V

I know not whether Laws be right,

Or whether Laws be wrong;
All that we know who lie in gaol

Is that the wall is strong;
And that each day is like a year,

A year whose days are long.

But this I know, that every Law

That men have made for Man,
Since first Man took His brother's life,

And the sad world began,
But straws the wheat and saves the chaff

With a most evil fan.

This too I know- and wise it were

If each could know the same-
That every prison that men build

Is built with bricks of shame,
And bound with bars lest Christ should see

How men their brothers maim.

With bars they blur the gracious moon,

And blind the goodly sun:
And the do well to hide their Hell,

For in it things are done
That Son of things nor son of Man

Ever should look upon!

The vilest deeds like poison weeds

Bloom well in prison-air:
It is only what is good in Man

That wastes and withers there:
Pale Anguish keeps the heavy gate,

And the warder is Despair.

For they starve the little frightened child

Till it weeps both night and day:
And they scourge the weak, and flog the fool,

And gibe the old and gray,
And some grow mad, and all grow bad,

And none a word may say.

Each narrow cell in which we dwell

Is a foul and dark latrine,
And the fetid breath of living Death

Chokes up each grated screen,
And all, but Lust, is turned to dust

In Humanity's machine.

The brackish water that we drink

Creeps with a loathsome slime,
And the bitter bread they weigh in scales

Is full of chalk and lime,
And Sleep will not lie down, but walks

Wild-eyed, and cries to Time.

But though lean Hunger and green Thirst

Like asp with adder fight,
We have little care of prison fare,

For what chills and kills outright
Is that every stone one lifts by day

Becomes one's heart by night.

With midnight always in one's heart,

And twilight in one's cell,
We turn the crank, or tear the rope,

Each in his separate Hell,
And the silence is more awful far

Than the sound of a brazen bell.

And never a human voice comes near

To speak a gentle word:
And the eye that watches through the door

Is pitiless and hard:
And by all forgot, we rot and rot,

With soul and body marred.

And thus we rust Life's iron chain

Degraded and alone:
And some men curse, and some men weep,

And some men make no moan:
But God's eternal Laws are kind

And break the heart of stone.

And every human heart that breaks,

In prison-cell or yard,
Is as that broken box that gave

Its treasure to the Lord,
And filled the unclean leper's house

With the scent of costliest nard.

Ah! happy they whose hearts can break

And peace of pardon win!
How else may man make straight his plan

And cleanse his soul from Sin?
How else but through a broken heart

May Lord Christ enter in?

And he of the swollen purple throat,

And the stark and staring eyes,
Waits for the holy hands that took

The Thief to Paradise;
And a broken and a contrite heart

The Lord will not despise.

The man in red who reads the Law

Gave him three weeks of life,
Three little weeks in which to heal

His soul of his soul's strife,
And cleanse from every blot of blood

The hand that held the knife.

And with tears of blood he cleansed the hand,

The hand that held the steel:
For only blood can wipe out blood,

And only tears can heal:
And the crimson stain that was of Cain

Became Christ's snow-white seal.