we lay:<br/>
And each evil sprite that walks by night<br/>
Before us seemed to play.<br/>
<br/>
They glided past, the glided fast,<br/>
Like travellers through a mist:<br/>
They mocked the moon in a rigadoon<br/>
Of delicate turn and twist,<br/>
And with formal pace and loathsome grace<br/>
The phantoms kept their tryst.<br/>
<br/>
With mop and mow, we saw them go,<br/>
Slim shadows hand in hand:<br/>
About, about, in ghostly rout<br/>
They trod a saraband:<br/>
And the damned grotesques made arabesques,<br/>
Like the wind upon the sand!<br/>
<br/>
With the pirouettes of marionettes,<br/>
They tripped on pointed tread:<br/>
But with flutes of Fear they filled the ear,<br/>
As their grisly masque they led,<br/>
And loud they sang, and long they sang,<br/>
For they sang to wake the dead.<br/>
<br/>
"Oho!" they cried, "the world is wide,<br/>
But fettered limbs go lame!<br/>
And once, or twice, to throw the dice<br/>
Is a gentlemanly game,<br/>
But he does not win who plays with Sin<br/>
In the secret House of Shame."<br/>
<br/>
No things of air these antics were,<br/>
That frolicked with such glee:<br/>
To men whose lives were held in gyves,<br/>
And whose feet might not go free,<br/>
Ah! wounds of Christ! they were living things,<br/>
Most terrible to see.<br/>
<br/>
Around, around, they waltzed and wound;<br/>
Some wheeled in smirking pairs;<br/>
With the mincing step of a demirep<br/>
Some sidled up the stairs:<br/>
And with subtle sneer, and fawning leer,<br/>
Each helped us at our prayers.<br/>
<br/>
The morning wind began to moan,<br/>
But still the night went on:<br/>
Through its giant loom the web of gloom<br/>
Crept till each thread was spun:<br/>
And, as we prayed, we grew afraid<br/>
Of the Justice of the Sun.<br/>
<br/>
The moaning wind went wandering round<br/>
The weeping prison wall:<br/>
Till like a wheel of turning steel<br/>
We felt the minutes crawl:<br/>
O moaning wind! what had we done<br/>
To have such a seneschal?<br/>
<br/>
At last I saw the shadowed bars,<br/>
Like a lattice wrought in lead,<br/>
Move right across the whitewashed wall<br/>
That faced my three-plank bed,<br/>
And I knew that somewhere in the world<br/>
God's dreadful dawn was red.<br/>
<br/>
At six o'clock we cleaned our cells,<br/>
At seven all was still,<br/>
But the sough and swing of a mighty wing<br/>
The prison seemed to fill,<br/>
For the Lord of Death with icy breath<br/>
Had entered in to kill.<br/>
<br/>
He did not pass in purple pomp,<br/>
Nor ride a moon-white steed.<br/>
Three yards of cord and a sliding board<br/>
Are all the gallows' need:<br/>
So with rope of shame the Herald came<br/>
To do the secret deed.<br/>
<br/>
We were as men who through a fen<br/>
Of filthy darkness grope:<br/>
We did not dare to breathe a prayer,<br/>
Or to give our anguish scope:<br/>
Something was dead in each of us,<br/>
And what was dead was Hope.<br/>
<br/>
For Man's grim Justice goes its way<br/>
And will not swerve aside:<br/>
It slays the weak, it slays the strong,<br/>
It has a deadly stride:<br/>
With iron heel it slays the strong<br/>
The monstrous parricide!<br/>
<br/>
We waited for the stroke of eight:<br/>
Each tongue was thick with thirst:<br/>
For the stroke of eight is the stroke of Fate<br/>
That makes a man accursed,<br/>
And Fate will use a running noose<br/>
For the best man and the worst.<br/>
<br/>
We had no other thing to do,<br/>
Save to wait for the sign to come:<br/>
So, like things of stone in a valley lone,<br/>
Quiet we sat and dumb:<br/>
But each man's heart beat thick and quick,<br/>
