One Hundred And Three Poem Rhyme Scheme

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With the frame of a man and the face of a boy and a manner strangely wild	A
And the great wide wondering innocent eyes of a silent suffering child	A
With his hideous dress and his heavy boots he drags to Eternity	B
And the Warder says in a softened tone Keep step One Hundred and Three	B
Tis a ghastly travesty of drill or a ghastly farce of work	C
But One Hundred and Three he catches step with a start a shuffle and jerk	C
Tis slow starvation in separate cells and a widow s son is he	B
And the widow she drank before he was born Keep step One Hundred and Three	B
	-
They shut a man in the four by eight with a six inch slit for air	D
Twenty three hours of the twenty four to brood on his virtues there	D
And the dead stone walls and the iron door close in as an iron band	E
On eyes that followed the distant haze far out on the level land	E
	-
Bread and water and hominy and a scrag of meat and a spud	F
A Bible and thin flat book of rules to cool a strong man s blood	F
They take the spoon from the cell at night and a stranger might think it odd	G
But a man might sharpen it on the floor and go to his own Great God	G
	-
One Hundred and Three it is hard to believe that you saddled your horse at dawn	H
There were girls that rode through the bush at eve and girls who lolled on the lawn	H
There were picnic parties in sunny bays and ships on the shining sea	B
There were foreign ports in the glorious days Hold up One Hundred and Three	B
	-
A man came out at exercise time from one of the cells to day	I
Twas the ghastly spectre of one I knew and I thought he was far away	I
We dared not speak but he signed Farewell fare well and I knew by this	J
And the number stamped on his clothes not sewn that a heavy sentence was his	K
	-
Where five men do the work of a boy with warders not to see	B
It is sad and bad and uselessly mad it is ugly as it can be	B
From the flower beds laid to fit the gaol in circle and line absurd	L
To the gilded weathercock on the church agape like a strangled bird	L
	-
Agape like a strangled bird in the sun and I wonder what he could see	B
The Fleet come in and the Fleet go out Hold up One Hundred and Three	B
The glorious sea and the bays and Bush and the distant mountains blue	M
Keep step keep step One Hundred and Three for my lines are halting too	M
	-
The great round church with its volume of sound where we dare not turn our eyes	N
They take us there from our separate hells to sing of Paradise	O
In all the creeds there is hope and doubt but of this there is no doubt	P
That starving prisoners faint in church and the warders carry them out	P
	-
They double lock at four o clock and the warders leave their keys	Q
And the Governor strolls with a friend at eve through his stone conservatories	Q
Their window slits are like idiot mouths with square stone chins adrop	R
And the weather stains for the dribble and the dead flat foreheads atop	R
	-
No light save the lights in the yard beneath the clustering lights of the Lord	S
And the lights turned in to the window slits of the Observation Ward	S
They eat their meat with their fingers there in a madness starved and dull	T
Oh the padded cells and the O b s are nearly always full	U
	-
Rules regulations red tape and rules all and alike they bind	V
Under separate treatment place the deaf in the dark cell shut the blind	V
And somewhere down in his sandstone tomb with never a word to save	W
One Hundred and Three is keeping step as he ll keep it to his grave	W
	-
The press is printing its smug smug lies and paying its shameful debt	X
It speaks of the comforts that prisoners have and holidays prisoners get	X
The visitors come with their smug smug smiles through the gaol on a working day	I
And the public hears with its large large ears what authorities have to say	I
	-
They lay their fingers on well hosed walls and they tread on the polished floor	Y
They peep in the generous shining cans with their ration Number Four	Y
And the visitors go with their smug smug smiles the reporters work is done	Z
Stand up my men who have done your time on ration Number One	Z
	-
Speak up my men I was never the man to keep my own bed warm	A2
I have jogged with you round in the Fools Parade and I ve worn your uniform	A2
I ve seen you live and I ve seen you die and I ve seen your reason fail	B2
I ve smuggled tobacco and loosened my tongue and I ve been punished in gaol	B2
	-
Ay clang the spoon on the iron floor and shove in the bread with your toe	C2
And shut with a bang the iron door and clank the bolt just so	C2
With an ignorant oath for a last good night or the voice of a filthy thought	D2
By the Gipsy Blood you have caught a man you ll be sorry that ever you caught	E2
	-
He shall be buried alive without meat for a day and a night unheard	L
If he speak to a fellow prisoner though he die for want of a word	L
He shall be punished and he shall be starved and he shall in darkness rot	E2
He shall be murdered body and soul and God said Thou shalt not	E2
	-
I ve seen the remand yard men go out by the subway out of the yard	F2
And I ve seen them come in with a foolish grin and a sentence of Three Years Hard	F2
They send a half starved man to the court where the hearts of men they carve	G2
Then feed him up in the hospital to give him the strength to starve	G2
	-
You get the gaol dust in your throat in your skin the dead gaol white	H2
You get the gaol whine in your voice and in every letter you write	H2
And in your eyes comes the bright gaol light not the glare of the world s distraught	D2
Not the hunted look nor the guilty look but the awful look of the Caught	E2
	-
There was one I met twas a mate of mine in a gaol that is known to us	I2
He died and they said it was heart disease but he died for want of a truss	I2
I ve knelt at the head of the pallid dead where the living dead were we	B
And I ve closed the yielding lids with my thumbs Keep step One Hundred and Three	B
	-
A criminal face is rare in gaol where all things else are ripe	R
It is higher up in the social scale that you ll find the criminal type	R
But the kindness of man to man is great when penned in a sandstone pen	J2
The public call us the criminal class but the warders call us the men	J2
	-
The brute is a brute and a kind man kind and the strong heart does not fail	B2
A crawler s a crawler everywhere but a man is a man in gaol	B2
For forced desertion or drunkenness or a law s illegal debt	X
While never a man who was a man was reformed by punishment yet	X
	-
The champagne lady comes home from the course in charge of the criminal swell	B2
They carry her in from the motor car to the lift in the Grand Hotel	B2
But armed with the savage Habituals Act they are waiting for you and me	B
And the drums they are beating loud and near Keep step One Hundred and Three	B
	-
The clever scoundrels are all outside and the moneyless mugs in gaol	B2
Men do twelve months for a mad wife s lies or Life for a strumpet s tale	B2
If the people knew what the warders know and felt as the prisoners feel	B2
If the people knew they would storm their gaols as they stormed the old Bastile	B2
	-
And the cackling screaming half human hens who were never mothers nor wives	K2
Would send their sisters to such a hell for the term of their natural lives	L2
Where laws are made in a Female Fit in the Land of the Crazy Fad	M2
And drunkards in judgment on drunkards sit and the mad condemn the mad	M2
	-
The High Church service swells and swells where the tinted Christs look down	N2
It is easy to see who is weary and faint and weareth the thorny crown	N2
There are swift made signs that are not to God and they march us Hellward then	J2
It is hard to believe that we knelt as boys to for ever and ever Amen	J2
	-
Warders and prisoners all alike in a dead rot dry and	O2

Henry Lawson

One Hundred And Three Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis

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