<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=473229" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Ballad of Reading Gaol II</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Version II</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He did not wear his scarlet coat, <br>For blood and wine are red, <br>And blood and wine were on his hands <br>When they found him with the dead, <br>The poor dead woman whom he loved, <br>And murdered in her bed. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>He walked amongst the Trial Men <br>In a suit of shabby gray; <br>A cricket cap was on his head, <br>And his step seemed light and gay; <br>But I never saw a man who looked <br>So wistfully at the day. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>I never saw a man who looked <br>With such a wistful eye <br>Upon that little tent of blue <br>Which prisoners call the sky, <br>And at every drifting cloud that went <br>With sails of silver by. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>I walked, with other souls in pain, <br>Within another ring, <br>And was wondering if the man had done <br>A great or little thing, <br>When a voice behind me whispered low, <br>'That fellow's got to swing.' </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>Dear Christ! the very prison walls <br>Suddenly seemed to reel, <br>And the sky above my head became <br>Like a casque of scorching steel; <br>And, though I was a soul in pain, <br>My pain I could not feel. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>I only knew what haunted thought <br>Quickened his step, and why <br>He looked upon the garish day <br>With such a wistful eye; <br>The man had killed the thing he loved, <br>And so he had to die. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>Yet each man kills the thing he loves, <br>By each let this be heard, <br>Some do it with a bitter look, <br>Some with a flattering word, <br>The coward does it with a kiss, <br>The brave man with a sword! </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>Some kill their love when they are young, <br>And some when they are old; <br>Some strangle with the hands of Lust, <br>Some with the hands of Gold: <br>The kindest use a knife, because <br>The dead so soon grow cold. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>Some love too little, some too long, <br>Some sell, and others buy; <br>Some do the deed with many tears, <br>And some without a sigh: <br>For each man kills the thing he loves, <br>Yet each man does not die. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>He does not die a death of shame <br>On a day of dark disgrace, <br>Nor have a noose about his neck, <br>Nor a cloth upon his face, <br>Nor drop feet foremost through the floor <br>Into an empty space. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>He does not sit with silent men <br>Who watch him night and day; <br>Who watch him when he tries to weep, <br>And when he tries to pray; <br>Who watch him lest himself should rob <br>The prison of its prey. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>He does not wake at dawn to see <br>Dread figures throng his room, <br>The shivering Chaplain robed in white, <br>The Sheriff stern with gloom, <br>And the Governor all in shiny black, <br>With the yellow face of Doom. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>He does not rise in piteous haste <br>To put on convict-clothes, <br>While some coarse-mouthed Doctor gloats, and notes <br>Each new and nerve-twitched pose, <br>Fingering a watch whose little ticks <br>Are like horrible hammer-blows. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>He does not feel that sickening thirst <br>That sands one's throat, before <br>The hangman with his gardener's gloves <br>Comes through the padded door, <br>And binds one with three leathern thongs, <br>That the throat may thirst no more. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>He does not bend his head to hear <br>The Burial Office read, <br>Nor, while the anguish of his soul <br>Tells him he is not dead, <br>Cross his own coffin, as he moves <br>Into the hideous shed. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>He does not stare upon the air <br>Through a little roof of glass: <br>He does not pray with lips of clay <br>For his agony to pass; <br>Nor feel upon his shuddering cheek <br>The kiss of Caiaphas. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>II</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Six weeks the guardsman walked the yard, <br>In the suit of shabby gray: <br>His cricket cap was on his head, <br>And his step was light and gay, <br>But I never saw a man who looked <br>So wistfully at the day. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>I never saw a man who looked <br>With such a wistful eye <br>Upon that little tent of blue <br>Which prisoners call the sky, <br>And at every wandering cloud that trailed <br>Its ravelled fleeces by. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>He did not wring his hands, as do <br>Those witless men who dare <br>To try to rear the changeling Hope <br>In the cave of black Despair: <br>He only looked upon the sun, <br>And drank the morning air. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>He did not wring his hands nor weep, <br>Nor did he peek or pine, <br>But he drank the air as though it held <br>Some healthful anodyne; <br>With open mouth he drank the sun <br>As though it had been wine! </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>And I and all the souls in pain, <br>Who tramped the other ring, <br>Forgot if we ourselves had done <br>A great or little thing, <br>And watched with gaze of dull amaze <br>The man who had to swing. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>For strange it was to see him pass <br>With a step so light and gay, <br>And strange it was to see him look <br>So wistfully at the day, <br>And strange it was to think that he <br>Had such a debt to pay. