Oscar Wilde on Hanging

“They hanged him as a beast is hanged:   They did not even toll A requiem that might have brought   Rest to his startled soul, But hurriedly they took him out,   And hid him in a hole.They stripped him of his canvas clothes,   And gave him to the flies: They mocked the swollen purple throat,   And the stark and staring eyes: ...”

“He does not die a death of shame   On a day of dark disgrace, Nor have a noose about his neck,   Nor a cloth upon his face, Nor drop feet foremost through the floor   Into an empty space.He does not sit with silent men   Who watch him night and day; Who watch him when he tries to weep,   And when he tries to pray; Who watch him lest himself should rob   The prison of its prey.He does not wake at dawn to see   Dread figures throng his room, The shivering Chaplain robed in white,   The Sheriff stern with gloom, And the Governor all in shiny black,   With the yellow face of Doom.He does not rise in piteous haste   To put on convict-clothes, While some coarse-mouthed Doctor gloats, and notes   Each new and nerve-twitched pose, Fingering a watch whose little ticks   Are like horrible hammer-blows.He does not know that sickening thirst   That sands one’s throat, before The hangman with his gardener’s gloves   Slips through the padded door, And binds one with three leathern thongs,   That the throat may thirst no more.He does not bend his head to hear   The Burial Office read, Nor, while the terror of his soul   Tells him he is not dead, Cross his own coffin, as he moves   Into the hideous shed.He does not stare upon the air   Through a little roof of glass: He does not pray with lips of clay   For his agony to pass; Nor feel upon his shuddering cheek   The kiss of Caiaphas.”