LAST night, when I was stepping ben,
Just as the Abbey clock struck ten,
I seemed to hear the tramp of men
That climbed the Gallows Bank;
And, turning to the open door,
I saw 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, doggedly, they stiffly strode
Along the unreturning road,
With eyes set on the stob, that showed
Stark in the snell night-air —
The naked 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, drovers, tinkers, herds,
And wenches flaunting fakish flerds,
An endless gang of gallow s’ birds,
I watched them shamble by.
I watched them hirple up the hill,
Drawn up and up against their will,
Those gray ghosts, shadowdess and still;
For only in my heart
Had sounded 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 turn 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 wenches clarty-fine,
Who’d perished by the banks of Tyne,
Since first it topped the fell,
That stob, new-tarred, with hempen noose,
Straw-colored, hanging long and loose
For any chance-come traveler’s use,
To swing him slick to hell.
And then the eyes of everyone,
The eyes of the whole gairishon,
Each daddy’s darling, 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.