Page:Poems (Edward Thomas, 1917).djvu/59

 THE GALLOWS

was a weasel lived in the sun

With all his family,

Till a keeper shot him with his gun

And hung him up on a tree,

Where he swings in the wind and rain,

In the sun and in the snow,

Without pleasure, without pain,

On the dead oak tree bough.

There was a crow who was no sleeper,

But a thief and a murderer

Till a very late hour; and this keeper

Made him one of the things that were,

To hang and flap in rain and wind,

In the sun and in the snow.

There are no more sins to be sinned

On the dead oak tree bough.

There was a magpie, too,

Had a long tongue and a long tail;

He could both talk and do—

But what did that avail?

He, too, flaps in the wind and rain

Alongside weasel and crow,

Without pleasure, without pain,

On the dead oak tree bough.

And many other beasts

And birds, skin, bone and feather,

Have been taken from their feasts

And hung up there together, 53