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Into our town
the Hangman came,
smelling of gold and blood and flame.
And he paced our bricks
with a diffident air.
And build his frame on the courthouse square.
The scaffold stood by the court house side,
only as wide as the door was wide;
a frame as tall, or little more
than the capping still of the court house door.
And we wondered,
whenever we had the time,
who the criminal,
what the crime the Hangman judged
with the yellow twist of knotted hemp
in his busy fist.
And innocent
though we were, with dread
we passed those eyes
of buckshot lead;
till one cried: "Hangman,"
"who is he,"
"for whom you raise the gallows-tree?"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye
and he gave us
a riddle
instead of reply:
"He who serves me best," said he,
"Shall earn the rope on the gallows-tree."
And he stepped down, and laid his hand
on a man who came from another land
and we breathed again, for another's grief
at the Hangman's hand
was our relief.
And the gallows-frame on the courthouse lawn
by tomorrow's sun would be struck and gone.
So we gave him way,
and no one spoke,
out of respect
for his hangman's cloak.
The next day's sun looked mildly down
on roof and street in our quiet town
and, stark and black in the morning air,
the gallows-tree on the courthouse square.
And the Hangman stood at his usual stand with the yellow hemp in his busy hand;
with his buckshot eye and his jaw like a pike
and his air so knowing and businesslike.
And we cried:
"Hangman, have you not done, yesterday, with the alien one?"
Then we fell silent,
and stood amazed:
"Oh, not for him was the gallows raised."
He laughed a laugh as he looked at us:
"Did you think I'd gone to all this fuss to hang one man?"
"That's a thing I do to stretch the rope when the rope is new."
Above our silence a voice cried:
"Shame!"
And into our midst
the Hangman came to that man's place.
"Do you hold," said he, "With him that was meat for the gallows-tree?"
And he laid his hand on that one's arm,
and we shrank back in quick alarm,
and we gave him way,
and no one spoke
out of the fear of his hangman's cloak.
That night
we saw with dread surprise
the Hangman's scaffold had grown in size.
Fed by the blood beneath the shute
the gallows-tree had taken root;
Now as wide, or a little more than the steps that led to the courthouse door,
as tall as the writing,or nearly as tall,
half way up on the courthouse wall.
The third he took -
we had all heard tell -
was a usurer and infidel,
And: "What," said the Hangman, have you to do, with the gallows-bound, and he a Jew?"
And we cried out: "Is this one he,"
"who has served you well and faithfully?"
The Hangman smiled:
"It's a clever scheme to try the strength of the gallows-beam."
The fourth man's dark,
accusing song
had scratched our comfort hard
and long;
and "What concern,"
he gave us back,
"Have you for the doomed - "
"the doomed"
"and black?"
The fifth. The sixth.
And we cried again:
"Hangman, Hangman, is this the man?"
"It's a trick," he said
"that we hangmen know for easing the trap when the trap springs - "
"slow."
And so we ceased,
and asked no more,
as the Hangman tallied
his bloody score;
and sun by sun,
and night by night,
the gallows grew to monstrous height.
The wings of the scaffold
opened wide
till they covered the square from side to side; and the monster cross-beam looking down
cast its shadow across the town.
Then, through the town the Hangman came, and called in the empty streets
my name -
and I looked at the gallows soaring tall and thought:
"There is no one left at all for hanging,"
"and so he calls to me to help pull down the gallows-tree."
And I went out with right good hope
to the Hangman's tree and the Hangman's rope.
He smiled at me as I came down to the courthouse square
through the silent town,
and supple
and stretched in his busy hand
was the yellow twist of the hempen strand.
And he whistled his tune as he tried the trap
and it sprang down
with a ready snap -
and then
with a smile
of awful command
he laid his hand
upon my hand.
"You tricked me, Hangman!" I shouted then.
"That your scaffold was built for other men."
"And I'm no henchman of yours," I cried, "You lied to me, Hangman,
foully lied!"
Then a twinkle grew in his buckshot eye:
"Lied to you?"
"Tricked you?" he said,
"Not I."
"For I answered straight"
"and I told you true:"
"The scaffold was raised for none but you."
"For who has served me more faithfully than you"
"with your coward's hope?"
said he,
"And,"
"where are the others that might have stood side by your side"
"in the common good?"
"Dead", I answered;
and amiably
"Murdered,"
the Hangman corrected me;
"First the alien, then the Jew ..."
"I did no more than you let me do."
Beneath the beam that blocked the sky,
none had stood so alone
as I -
and the Hangman strapped me,
and no voice there cried "Stay" for me
in the empty square.