Читать книгу Prison Poetry - Hiram Peck McKnight - Страница 7

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In contravention of the laws of right,

Man's cruel passion and his guilty might,

Has bound me tightly with a galling chain

Of heaped-up malice and unjust disdain!

From front rank lawyer to a felon's cell,

Through perjured villains, not by sin I fell!

By fiat law my body was consigned

To this grim cell for guilty ones designed.

Yet I'm no convict—I have never known

The deep remorse by guilty wretches shown!

I am a martyr—doomed by adverse fate

To brave the billows of malicious hate!

Yet I am free, for Nature's august plan

Makes MIND not matter constitute the MAN.

Tho' men may curse me and cast out my name,

Like some vile bauble on the sea of shame;

Brand me as murderer or catiff thief,

Or atheistic infidel—steepid in unbelief;

Foe to all that's pure and good—wretch unfit to live;

Outlaw whom no honest man can even pity give!

Yet my soul will still defy your prison bolts and bars,

And soaring far on eager wings beyond the faintest stars,

Live in a world to you unknown, where only poet soul

Can bask in beauty undefiled by cankering control!

In vain is all your hate and scorn—vain your prison blight;

God loves me, and I feel assured that all will yet be right!

I know one law—a perfect law, by Nature's self designed—

'Tis Heaven's dearest gift to man—The Freedom of the Mind!

If minds and hearts were easy read as faces we can see,

Society would lose its dread and many a prisoner free!

But what, alas! do people care what's in another's brain?

They only seek to hide their share of misery and pain.

Were all compelled to truthful be and show their inner life—

Great heavens! what a jamboree of sin and shame and strife!

How few would measure half a span if Mind alone we closely scan!

Where is the man on this broad earth, so pure, so good, so true,

That never gave an action birth he dared not bring to view?

The Christ alone was sinless here, none other lives aright;

All human goodness springs from fear of death's approaching night!

There is no soul so white I know but what temptation's power

Its purity can overthrow and all its good deflower!

Disguise the truth as best we can, he errs the most who most is Man!

Come, let us take a journey, with cathode rays supplied,

And view the greatest and good in all their pomp and pride!

Examine first the churches, where the godly crew

Teach poor erring mortals what is best to do.

They tell us human nature is once and always wrong,

And prove man's deep depravity in sermon or by song.

All natural passion is denounced as deep and deadly sin,

And truth and virtue painted as graces hard to win.

Heaven, they tell us, is a place with blisses running o'er;

Hell, a lake of torture, where fiery billows roar!

A choice eternal all must make between their birth and death;

It may be made in early life or with expiring breath!

But how this choice must be made each gives a separate plan,

That clearly proves how narrow is the erring mind of Man.

One tells us naught but good pursue, all evil to eschew;

Another swears without God's grace no mortal thus can do;

One bids us work salvation out with trembling and with fear,

Another swears that God's elect should never shed a tear;

One says all must live the life Jesus lived on earth.

Another says it can't be done without a Second Birth!

Some say work, others trust, others still say wait;

Some deem us mere automatons, saved or lost by Fate!

Some, with philanthropic views, declare all must be saved,

Since Christ, the Perfect Offering for all, death's horrors braved!

Since Christians never will agree, 'tis best that every man

Should listen to his conscience, and do the best he can!

God ever has and will do right! In His Eternal Plan

The time will come to set aright the numerous wrongs of Man!

See yonder's pompous deacon, with diamonds clear and bright;

He looks a model Christian—just turn on him your light.

Great heavens! what a medley of cant and sin and shame!

If the half we see was ever told 'twould ruin his good name!

But turn on yonder pastor your strange, mysterious light;

I know he is a real good man, who loves Eternal Right.

Ye holy saints, protect us! he too has gone amiss!

When Siren Voice allured him with a seductive kiss!

If half the prayers we utter be not a sounding lie,

It is but little marvel that we are doomed to die!

For each will plead forgiveness for thought or action done,

And none by spotless merit eternal bliss hath won.

Then gently judge your fellow, his failings lightly scan;

Like you, he can not corner all the brains of man!

See, yonder is our Congress, where wits and fools unite,

To declare by the nation's statute what is fundamental right!

They yell of patriotism and the majesty of Law,

And are for once unanimous—their salaries to draw!

Alas! alas! 'tis ever thus within our halls of State;

Sweet Justice is blacklisted—the dollar is too great.

Aye, even on judicial bench, where justice should be done,

How scattering are the cases where Right the victory won!

Lawyers, judge and jury exparte view the case—

An angel would be ruined in the defendant's place!

In vain is protestation, in vain a blameless life;

Some must be doomed to prison when prejudice is rife!

Law must keep its servants in stations high and proud,

Tho' every hour should furnish a coffin and a shroud!

The modern Shylock of today, unlike his friend of old,

Demands the pound of quivering flesh and all his victim's gold;

Nor feels content until he sees his victim's hated face

Behind a wall of rock and steel in garments of disgrace.

Then he will raise his dainty hands and loud applaud the law

That can protect such beings, who live without a flaw.

He has no pity for the weak, who thro' temptation fall,

But freely spends his time and means the guileless to enthrall.

He heaps his mighty wrath and scorn on every evil done,

And speaks in tones of pure disgust of poverty's pale son.