Like a madman on a drum!<br/>
<br/>
With sudden shock the prison-clock<br/>
Smote on the shivering air,<br/>
And from all the gaol rose up a wail<br/>
Of impotent despair,<br/>
Like the sound the frightened marshes hear<br/>
From some leper in his lair.<br/>
<br/>
And as one sees most fearful things<br/>
In the crystal of a dream,<br/>
We saw the greasy hempen rope<br/>
Hooked to the blackened beam,<br/>
And heard the prayer the hangman's snare<br/>
Strangled into a scream.<br/>
<br/>
And all the woe that moved him so<br/>
That he gave that bitter cry,<br/>
And the wild regrets, and the bloody sweats,<br/>
None knew so well as I:<br/>
For he who lives more lives than one<br/>
More deaths that one must die.<br/>
IV<br/>
<br/>
There is no chapel on the day<br/>
On which they hang a man:<br/>
The Chaplain's heart is far too sick,<br/>
Or his face is far too wan,<br/>
Or there is that written in his eyes<br/>
Which none should look upon.<br/>
<br/>
So they kept us close till nigh on noon,<br/>
And then they rang the bell,<br/>
And the warders with their jingling keys<br/>
Opened each listening cell,<br/>
And down the iron stair we tramped,<br/>
Each from his separate Hell.<br/>
<br/>
Out into God's sweet air we went,<br/>
But not in wonted way,<br/>
For this man's face was white with fear,<br/>
And that man's face was gray,<br/>
And I never saw sad men who looked<br/>
So wistfully at the day.<br/>
<br/>
I never saw sad men who looked<br/>
With such a wistful eye<br/>
Upon that little tent of blue<br/>
We prisoners called the sky,<br/>
And at every happy cloud that passed<br/>
In such strange freedom by.<br/>
<br/>
But there were those amongst us all<br/>
Who walked with downcast head,<br/>
And knew that, had each got his due,<br/>
They should have died instead:<br/>
He had but killed a thing that lived,<br/>
Whilst they had killed the dead.<br/>
<br/>
For he who sins a second time<br/>
Wakes a dead soul to pain,<br/>
And draws it from its spotted shroud<br/>
And makes it bleed again,<br/>
And makes it bleed great gouts of blood,<br/>
And makes it bleed in vain!<br/>
<br/>
Like ape or clown, in monstrous garb<br/>
With crooked arrows starred,<br/>
Silently we went round and round<br/>
The slippery asphalte yard;<br/>
Silently we went round and round,<br/>
And no man spoke a word.<br/>
<br/>
Silently we went round and round,<br/>
And through each hollow mind<br/>
The Memory of dreadful things<br/>
Rushed like a dreadful wind,<br/>
And Horror stalked before each man,<br/>
And Terror crept behind.<br/>
<br/>
The warders strutted up and down,<br/>
And watched their herd of brutes,<br/>
Their uniforms were spick and span,<br/>
And they wore their Sunday suits,<br/>
But we knew the work they had been at,<br/>
By the quicklime on their boots.<br/>
<br/>
For where a grave had opened wide,<br/>
There was no grave at all:<br/>
Only a stretch of mud and sand<br/>
By the hideous prison-wall,<br/>
And a little heap of burning lime,<br/>
That the man should have his pall.<br/>
<br/>
For he has a pall, this wretched man,<br/>
Such as few men can claim:<br/>
Deep down below a prison-yard,<br/>
Naked, for greater shame,<br/>
He lies, with fetters on each foot,<br/>
Wrapt in a sheet of flame!<br/>
<br/>
And all the while the burning lime<br/>
Eats flesh and bone away,<br/>
It eats the brittle bones by night,<br/>
And the soft flesh by day,<br/>
It eats the flesh and bone by turns,<br/>
But it eats the heart alway.<br/>
<br/>
For three long years they will not sow<br/>
Or root or seedling there:<br/>
