Page:The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1904).djvu/35

 The moaning wind went wandering round The weeping prison-wall: Till like a wheel of turning steel We felt the minutes crawl: O moaning wind! what had we done To have such a seneschal?

At last I saw the shadowed bars, Like a lattice wrought in lead, Move right across the whitewashed wall That faced my three-plank bed, And I knew that somewhere in the world God's dreadful dawn was red.

At six o'clock we cleaned our cells, At seven all was still, But the sough and swing of a mighty wing The prison seemed to fill, For the Lord of Death with icy breath Had entered in to kill.

He did not pass in purple pomp, Nor ride a moon-white steed. Three yards of cord and a sliding board Are all the gallows' need: 19