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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=408923" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Song of a Prison</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Now this is the song of a prison—a song of a gaol or jug—<br>A ballad of quod or of chokey, the ultimate home of the mug.<br>The yard where the Foolish are drafted; Hell’s school where the harmless are taught;<br>For the big beast never is captured and the great thief never is caught. <br>A song of the trollop’s victim, and the dealer in doubtful eggs,<br>And a song of the man who was ruined by the lie with a thousand legs.<br>A song of suspected persons and rouge-and-vagabond pals,<br>And of persons beyond suspicion—the habitual criminals. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">’Tis a song of the weary warders, whom prisoners call “the screws”—<br>A class of men who I fancy would cleave to the “Evening News.”<br>They look after their treasures sadly. By the screw of their keys they are known,<br>And they screw them many times daily before they draw their own. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">It is written on paper pilfered from the prison printery,<br>With a stolen stump of a pencil that a felon smuggled for me.<br>And he’d have got twenty-four hours in the cells if he had been caught,<br>With bread to eat and water to drink and plenty of food for thought. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And I paid in chews of tobacco from one who is in for life;<br>But he is a decent fellow—he only murdered his wife.<br>(He is cherub-like, jolly, good-natured, and frank as the skies above,<br>And his Christian name is Joseph, and his other, ye gods! is Love!) </div><div style="margin:10px 0">The Governor knows, and the Deputy, and all of the warders know,<br>Once a week, and on Sunday, we sit in a sinful row,<br>And bargain for chews of tobacco under the cover of prayer—<br>And the harmless Anglican chaplain is the only innocent there. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Staircase and doors of iron, no sign of a plank or brick,<br>Ceilings and floors of sandstone, and the cell walls two feet thick;<br>Cell like a large-sized coffin, or a small-sized tomb, and white,<br>And it strikes a chill to the backbone on the warmest summer night. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">For fifteen hours they leave you to brood in the gloom and cold<br>On the cheats that you should have cheated, and the lies that you should have told;<br>On the money that would release you, you lent to many a friend,<br>And the many a generous action you suffered for in the end. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Grey daylight follows softly the heartless electric light<br>That printed the bars of the window on the wall of the cell all night<br>The darkness has vanished “hushing” when there is nothing to hush—<br>And I think of the old grey daylight on the teamster’s camp in the bush. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">I think of the low bark homestead, the yard and the sinister bail,<br>And the shed in a hole in the gully—a pigsty compared with gaol;<br>The drought and the rows and the nagging; the hill where a flat grave is—<br>The gaol of my boyhood as dreadful and barren and grey as this. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">We rise at six when the bell rings, and roll up our blankets neat,<br>Then we pace the cell till seven, brain-dulled, and with leaden feet.<br>Bolts clank, and the iron doors open, light floods from an iron-barred arch—<br>And we start with a start galvanic at the passionless, “Left—Quick march!” </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Down the crooked and winding staircase in the great wrong-angular well,<br>Like the crooked stairs that of late years we have stumbled down to Hell;<br>We empty the tubs and muster, with the prison slouch and tread,<br>And we take to the cells our breakfast of hominy and of bread. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">The church in its squat round tower, with Christ in His thorny wreath—<br>The reception house is below it, so the gates of Hell are beneath,<br>Where sinners are clad and numbered, when hope for a while has<br>And above us the gilded rooster that crowed when Peter lied. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">What avail is the prayer of the abbess? Or the raving of Cock-eyed Liz?<br>The holy hermit in his cell, or the Holy Terror in his?<br>Brothers and sisters of Heaven, seen through the bars in a wall,<br>As we see the uncaught sinners—and God have mercy on all.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Henry+Lawson">Henry Lawson</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=408923" data-title="The Song of a Prison de Henry Lawson" data-description="Now this is the song of a prison—a song of a gaol or jug—
A ballad of quod or of chokey, the ultimate home of the mug.
The yard where the Foolish are drafted; Hell’s school where the harmless are taught;
For the big beast never is captured a..."></div>
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