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>The oak and elm have pleasant leaves <br>That in the spring-time shoot: <br>But grim to see is the gallows-tree, <br>With its alder-bitten root, <br>And, green or dry, a man must die <br>Before it bears its fruit! </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>The loftiest place is the seat of grace <br>For which all worldlings try: <br>But who would stand in hempen band <br>Upon a scaffold high, <br>And through a murderer's collar take <br>His last look at the sky? </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>It is sweet to dance to violins <br>When Love and Life are fair: <br>To dance to flutes, to dance to lutes <br>Is delicate and rare: <br>But it is not sweet with nimble feet <br>To dance upon the air! </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>So with curious eyes and sick surmise <br>We watched him day by day, <br>And wondered if each one of us <br>Would end the self-same way, <br>For none can tell to what red Hell <br>His sightless soul may stray. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>At last the dead man walked no more <br>Amongst the Trial Men, <br>And I knew that he was standing up <br>In the black dock's dreadful pen, <br>And that never would I see his face <br>For weal or woe again. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>Like two doomed ships that pass in storm <br>We had crossed each other's way: <br>But we made no sign, we said no word, <br>We had no word to say; <br>For we did not meet in the holy night, <br>But in the shameful day. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>A prison wall was round us both, <br>Two outcast men we were: <br>The world had thrust us from its heart, <br>And God from out His care: <br>And the iron gin that waits for Sin <br>Had caught us in its snare. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>III</div><div style="margin:10px 0">In Debtors' Yard the stones are hard, <br>And the dripping wall is high, <br>So it was there he took the air <br>Beneath the leaden sky, <br>And by each side a warder walked, <br>For fear the man might die. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>Or else he sat with those who watched <br>His anguish night and day; <br>Who watched him when he rose to weep, <br>And when he crouched to pray; <br>Who watched him lest himself should rob <br>Their scaffold of its prey. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>The Governor was strong upon <br>The Regulations Act: <br>The Doctor said that Death was but <br>A scientific fact: <br>And twice a day the Chaplain called, <br>And left a little tract. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>And twice a day he smoked his pipe, <br>And drank his quart of beer: <br>His soul was resolute, and held <br>No hiding-place for fear; <br>He often said that he was glad <br>The hangman's day was near. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>But why he said so strange a thing <br>No warder dared to ask: <br>For he to whom a watcher's doom <br>Is given as his task, <br>Must set a lock upon his lips, <br>And make his face a mask. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>Or else he might be moved, and try <br>To comfort or console: <br>And what should Human Pity do <br>Pent up in Murderers' Hole? <br>What word of grace in such a place <br>Could help a brother's soul? </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>With slouch and swing around the ring <br>We trod the Fools' Parade! <br>We did not care: we knew we were <br>The Devils' Own Brigade: <br>And shaven head and feet of lead <br>Make a merry masquerade. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>We tore the tarry rope to shreds <br>With blunt and bleeding nails; <br>We rubbed the doors, and scrubbed the floors, <br>And cleaned the shining rails: <br>And, rank by rank, we soaped the plank, <br>And clattered with the pails. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>We sewed the sacks, we broke the stones, <br>We turned the dusty drill: <br>We banged the tins, and bawled the hymns, <br>And sweated on the mill: <br>But in the heart of every man <br>Terror was lying still. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>So still it lay that every day <br>Crawled like a weed-clogged wave: <br>And we forgot the bitter lot <br>That waits for fool and knave, <br>Till once, as we tramped in from work, <br>We passed an open grave. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>With yawning mouth the horrid hole <br>Gaped for a living thing; <br>The very mud cried out for blood <br>To the thirsty asphalte ring: <br>And we knew that ere one dawn grew fair <br>The fellow had to swing. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>Right in we went, with soul intent <br>On Death and Dread and Doom: <br>The hangman, with his little bag, <br>Went shuffling through the gloom: <br>And I trembled as I groped my way <br>Into my numbered tomb. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>That night the empty corridors <br>Were full of forms of Fear, <br>And up and down the iron town <br>Stole feet we could not hear, <br>And through the bars that hide the stars <br>White faces seemed to peer. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>He lay as one who lies and dreams <br>In a pleasant meadow-land, <br>The watchers watched him as he slept, <br>And could not understand <br>How one could sleep so sweet a sleep <br>With a hangman close at hand. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>But there is no sleep when men must weep <br>Who never yet have wept: <br>So we- the fool, the fraud, the knave- <br>That endless vigil kept, <br>And through each brain on hands of pain <br>Another's terror crept. