Page:The poems of Richard Watson Gilder, Gilder, 1908.djvu/200

172 THE PRISONER'S THOUGHT

I

't I for whom the law's brute penalty

Was made; to whom the law once seemed a power

Far off and not to be concerned withal?

Am I indeed this rank and noisome thing

Fit for such handling; to be pushed aside

Into a human, foul receptacle,—

A fetid compost of dull, festering crime—

Even not meet for nutriment of earth,

But only here to rot in memories

Of my own shame, and shame of other men?

Here let me rot, then—there's a taste one has

For just the best of all things, even of sin.

He's a poor devil who in deepest hell

Knows no keen relish for the worst that is,—

The very acme of intensest pain,—

Nor smacks charred lips at thoughts of some dear crime,

The sweetest, deadliest, damnablest of all.

Sometimes I hug that hellish happiness;

And then a loathing falls upon my soul

For what I was, and am, and still must be.

II

And this same I—there comes to me a time,

And often comes, when all this slips away;

Stays not one stain, nor scar, nor fatal hurt.

Perhaps it is a sort of waking dream;

But if I dream, I'm breathing audibly,

I feel my pulse beat, hear the talk and tread

Down these long corridors; see the barred blue

Of the cell's window, hear a singing bird—

Yes, O my God, I hear a singing bird,

Such as I heard in childhood. Now, you think,