I know not whether laws be right or whether laws be wrong. All that we know who lie in jail 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 jibe the old and grey, and some grow mad and all
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
and the bitter bread they weigh in scales is full of chalk and lime, and sleep will not lie down,
but walks wide -eyed and cries to time. But through lean hunger and green thirst,
like asp without a 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,
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 heart 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 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,
for only blood can wipe out blood, and only tears can heal.