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>Alas! it is a fearful thing <br>To feel another's guilt! <br>For, right within, the sword of Sin <br>Pierced to its poisoned hilt, <br>And as molten lead were the tears we shed <br>For the blood we had not spilt. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>The warders with their shoes of felt <br>Crept by each padlocked door, <br>And peeped and saw, with eyes of awe, <br>Gray figures on the floor, <br>And wondered why men knelt to pray <br>Who never prayed before. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>All through the night we knelt and prayed, <br>Mad mourners of a corse! <br>The troubled plumes of midnight shook <br>Like the plumes upon a hearse: <br>And as bitter wine upon a sponge <br>Was the savour of Remorse. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>The gray cock crew, the red cock crew, <br>But never came the day: <br>And crooked shapes of Terror crouched, <br>In the corners where we lay: <br>And each evil sprite that walks by night <br>Before us seemed to play. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>They glided past, the glided fast, <br>Like travellers through a mist: <br>They mocked the moon in a rigadoon <br>Of delicate turn and twist, <br>And with formal pace and loathsome grace <br>The phantoms kept their tryst. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>With mop and mow, we saw them go, <br>Slim shadows hand in hand: <br>About, about, in ghostly rout <br>They trod a saraband: <br>And the damned grotesques made arabesques, <br>Like the wind upon the sand! </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>With the pirouettes of marionettes, <br>They tripped on pointed tread: <br>But with flutes of Fear they filled the ear, <br>As their grisly masque they led, <br>And loud they sang, and long they sang, <br>For they sang to wake the dead. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>'Oho!' they cried, 'the world is wide, <br>But fettered limbs go lame! <br>And once, or twice, to throw the dice <br>Is a gentlemanly game, <br>But he does not win who plays with Sin <br>In the secret House of Shame.' </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>No things of air these antics were, <br>That frolicked with such glee: <br>To men whose lives were held in gyves, <br>And whose feet might not go free, <br>Ah! wounds of Christ! they were living things, <br>Most terrible to see. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>Around, around, they waltzed and wound; <br>Some wheeled in smirking pairs; <br>With the mincing step of a demirep <br>Some sidled up the stairs: <br>And with subtle sneer, and fawning leer, <br>Each helped us at our prayers. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>The morning wind began to moan, <br>But still the night went on: <br>Through its giant loom the web of gloom <br>Crept till each thread was spun: <br>And, as we prayed, we grew afraid <br>Of the Justice of the Sun. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>The moaning wind went wandering round <br>The weeping prison wall: <br>Till like a wheel of turning steel <br>We felt the minutes crawl: <br>O moaning wind! what had we done <br>To have such a seneschal? </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>At last I saw the shadowed bars, <br>Like a lattice wrought in lead, <br>Move right across the whitewashed wall <br>That faced my three-plank bed, <br>And I knew that somewhere in the world <br>God's dreadful dawn was red. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>At six o'clock we cleaned our cells, <br>At seven all was still, <br>But the sough and swing of a mighty wing <br>The prison seemed to fill, <br>For the Lord of Death with icy breath <br>Had entered in to kill. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>He did not pass in purple pomp, <br>Nor ride a moon-white steed. <br>Three yards of cord and a sliding board <br>Are all the gallows' need: <br>So with rope of shame the Herald came <br>To do the secret deed. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>We were as men who through a fen <br>Of filthy darkness grope: <br>We did not dare to breathe a prayer, <br>Or to give our anguish scope: <br>Something was dead in each of us, <br>And what was dead was Hope. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>For Man's grim Justice goes its way <br>And will not swerve aside: <br>It slays the weak, it slays the strong, <br>It has a deadly stride: <br>With iron heel it slays the strong <br>The monstrous parricide! </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>We waited for the stroke of eight: <br>Each tongue was thick with thirst: <br>For the stroke of eight is the stroke of Fate <br>That makes a man accursed, <br>And Fate will use a running noose <br>For the best man and the worst. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>We had no other thing to do, <br>Save to wait for the sign to come: <br>So, like things of stone in a valley lone, <br>Quiet we sat and dumb: <br>But each man's heart beat thick and quick, <br>Like a madman on a drum! </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>With sudden shock the prison-clock <br>Smote on the shivering air, <br>And from all the gaol rose up a wail <br>Of impotent despair, <br>Like the sound the frightened marshes hear <br>From some leper in his lair. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>And as one sees most fearful things <br>In the crystal of a dream, <br>We saw the greasy hempen rope <br>Hooked to the blackened beam, <br>And heard the prayer the hangman's snare <br>Strangled into a scream. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>And all the woe that moved him so <br>That he gave that bitter cry, <br>And the wild regrets, and the bloody sweats, <br>None knew so well as I: <br>For he who lives more lives than one <br>More deaths that one must die. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>IV</div><div style="margin:10px 0">There is no chapel on the day <br>On which they hang a man: <br>The Chaplain's heart is far too sick, <br>Or his face is far too wan, <br>Or there is that written in his eyes <br>Which none should look upon. