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 they do well to hide their Hell,
 For in it things are done
That Son of God 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 grey,
And some grow mad, and all grow bad,
 And none a word may say.
Each narrow cell in which we dwell
 Is 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 day 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.