The Ballad of Reading Gaol quotes Flashcards
(22 cards)
The poor dead woman
whom he loved, and murdered in her bed
I never saw a man who looked with such a wistful eye
upon that little tent of blue which prisoners call the sky
other souls
in pain
Yet each man
kills the thing he loves
The very prison walls
suddenly seemed to reel
Fingering a watch whose little ticks
are like horrible hammer-blows
In Debtor’s Yard the stones are hard
and the dripping wall is high
With blunt and bleeding nails we rubbed the doors and scrubbed the floors,
and cleaned the shining rails
The very mud cried out
for blood
Iron
town
For Man’s
grim justice goes its way
Heard the prayer the hangman’s snare
strangled into a scream.
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 too wan
Each from his
separate Hell
They wore their
Sunday suits
But we knew the work they had been at,
By the quicklime on their boots
God’s kindly earth is kindlier
than men know
They mocked
the swollen purple throat
The Chaplain would not kneel to pray
By his dishonoured grave
But God’s eternal
Laws are kind
And his grave
has got no name
