play.

               They glided past, they glided fast,
                 Like travelers through a mist:
               They mocked the moon in a rigadoon
                 Of delicate turn and twist,
               And with formal pace and loathsome grace
                 The phantoms kept their tryst.

               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 loud 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 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