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The Ballad of Reading Gaol. Wilde OscarЧитать онлайн книгу.

The Ballad of Reading Gaol - Wilde Oscar


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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 Fool's 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 watcher 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


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