Complete Works of Oscar Wilde

by Oscar Wilde

  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 born,

  Two outcast men we were:

  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.

  3

  In Debtor’s 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 Fools’ 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 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’ need:

  So with rope of shame the Herald came

  To do the secret deed.

  We were as men who through a fen

  Of filthy darkness grope:

  We did not dare to breathe a prayer,

  Or to give our anguish scope:

  Something was dead in each of us,

  And what was dead was Hope.

  For Man’s grim Justice goes its way,

  And will not swerve aside:

  It slays the weak, it slays the strong,

  It has a deadly stride:

  With iron heel it slays the strong,

  The monstrous parricide!

  We waited for the stroke of eight:

  Each tongue was thick with thirst:

  For the stroke of eight is the stroke of Fate

  That makes a man accursed,

  And Fate will use a running noose

  For the best man and the worst.

  We had no other thing to do,

  Save to wait for the sign to come:

  So, like things of stone in a valley lone,

  Quiet we sat and dumb:

  But each man’s heart beat thick and quick,

  Like a madman on a drum!

  With sudden shock the prison-clock

  Smote on the shivering air,

  And from all the gaol rose up a wail

  Of impotent despair,

  Like the sound that frightened marshes hear

  From some leper in his lair.

  And as one sees most fearful things

  In the crystal of a dream,

  We saw the greasy hempen rope

  Hooked to the blackened beam,

  And heard the prayer the hangman’s snare

  Strangled into a scream.

  And all the woe that moved him so

  That he gave that bitter cry,

  And the wild regrets, and the bloody sweats,

  None knew so well as I:

  For he who lives more lives than one

  More deaths than one must die.

  4

  There is no chapel on the day

  On which they hang a man:

  The Chaplain’s heart is far too sick,

  Or his face is far too wan,

  Or there is that written in his eyes

  Which none should look upon.

  So they kept us close till nigh on noon,

  And then they rang the bell,

  And the Warders with their jingling keys

  Opened each listening cell,

  And down the iron stair we tramped,

  Each from his separate Hell.

  Out into God’s sweet air we went,

  But not in wonted way,

  For this man’s face was white with fear,

  And that man’s face was grey,

  And I never saw sad men who looked

  So wistfully at the day.

  I never saw sad men who looked

  With such a wistful eye

  Upon that little tent of blue

  We prisoners called the sky,

  And at every careless cloud that passed

  In happy freedom by.

  But there were those amongst us all

  Who walked with downcast head,

  And knew that, had each got his due,

  They should have died instead:

  He had but killed a thing that lived,

  Whilst they had killed the dead.

  For he who sins a second time

  Wakes a dead soul to pain,

  And draws it from its spotted shroud,

  And makes it bleed again,

  And makes it bleed great gouts of blood,

  And makes it bleed in vain!

  Like ape or clown, in monstrous garb

  With crooked arrows starred,

  Silently we went round and round

  The slippery asphalte yard;

  Silently we went round and round,

  And no man spoke a word.

  Silently we went round and round,

  And through each hollow mind

  The Memory of dreadful things

  Rushed like a dreadful wind,

  And Horror stalked before each man,

  And Terror crept behind.

  The Warders strutted up and down,

  And kept their herd of brutes,

  Their uniforms were spick and span,

  And they wore their Sunday suits,

  But we knew the work they had been at,

  By the quicklime on their boots.

  For where a grave had opened wide,

  There was no grave at all:

  Only a stretch of mud and sand

  By the hideous prison-wall,

  And a little heap of burning lime,

  That the man should have his pall.

  For he has a pall, this wretched man,

  Such as few men can claim:

  Deep down below a prison-yard,

  Naked for greater shame,

  He lies, with fetters on each foot,

  Wrapt in a sheet of flame!

  And all the while the burning lime

  Eats flesh and bone away,

  It eats the brittle bone by night,

  And the soft flesh by day,

  It eats the flesh and bone by turns,

  But it eats the heart alway.

  For three long years they will not sow

  Or root or seedling there:

  For three long years the unblessed spot

  Will sterile be and bare,

  And look upon the wondering sky

  With unreproachful stare.

  They think a murderer’s heart would taint

  Each simple seed they sow.

  It is not true! God’s kindly earth

  Is kindlier than men know,

  And the red rose would but blow more red,

  The white rose whiter blow.

  Out of his mouth a red, red rose!

  Out of his heart a white!

  For who can say by what strange way,

  Christ brings His will to light,

  Since the barren staff the pilgrim bore

  Bloomed in the great Pope’s sight?

  But neither milk-white rose nor red

  May bloom in prison-air;

  The shard, the pebble, and the flint,

  Are what they give us there:

  For flowers have been known to heal

  A common man’s despair.

  So never will wine-red rose or white,

  Petal by petal, fall

  On that stretch of mud and sand that lies

  By the hideous prison-wall,

  To tell the men who tramp the yard

  That God’s Son died for all.

  Yet though the hideous prison-wall

  Still hems him round and round,

  And a spirit may not walk by night

  That is with fetters bound,

  And a spirit may but weep that lies

  In such unholy ground,

  He is at peace – this wretched man –

  At peace, or will be soon:

  There is no thing to make him mad,

  Nor does Terror walk at noon,

  For the lampless Earth in which he lies

  Has neither Sun nor Moon.

  They hanged him as a beast is hanged!

  They did not even toll
r />   A requiem that might have brought

  Rest to his startled soul,

  But hurriedly they took him out,

  And hid him in a hole.

  They stripped him of his canvas clothes,

  And gave him to the flies:

  They mocked the swollen purple throat,

  And the stark and staring eyes:

  And with laughter loud they heaped the shroud

  In which their convict lies.

  The Chaplain would not kneel to pray

  By his dishonoured grave:

  Nor mark it with that blessed Cross

  That Christ for sinners gave,

  Because the man was one of those

  Whom Christ came down to save.

  Yet all is well; he has but passed

  To Life’s appointed bourne:

  And alien tears will fill for him

  Pity’s long-broken urn,

  For his mourners will be outcast men,

  And outcasts always mourn

  5

  I know not whether Laws be right,

  Or whether Laws be wrong;

  All that we know who lie in gaol

  Is that the wall is strong;

  And that each day is like a year,

  A year whose days are long.

  But this I know, that every Law