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>So they kept us close till nigh on noon, <br>And then they rang the bell, <br>And the warders with their jingling keys <br>Opened each listening cell, <br>And down the iron stair we tramped, <br>Each from his separate Hell. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>Out into God's sweet air we went, <br>But not in wonted way, <br>For this man's face was white with fear, <br>And that man's face was gray, <br>And I never saw sad men who looked <br>So wistfully at the day. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>I never saw sad men who looked <br>With such a wistful eye <br>Upon that little tent of blue <br>We prisoners called the sky, <br>And at every happy cloud that passed <br>In such strange freedom by. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>But there were those amongst us all <br>Who walked with downcast head, <br>And knew that, had each got his due, <br>They should have died instead: <br>He had but killed a thing that lived, <br>Whilst they had killed the dead. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>For he who sins a second time <br>Wakes a dead soul to pain, <br>And draws it from its spotted shroud <br>And makes it bleed again, <br>And makes it bleed great gouts of blood, <br>And makes it bleed in vain! </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>Like ape or clown, in monstrous garb <br>With crooked arrows starred, <br>Silently we went round and round <br>The slippery asphalte yard; <br>Silently we went round and round, <br>And no man spoke a word. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>Silently we went round and round, <br>And through each hollow mind <br>The Memory of dreadful things <br>Rushed like a dreadful wind, <br>And Horror stalked before each man, <br>And Terror crept behind. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>The warders strutted up and down, <br>And watched their herd of brutes, <br>Their uniforms were spick and span, <br>And they wore their Sunday suits, <br>But we knew the work they had been at, <br>By the quicklime on their boots. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>For where a grave had opened wide, <br>There was no grave at all: <br>Only a stretch of mud and sand <br>By the hideous prison-wall, <br>And a little heap of burning lime, <br>That the man should have his pall. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>For he has a pall, this wretched man, <br>Such as few men can claim: <br>Deep down below a prison-yard, <br>Naked, for greater shame, <br>He lies, with fetters on each foot, <br>Wrapt in a sheet of flame! </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>And all the while the burning lime <br>Eats flesh and bone away, <br>It eats the brittle bones by night, <br>And the soft flesh by day, <br>It eats the flesh and bone by turns, <br>But it eats the heart alway. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>For three long years they will not sow <br>Or root or seedling there: <br>For three long years the unblessed spot <br>Will sterile be and bare, <br>And look upon the wondering sky <br>With unreproachful stare. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>They think a murderer's heart would taint <br>Each simple seed they sow. <br>It is not true! God's kindly earth <br>Is kindlier than men know, <br>And the red rose would but glow more red, <br>The white rose whiter blow. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>Out of his mouth a red, red rose! <br>Out of his heart a white! <br>For who can say by what strange way, <br>Christ brings His will to light, <br>Since the barren staff the pilgrim bore <br>Bloomed in the great Pope's sight? </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>But neither milk-white rose nor red <br>May bloom in prison air; <br>The shard, the pebble, and the flint, <br>Are what they give us there: <br>For flowers have been known to heal <br>A common man's despair. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>So never will wine-red rose or white, <br>Petal by petal, fall <br>On that stretch of mud and sand that lies <br>By the hideous prison-wall, <br>To tell the men who tramp the yard <br>That God's Son died for all. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>Yet though the hideous prison-wall <br>Still hems him round and round, <br>And a spirit may not walk by night <br>That is with fetters bound, <br>And a spirit may but weep that lies <br>In such unholy ground, </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>He is at peace- this wretched man- <br>At peace, or will be soon: <br>There is no thing to make him mad, <br>Nor does Terror walk at noon, <br>For the lampless Earth in which he lies <br>Has neither Sun nor Moon. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>They hanged him as a beast is hanged: <br>They did not even toll <br>A requiem that might have brought <br>Rest to his startled soul, <br>But hurriedly they took him out, <br>And hid him in a hole. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>The warders stripped him of his clothes, <br>And gave him to the flies: <br>They mocked the swollen purple throat, <br>And the stark and staring eyes: <br>And with laughter loud they heaped the shroud <br>In which the convict lies. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>The Chaplain would not kneel to pray <br>By his dishonoured grave: <br>Nor mark it with that blessed Cross <br>That Christ for sinners gave, <br>Because the man was one of those <br>Whom Christ came down to save. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>Yet all is well; he has but passed <br>To Life's appointed bourne: <br>And alien tears will fill for him <br>Pity's long-broken urn, <br>For his mourners be outcast men, <br>And outcasts always mourn. