With mop and mow, we saw them go,
Slim shadows hand in hand: 
About, about, in ghostly rout
They trod a saraband: 
And the damned grotesques made arabesques,
Like the wind upon the sand!

With the pirouettes of marionettes,
They tripped on pointed tread: 
But with flutes of Fear they filled the ear,
As their grisly masque they led,
And loud they sang, and long they sang,
For they sang to wake the dead.

‘Oho!’ they cried, ’The world is wide,
But fettered limbs go lame! 
And once, or twice, to throw the dice
Is a gentlemanly game,
But he does not win who plays with Sin
In the secret House of Shame.’

No things of air these antics were,
That frolicked with such glee: 
To men whose lives were held in gyves,
And whose feet might not go free,
Ah! wounds of Christ! they were living things,
Most terrible to see.

Around, around, they waltzed and wound;
Some wheeled in smirking pairs;
With the mincing step of a demirep
Some sidled up the stairs: 
And with subtle sneer, and fawning leer,
Each helped us at our prayers.

The morning wind began to moan,
But still the night went on: 
Through its giant loom the web of gloom
Crept till each thread was spun: 
And, as we prayed, we grew afraid
Of the Justice of the Sun.

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: 
So with rope of shame the Herald came
To do the secret deed.

We were as men who through a fen
Of filthy darkness grope: 
We did not dare to breathe a prayer,
Or to give our anguish scope: 
Something was dead in each of us,
And what was dead was Hope.

For Man’s grim Justice goes its way,
And will not swerve aside: 
It slays the weak, it slays the strong,
It has a deadly stride: 
With iron heel it slays the strong,
The monstrous parricide!

We waited for the stroke of eight: 
Each tongue was thick with thirst: 
For the stroke of eight is the stroke of Fate
That makes a man accursed,
And Fate will use a running noose
For the best man and the worst.

We had no other thing to do,
Save to wait for the sign to come: 
So, like things of stone in a valley lone,
Quiet we sat and dumb: 
But each man’s heart beat thick and quick,
Like a madman on a drum!