Читать книгу Poetical Works of Henry Lawson - Henry Lawson - Страница 23

Table of Contents

Withthe frame of a man, and the face of a boy, and a manner strangely wild,

And the great, wide, wondering, innocent eyes of a silent-suffering child;

With his hideous dress and his heavy boots, he drags to Eternity—

And the Warder says, in a softened tone: “Catch step, One-Hundred-and-Three.”

’Tis a ghastly parody of drill—or a travesty of work—

But One-Hundred-and-Three, he catches step with a start, a shuffle and jerk.

He is silenced and starved and “drilled” in goal—and a waster’s son was he,

His sins were written before he was born—(Keep step, One-Hundred-and-Three!)

They shut a man in the four-by-eight, with a six-inch slit for air,

Twenty-three hours of the twenty-four, to brood on his virtues there.

The dead stone walls and the iron door close in like iron bands

On eyes that had followed the distant haze out there on the Level Lands.

Bread and water and hominy, and a scrag of meat and a spud,

A Bible and thin flat Book of Rules, to cool a strong man’s blood;

They take the spoon from the cell at night—and a stranger would think it odd;

But a man might sharpen it on the floor, and go to his own Great God.

One-Hundred-and-Three, it is hard to believe that you saddled your horse at dawn,

And strolled through the bush with a girl at eve, or lolled with her on the lawn.

There were picnic parties in sunny bays, and ships on the shining sea;

There were foreign ports in the glorious days—(Hold up, One-Hundred-and-Three!)

A man came out at exercise time from one of the cells to-day:

’Twas the ghastly spectre of one I knew, and I thought he was far away;

We dared not speak, but he signed “Farewell—fare—well,” and I knew by this

And the numberstampedon his clothes (notsewn) that a heavy sentence was his.

Where five men do the work of a boy, with warders not to see— It is sad and bad and uselessly mad, it is ugly as it can be, From the flower-beds shaped to fit the gaol, in circle and line absurd, To the gilded weathercock on the church, agape like a strangled bird—

Agape like a strangled bird in the sun, and I wonder what he could see—

The Fleet come in, and the Fleet go out? (Hold up, One-Hundred-and-Three!)

The glorious sea, and the bays and Bush, and the distant mountains blue—

(Keep step, keep step, One-Hundred-and-Three, for my heart is halting too)

The great, round church with its volume of sound, where we dare not turn our eyes—

They take us there from our separate hells to sing of Paradise;

The High Church service swells and swells where the tinted Christs look down—

It is easy to see who is weary and faint and weareth the thorny crown.

Though every creed hath its Certain Hope, yet here, in hopless doubt,

Despairing prisoners faint in church, and the warders carry them out.

There are swift-made signs that are not to God as they march us hellward then;

It is hard to believe that we knelt as boys to “For ever and ever, Amen.”

They double-lock at four o’clock; the warders leave their keys,

And the Governor strolls with a friend at eve through his stone conservatories;

Their window-slits are like idiot mouths, with square stone chins adrop,

And the weatherstains for the dribble, and the dead flat foreheads atop.

Rules, regulations—Red Tape and rules; all and alike they bind:

Under separate treatment place the deaf; in the dark cell shut the blind!

And somewhere down in his sandstone tomb, with never a word to save,

One-Hundred-and-Three is keeping step, as he’ll keep it to his grave.

The press is printing its smug, smug lies, and paying its shameful debt—

It speaks of the comforts that prisoners have, and “holidays” prisoners get.

The visitors come with their smug, smug smiles through the gaol on a working day,

And the public hears with its large, large ears what “Authorities” have to say.

They lay their fingers on well-hosed walls, and they tread on the polished floor;

They peep in the generous, shining cans with their ration Number Four.

And the visitors go with their smug, smug smiles; the reporters’ work is done;

Stand up! my men, who have done your time on Ration Number One!

He shall be buried alive without meat, for a day and a night unheard,

If he speak to a fellow-corpse—who died for want of a word.

He shall be punished, and he shall be starved, and he shall in darkness rot,

He shall be murdered body and soul—and God said, “Thou shalt not!”

I’ve seen the remand-yard men go forth by the subway out of the yard—

And I’ve seen them come in with a foolish grin and a sentence of Three Years Hard.

They send a half-starved man to the Court, where the hearts of men they carve—

Then feed him up in the hospital to give him the strength to starve.

You get the gaol-dust in your throat, in your skin the dead gaol-white;

You get the gaol-whine in your voice and in every letter you write.

And in your eyes comes the bright gaol-light—not the glare of the world’s distraught,

Not the hunted look, nor the guilty look, but the awful look of the Caught.

The brute is a brute, and a kind man kind, and the strong heart does not fail—

A crawler’s a crawler everywhere, but a man is a man in gaol;

For the kindness of man to man is great when penned in a sandstone pen—

The public call us the “criminal class.” but the warders call us “the men.”

We crave for sunlight, we crave for meat, we crave for the Might-have Been,

But the cruellest thing in the walls of a gaol is the craving for nicotine.

Yet the spirit of Christ is in every place where the soul of a man can dwell—

It comes like tobacco in prison, or like news to the separate cell.

The champagne lady comes home from the course in charge of the criminal swell—

They carry her in from the motor car to the lift in the Grand Hotel;

But armed with the savage Habituals Act they are waiting for you and me—

And drunkards in judgment on drunkards sit, (Keep step, One-Hundred-and-Three!)

The clever scoundrels are all outside, and the moneyless mugs in gaol—

Men do twelve months for a mad wife’s lies or Life for a strumpet’s tale.

If the people knew what the warders know, and felt as the prisoners feel—

If the people knew, they would storm their gaols as they stormed the old Bastile.

Warders and prisoners all alike in a dead rot, dry and slow—

The author must not write for his own, and the tailor must not sew.

The billet-bound officers dare not speak and discharged men dare not tell,

Though many and many an innocent man must brood in this barren hell.

Ay! clang the spoon on the iron floor, and shove in the bread with your toe,

And shut with a bang the iron door, and clank the bolt—just so;

But One-Hundred-and-Three is near the End when the clonking gaol-bell sounds—

He cannot swallow the milk they send when the doctor has gone his rounds.

.....

They have smuggled him out to the hospital with no one to tell the tale,

But it’s little the doctors and nurses can do for the patient from Starvinghurst Gaol.

The blanket and screen are ready to draw. . . .There are footsteps light and free—

And the angels are whispering over his bed: “Keep step, One-Hundred-and-Three!”