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>V</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I know not whether Laws be right, <br>Or whether Laws be wrong; <br>All that we know who lie in gaol <br>Is that the wall is strong; <br>And that each day is like a year, <br>A year whose days are long. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>But this I know, that every Law <br>That men have made for Man, <br>Since first Man took His brother's life, <br>And the sad world began, <br>But straws the wheat and saves the chaff <br>With a most evil fan. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>This too I know- and wise it were <br>If each could know the same- <br>That every prison that men build <br>Is built with bricks of shame, <br>And bound with bars lest Christ should see <br>How men their brothers maim. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>With bars they blur the gracious moon, <br>And blind the goodly sun: <br>And the do well to hide their Hell, <br>For in it things are done <br>That Son of things nor son of Man <br>Ever should look upon! </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>The vilest deeds like poison weeds <br>Bloom well in prison-air: <br>It is only what is good in Man <br>That wastes and withers there: <br>Pale Anguish keeps the heavy gate, <br>And the warder is Despair. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>For they starve the little frightened child <br>Till it weeps both night and day: <br>And they scourge the weak, and flog the fool, <br>And gibe the old and gray, <br>And some grow mad, and all grow bad, <br>And none a word may say. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>Each narrow cell in which we dwell <br>Is a foul and dark latrine, <br>And the fetid breath of living Death <br>Chokes up each grated screen, <br>And all, but Lust, is turned to dust <br>In Humanity's machine. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>The brackish water that we drink <br>Creeps with a loathsome slime, <br>And the bitter bread they weigh in scales <br>Is full of chalk and lime, <br>And Sleep will not lie down, but walks <br>Wild-eyed, and cries to Time. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>But though lean Hunger and green Thirst <br>Like asp with adder fight, <br>We have little care of prison fare, <br>For what chills and kills outright <br>Is that every stone one lifts by day <br>Becomes one's heart by night. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>With midnight always in one's heart, <br>And twilight in one's cell, <br>We turn the crank, or tear the rope, <br>Each in his separate Hell, <br>And the silence is more awful far <br>Than the sound of a brazen bell. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>And never a human voice comes near <br>To speak a gentle word: <br>And the eye that watches through the door <br>Is pitiless and hard: <br>And by all forgot, we rot and rot, <br>With soul and body marred. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>And thus we rust Life's iron chain <br>Degraded and alone: <br>And some men curse, and some men weep, <br>And some men make no moan: <br>But God's eternal Laws are kind <br>And break the heart of stone. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>And every human heart that breaks, <br>In prison-cell or yard, <br>Is as that broken box that gave <br>Its treasure to the Lord, <br>And filled the unclean leper's house <br>With the scent of costliest nard. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>Ah! happy they whose hearts can break <br>And peace of pardon win! <br>How else may man make straight his plan <br>And cleanse his soul from Sin? <br>How else but through a broken heart <br>May Lord Christ enter in? </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>And he of the swollen purple throat, <br>And the stark and staring eyes, <br>Waits for the holy hands that took <br>The Thief to Paradise; <br>And a broken and a contrite heart <br>The Lord will not despise. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>The man in red who reads the Law <br>Gave him three weeks of life, <br>Three little weeks in which to heal <br>His soul of his soul's strife, <br>And cleanse from every blot of blood <br>The hand that held the knife. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>And with tears of blood he cleansed the hand, <br>The hand that held the steel: <br>For only blood can wipe out blood, <br>And only tears can heal: <br>And the crimson stain that was of Cain <br>Became Christ's snow-white seal. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>VI</div><div style="margin:10px 0">In Reading gaol by Reading town <br>There is a pit of shame, <br>And in it lies a wretched man <br>Eaten by teeth of flame, <br>In a burning winding-sheet he lies, <br>And his grave has got no name. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>And there, till Christ call forth the dead, <br>In silence let him lie: <br>No need to waste the foolish tear, <br>Or heave the windy sigh: <br>The man had killed the thing he loved, <br>And so he had to die. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>And all men kill the thing they love, <br>By all let this be heard, <br>Some do it with a bitter look, <br>Some with a flattering word, <br>The coward does it with a kiss, <br>The brave man with a sword!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Oscar+Wilde">Oscar Wilde</a><div class=q> <img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share"> <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=473229" data-title="Ballad of Reading Gaol II de Oscar Wilde" data-description="Version II 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 ..."></div> </div> </div>

solid border dashed border dotted border double border groove border ridge border inset border outset border no border blue green red purple cyan gold silver black