3.
The third he took-we had all heard tell
Was a user 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 out 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 last?”
“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.
4.
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 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 no henchman of yours,” I cried,
“You lied to me. Hangman. foully lied!”
Then a twinkle grew in the 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
Then 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 whispered, and sadly
“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.