For three long years the unblessed spot<br/>
Will sterile be and bare,<br/>
And look upon the wondering sky<br/>
With unreproachful stare.<br/>
<br/>
They think a murderer's heart would taint<br/>
Each simple seed they sow.<br/>
It is not true! God's kindly earth<br/>
Is kindlier than men know,<br/>
And the red rose would but glow more red,<br/>
The white rose whiter blow.<br/>
<br/>
Out of his mouth a red, red rose!<br/>
Out of his heart a white!<br/>
For who can say by what strange way,<br/>
Christ brings His will to light,<br/>
Since the barren staff the pilgrim bore<br/>
Bloomed in the great Pope's sight?<br/>
<br/>
But neither milk-white rose nor red<br/>
May bloom in prison air;<br/>
The shard, the pebble, and the flint,<br/>
Are what they give us there:<br/>
For flowers have been known to heal<br/>
A common man's despair.<br/>
<br/>
So never will wine-red rose or white,<br/>
Petal by petal, fall<br/>
On that stretch of mud and sand that lies<br/>
By the hideous prison-wall,<br/>
To tell the men who tramp the yard<br/>
That God's Son died for all.<br/>
<br/>
Yet though the hideous prison-wall<br/>
Still hems him round and round,<br/>
And a spirit may not walk by night<br/>
That is with fetters bound,<br/>
And a spirit may but weep that lies<br/>
In such unholy ground,<br/>
<br/>
He is at peace- this wretched man-<br/>
At peace, or will be soon:<br/>
There is no thing to make him mad,<br/>
Nor does Terror walk at noon,<br/>
For the lampless Earth in which he lies<br/>
Has neither Sun nor Moon.<br/>
<br/>
They hanged him as a beast is hanged:<br/>
They did not even toll<br/>
A requiem that might have brought<br/>
Rest to his startled soul,<br/>
But hurriedly they took him out,<br/>
And hid him in a hole.<br/>
<br/>
The warders stripped him of his clothes,<br/>
And gave him to the flies:<br/>
They mocked the swollen purple throat,<br/>
And the stark and staring eyes:<br/>
And with laughter loud they heaped the shroud<br/>
In which the convict lies.<br/>
<br/>
The Chaplain would not kneel to pray<br/>
By his dishonoured grave:<br/>
Nor mark it with that blessed Cross<br/>
That Christ for sinners gave,<br/>
Because the man was one of those<br/>
Whom Christ came down to save.<br/>
<br/>
Yet all is well; he has but passed<br/>
To Life's appointed bourne:<br/>
And alien tears will fill for him<br/>
Pity's long-broken urn,<br/>
For his mourners be outcast men,<br/>
And outcasts always mourn.<br/>
V<br/>
<br/>
I know not whether Laws be right,<br/>
Or whether Laws be wrong;<br/>
All that we know who lie in gaol<br/>
Is that the wall is strong;<br/>
And that each day is like a year,<br/>
A year whose days are long.<br/>
<br/>
But this I know, that every Law<br/>
That men have made for Man,<br/>
Since first Man took His brother's life,<br/>
And the sad world began,<br/>
But straws the wheat and saves the chaff<br/>
With a most evil fan.<br/>
<br/>
This too I know- and wise it were<br/>
If each could know the same-<br/>
That every prison that men build<br/>
Is built with bricks of shame,<br/>
And bound with bars lest Christ should see<br/>
How men their brothers maim.<br/>
<br/>
With bars they blur the gracious moon,<br/>
And blind the goodly sun:<br/>
And the do well to hide their Hell,<br/>
For in it things are done<br/>
That Son of things nor son of Man<br/>
Ever should look upon!<br/>
<br/>
The vilest deeds like poison weeds<br/>
Bloom well in prison-air:<br/>
It is only what is good in Man<br/>
That wastes and withers there:<br/>
Pale Anguish keeps the heavy gate,<br/>
