Page:The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1904).djvu/31

 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 watchers 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, 15