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"With breathless speed, like a soul in chase,

I took him up and ran;

There was no time to dig a grave

Before the day began:

In a lonesome wood, with heaps of leaves,

I hid the murdered man.

"And all that day I read in school,

But my thought was otherwhere;
As soon as the mid-day task was done,
In secret I was there;

And a mighty wind had swept the leaves,
And still the corse was bare!

"Then down I cast me on my face,
And first began to weep,

For I knew my secret then was one
That earth refused to keep:
Or land or sea, though it should be
Ten thousand fathoms deep.

"So wills the fierce avenging Sprite,
Till blood for blood atones!
Aye, though he's buried in a cave,
And trodden down with stones,
And years have rotted off his flesh,—
The world shall see his bones!

"Oh, God! that hórrid, horrid dream
Besets me now awake!
Again-again, with dizzy brain,

The human life I take;

And my red right hand grows raging hot,
Like Cranmer's at the stake.

"And still no peace for the restless clay

Will wave or mold allow;

The horrid thing pursues my soul,—

It stands before me now!"

The fearful Boy looked up, and saw

Huge drops upon his brow.

The Ballad of Reading Gaol

2687

That very night, while gentle sleep

The urchin eyelids kissed,

Two stern-faced men set out from Lynn,

Through the cold and heavy mist;

And Eugene Aram walked between,
With gyves upon his wrist.

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Thomas Hood [1799-1845]

THE BALLAD OF READING GAOL

I

He did not wear his scarlet coat,

For blood and wine are red,

And blood and wine were on his hands
When they found him with the dead,
The poor dead woman whom he loved,
And murdered in her bed.

He walked amongst the Trial Men
In a suit of shabby gray;

A cricket cap was on his head,

And his step seemed light and gay; But I never saw a man who looked So wistfully at the day.

I never saw a man who looked

With such a wistful eye

Upon that little tent of blue

Which prisoners call the sky,

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And at every drifting cloud that went

With sails of silver by.

I walked, with other souls in pain,

Within another ring,

And was wondering if the man had done

A great or little thing,

When a voice behind me whispered low,

"That fellow's got to swing."

Dear Christ! the very prison walls
Suddenly seemed to reel,
And the sky above my head became
Like a casque of scorching steel;
And, though I was a soul in pain,
My pain I could not feel.

I only knew what hunted thought
Quickened his step, and why
He looked upon the garish day
With such a wistful eye;

The man had killed the thing he loved,

And so he had to die.

Yet each man kills the thing he loves,
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,

Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!

Some kill their love when they are young,
And some when they are old;

Some strangle with the hands of Lust,
Some with the hands of Gold:

The kindest use a knife, because
The dead so soon grow cold.

Some love too little, some too long,
Some sell, and others buy;
Some do the deed with many tears,
And some without a sigh:

For each man kills the thing he loves,
Yet each man does not die.

He does not die a death of shame
On a day of dark disgrace,
Nor have a noose about his neck,

Nor a cloth upon his face,

Nor drop feet foremost through the floor Into an empty space.

The Ballad of Reading Gaol

He does not sit with silent men

2689

Who watch him night and day;

Who watch him when he tries to weep,

And when he tries to pray;

Who watch him lest himself should rob
The prison of its prey.

He does not wake at dawn to sce
Dread figures throng his room,
The shivering Chaplain robed in white,
The Sheriff stern with gloom,
And the Governor all in shiny black,
With the yellow face of Doom.

He does not rise in piteous haste

To put on convict-clothes,

While some coarse-mouthed Doctor gloats, and notes
Each new and nerve-twitched pose,
Fingering a watch whose little ticks

Are like horrible hammer-blows.

He does not know that sickening thirst
That sands one's throat, before

The hangman with his gardener's gloves
Slips through the padded door,

And binds one with three leathern thongs,
That the throat may thirst no more.

He does not bend his head to hear

The Burial Office read,

Nor, while the terror of his soul

Tells him he is not dead,

Cross his own coffin, as he moves

Into the hideous shed.

He does not stare upon the air
Through a little roof of glass:
He does not pray with lips of clay
For his agony to pass;

Nor feel upon his shuddering cheek
That kiss of Caiaphas.

II

Six weeks our guardsman walked the yard, In the suit of shabby gray:

His cricket cap was on his head,

And his step seemed light and gay,

But I never saw a man who looked
So wistfully at the day.

I never saw a man who looked
With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue

Which prisoners call the sky,

And at every wandering cloud that trailed
Its raveled fleeces by.

He did not wring his hands, as do
Those witless men who dare
To try to rear the changeling Hope
In the cave of black Despair:
He only looked upon the sun,
And drank the morning air.

He did not wring his hands nor weep,
Nor did he peek or pine,

But he drank the air as though it held
Some healthful anodyne;

With open mouth he drank the sun
As though it had been wine!

And I and all the souls in pain,
Who tramped the other ring,
Forgot if we ourselves had done
A great or little thing,

And watched with gaze of dull amaze
The man who had to swing.

And strange it was to see him pass

With a step so light and gay, And strange it was to see him look

So wistfully at the day,

And strange it was to think that he

Had such a debt to pay.

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