But if you bid him look within and study his own heart,

He has a task herculean—'tis such a tiny part!

And as for Mind—ye angels! in fair creation's plan

'Twas given to his victim, and left him half a man!

The modern Clytemnestra no dagger needs to use;

She slays her Agamemnon within your legal pews,

Since judges now are willing to sunder marriage ties,

And juries are so truculent when blushing beauty lies.

Or if she be a Helen, and Paris suits her taste,

She hastes without compunction to lay her honor waste.

"Society" allows her to have "a special friend,"

And a husband is so handy her good name to defend!

But alas! Aspasia no mercy need expect;

Her Pericles lionized, but none her worth detect!

And as for poor Thargelia none will take her part;

She lives a social outcast, with broken, bleeding heart;

But each base seducer, in our social plan.

Makes poor, trusting woman bear the sins of Man!

Many men are now misjudged, and meet an awful fate,

Whose innocence is published, but alas, it is too late!

Many, too, are breathing freedom's precious air

Whose vile conduct merits prison dress and fare.

Only little rascals in your prisons die,

While stupendous villians liberty can buy!

Each one strives with fervor his neighbor to outshine,

And he who has the most of gold is reckoned half divine.

You scatter dark temptations around the poor man's path,

And when he falls you pour on him all your vicious wrath.

Poverty in public lives all her deeds are seen;

Wealth can build a castle her wickedness to screen.

Yet many a noble woman and kingly man is found

As toilers in your factories or tillers of the ground!

If cathode rays were freely used to bring to human sight

The dirty methods villians use to damn Eternal Right,

Many men would be set free and others take their place

Who now can roll in luxury and laugh at their disgrace.

A judge and jury now can sit and hang a man at will,

But they say 'tis open murder if but one dares kill!

Take a ring of brass and plate it o'er with gold,

And 'tis only business when the fraud is sold!

Adulterate both food and drink, deal in deadly pills;

Law will aid your robbery and collect your bills!

Give to your profession but a sounding name,

Then cut up the devil without fear or shame.

Be sure to call it business whatever you may do,

And if you have sufficient gall that will pull you through.

Now throughout this prison rays cathodal dart,

And read the hidden secrets of each convict heart.

Some have wrought vile deeds, and wrought them o'er and o'er,

That surely proves them rotten to their inmost core.

And here are wretched fiends, who with consumate art,

Ravish every instinct of the human heart.

Some men of wit and letters, cultured and refined,

Others moral lepers, with heart and conscience blind.

From drawing room and brothel, farm and city slum,

Some by acts of justice, some through perjury come;

The innocent and guilty, callow youth and age,

All can be imprisoned in this Christian age!

But they who seek for liberty no innocence must plead—

Gold, and plenty of it, will be all they need.

Some young souls are making, for a stated time,

This, their maiden effort, on the sea of crime.

Oh, Christians, teach them early what to me is plain;

Crime ever has and ever will result in lasting pain.

Do not be too lenient, nor too soon forgive,

Lest all vice should flourish and no virtue live.

Society demands it, the guilty should atone—

But take care you punish those, and those alone!

Keep them in your prisons till by virtue shown

They will know what is and what is not their own.

But let all be careful lest by word or act

Those who should reform them from their good subtract.

Rule them wisely, gently—by some humane plan,

All their faults to conquer as best becomes a MAN.

When your work is finished and their habits changed,

them honest labor, by the State arranged;

Show them honest labor can a living gain,

While the social outcast harvests want and shame!

Treat them fairly, kindly; teach them all the true

Will be friendly with them while the right they do.

Both principle and policy declare this course is wise;

Then why longer act the fool and wisdom's voice despise?

Crime never can nor will decrease until in Wisdom's School

Men learn the noted lesson, "Right through Law should Rule."

All tried plans are failures, this none dares deny;

Now give Common Sense a show and failure dare defy.

Do this, and lash and pistol, now your sole defense,

Shall give place to Reason and plain Common Sense!

Courts are far too careless when they give men life

For offense unnoticed save in time of strife.

Naught but some poor chicken or a ham he stole—

Shall the devil purchase at such price a soul?

If such petty crimes as this deserve such prison fare,

Come now, honest reader, what is your just share?

Was that old Greek right, who, tho' a man of sense,

Could mete out death to all for each small offense?

Apply his heartless rule, and can you truly say

Any man or woman would be left to slay?

Man is only mortal, and to sin is prone;

Never cure another's faults till you quit your own.

Many are convicted by the press at large;

The Public Mind is rarely Heaven's peculiar charge.

Bring the judge and jury who declared my fate

For the shining dollars furnished them by hate,

And their guilty conscience by my own arrange,

And then tell me frankly if my fate should change!

Yet I had sooner die behind these bars of steel

Than to have a heart of stone that could not feel!

I know such human tigers, who fatten on distress,

Never can and never will enjoy one hour of rest!

Until all hate and malice, all greed and other sin

Is burned by awful torture to leave them pure within!

God will forgive each penitent whate'er his sin may be,

Whose heart is overflowing with love for bond and free.

Oh listen! brothers, listen—'tis Jehovah's plan—

And a time is fixed to right the wrongs of Man.