And the warder is Despair.<br/>
<br/>
For they starve the little frightened child<br/>
Till it weeps both night and day:<br/>
And they scourge the weak, and flog the fool,<br/>
And gibe the old and gray,<br/>
And some grow mad, and all grow bad,<br/>
And none a word may say.<br/>
<br/>
Each narrow cell in which we dwell<br/>
Is a foul and dark latrine,<br/>
And the fetid breath of living Death<br/>
Chokes up each grated screen,<br/>
And all, but Lust, is turned to dust<br/>
In Humanity's machine.<br/>
<br/>
The brackish water that we drink<br/>
Creeps with a loathsome slime,<br/>
And the bitter bread they weigh in scales<br/>
Is full of chalk and lime,<br/>
And Sleep will not lie down, but walks<br/>
Wild-eyed, and cries to Time.<br/>
<br/>
But though lean Hunger and green Thirst<br/>
Like asp with adder fight,<br/>
We have little care of prison fare,<br/>
For what chills and kills outright<br/>
Is that every stone one lifts by day<br/>
Becomes one's heart by night.<br/>
<br/>
With midnight always in one's heart,<br/>
And twilight in one's cell,<br/>
We turn the crank, or tear the rope,<br/>
Each in his separate Hell,<br/>
And the silence is more awful far<br/>
Than the sound of a brazen bell.<br/>
<br/>
And never a human voice comes near<br/>
To speak a gentle word:<br/>
And the eye that watches through the door<br/>
Is pitiless and hard:<br/>
And by all forgot, we rot and rot,<br/>
With soul and body marred.<br/>
<br/>
And thus we rust Life's iron chain<br/>
Degraded and alone:<br/>
And some men curse, and some men weep,<br/>
And some men make no moan:<br/>
But God's eternal Laws are kind<br/>
And break the heart of stone.<br/>
<br/>
And every human heart that breaks,<br/>
In prison-cell or yard,<br/>
Is as that broken box that gave<br/>
Its treasure to the Lord,<br/>
And filled the unclean leper's house<br/>
With the scent of costliest nard.<br/>
<br/>
Ah! happy they whose hearts can break<br/>
And peace of pardon win!<br/>
How else may man make straight his plan<br/>
And cleanse his soul from Sin?<br/>
How else but through a broken heart<br/>
May Lord Christ enter in?<br/>
<br/>
And he of the swollen purple throat,<br/>
And the stark and staring eyes,<br/>
Waits for the holy hands that took<br/>
The Thief to Paradise;<br/>
And a broken and a contrite heart<br/>
The Lord will not despise.<br/>
<br/>
The man in red who reads the Law<br/>
Gave him three weeks of life,<br/>
Three little weeks in which to heal<br/>
His soul of his soul's strife,<br/>
And cleanse from every blot of blood<br/>
The hand that held the knife.<br/>
<br/>
And with tears of blood he cleansed the hand,<br/>
The hand that held the steel:<br/>
For only blood can wipe out blood,<br/>
And only tears can heal:<br/>
And the crimson stain that was of Cain<br/>
Became Christ's snow-white seal.<br/>
VI<br/>
<br/>
In Reading gaol by Reading town<br/>
There is a pit of shame,<br/>
And in it lies a wretched man<br/>
Eaten by teeth of flame,<br/>
In a burning winding-sheet he lies,<br/>
And his grave has got no name.<br/>
<br/>
And there, till Christ call forth the dead,<br/>
In silence let him lie:<br/>
No need to waste the foolish tear,<br/>
Or heave the windy sigh:<br/>
The man had killed the thing he loved,<br/>
And so he had to die.<br/>
<br/>
And all men kill the thing they love,<br/>
By all let this be heard,<br/>
Some do it with a bitter look,<br/>
Some with a flattering word,<br/>
The coward does it with a kiss,<br/>
The brave man with a sword!<br/><br/>
THE END<br/><br/>
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