The Night Before     

      Look you, Dominie; look you, and listen! Look in my face, first; search every line there; Mark every feature, — chin, lip, and forehead! Look in my eyes, and tell me the lesson You read there; measure my nose, and tell me Where I am wanting! A man's nose, Dominie, Is often the cast of his inward spirit; So mark mine well. But why do you smile so? Pity, or what? Is it written all over, This face of mine, with a brute's confession? Nothing but sin there? nothing but hell-scars? Or is it because there is something better —      A glimmer of good, maybe — or a shadow Of something that's followed me down from childhood —      Followed me all these years and kept me, Spite of my slips and sins and follies, Spite of my last red sin, my murder, —      Just out of hell? Yes? something of that kind? And you smile for that? You're a good man, Dominie, The one good man in the world who knows me, —      My one good friend in a world that mocks me, Here in this hard stone cage. But I leave it To-morrow. To-morrow! My God! am I crying? Are these things tears? Tears! What! am I frightened? I, who swore I should go to the scaffold With big strong steps, and —  No more. I thank you, But no — I am all right now! No! — listen! I am here to be hanged; to be hanged to-morrow At six o'clock, when the sun is rising. And why am I here? Not a soul can tell you But this poor shivering thing before you, This fluttering wreck of the man God made him, For God knows what wild reason. Hear me, And learn from my lips the truth of my story. There's nothing strange in what I shall tell you, Nothing mysterious, nothing unearthly, —      But damnably human, — and you shall hear it. Not one of those little black lawyers had guessed it; The judge, with his big bald head, never knew it; And the jury (God rest their poor souls!) never dreamed it. Once there were three in the world who could tell it; Now there are two. There'll be two to-morrow, —      You, my friend, and —  But there's the story: —       When I was a boy the world was heaven. I never knew then that the men and the women Who petted and called me a brave big fellow Were ever less happy than I; but wisdom —      Which comes with the years, you know — soon showed me The secret of all my glittering childhood, The broken key to the fairies' castle That held my life in the fresh, glad season When I was the king of the earth. Then slowly —      And yet so swiftly! — there came the knowledge That the marvellous life I 

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