Classic Poem

Last night, as I was stepping ben
Just as the Abbey clock struck ten,
My heart thrilled to the tramp of men
That climbed the Gallows Bank:
And turning to the open door
I watched them trudging, four and four,
Breasting the brae with moonlight hoar,
Rank after ragged rank.

Their arms against their sides were bound:
Their mouths were gagged; and not a sound
Their feet made on the frozen ground
Nor cast a shadow there,
As up the unreturning road
They shuffled, hobbled, limped, and strode
With eyes set on the tree that showed
Stark in the snell night air —

The gallows-tree of stout ash-wood
That handy on the fell-top stood
For folk who come to little good
Against the star-pricked sky.
Horse-copers, tinkers, thieving herds,
And doxies flaunting fakish flerds,
An endless gang of gallows-birds,
I watched them wamble by —

I watched them hirple up the hill,
Drawn up and up against their will,
Those grey ghosts shadowless and still —
For only in my heart
Had echoed that tramp-tramp of feet,
And nothing but my own heart's beat
Had drawn me to the haunted street —
When with a sudden start.

I saw the whole rapscallion rout
Each man of blood and sleiching lout
Stop all at once and wheel about
And fix their eyes on me:
And as I watched, the starry skies
And moonlit road and heathy rise
Vanished, and naught was there but eyes
That glowered murderously —

Hundreds of eyes that stared in mine,
Of lads and lasses clarty-fine
Who'd perished by the banks of Tyne
When first it topped the fell,
That tree new tarred with hempen noose,
Straw-coloured, dangling long and loose
For any chance-come traveller's use
To sling him slick to hell.

And then the eyes of every one —
The eyes of the whole gairishon,
Each daddy's daughter, mother's son,
Who'd danced with heels in air
Since reivers rode the Borderside,
And men had thieved and fought and died,
And wenched and murdered, sneaked and lied —
Shrank to a single stare:

And as from out the heart of night
Those dead eyes searched me wildfire-bright
I looked into their murder-light
And, startled, knew, alas,
That I was staring in my own
Scared eyes where, frozen to the bone,
New-risen from sleep I stood alone
Before my looking-glass.