Hanging

"... Now when they had tidied all the room, They led the women from the well-built hall Between the round-house and the sacred fence About the court, and penned them in a strait Whence there was no escape. Then to the others First spake the wise Telemachus: ‘Now never by a clean death let me take These women’s lives, who on my head have poured Disgrace, and on my mother, and were used To lie beside the suitors.’ Upon the word he tied to a great column The cable of a blue-prowed ship, and slung it About the round-house, stretching it high up So that the feet of none might touch the ground. And, as when thrushes with long wings, or doves Dash right into a snare set in a thicket, When they are making for their rest, and ’tis A cruel bed that takes them, so the women Held in a row their heads, and round the necks Of all were nooses cast, that they might die A death most piteous. With their feet they writhed A little while—not long."

"And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself."

"If you're born to be hanged then you'll never be drowned."

"We have been rinsed and laundered by the rain, And by the sunlight dried and blackened too. Magpie and crow have plucked our eyeballs twain And cropped our eyebrows and the beards we grew."

"And my poor fool is hang'd! No, no, no life! Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life, And thou no breath at all? Thou'lt come no more, Never, never, never, never, never!"

"O little did my mother think When first she cradled me, That I would turn a rovin’ boy And die on the gallows tree."

"He does not die a death of shame On a day of dark disgrace, Nor have a noose about his neck, Nor a cloth upon his face, Nor drop feet foremost through the floor Into an empty space.He does not sit with silent men Who watch him night and day; Who watch him when he tries to weep, And when he tries to pray; Who watch him lest himself should rob The prison of its prey.He does not wake at dawn to see Dread figures throng his room, The shivering Chaplain robed in white, The Sheriff stern with gloom, And the Governor all in shiny black, With the yellow face of Doom.He does not rise in piteous haste To put on convict-clothes, While some coarse-mouthed Doctor gloats, and notes Each new and nerve-twitched pose, Fingering a watch whose little ticks Are like horrible hammer-blows.He does not know that sickening thirst That sands one’s throat, before The hangman with his gardener’s gloves Slips through the padded door, And binds one with three leathern thongs, That the throat may thirst no more.He does not bend his head to hear The Burial Office read, Nor, while the terror of his soul Tells him he is not dead, Cross his own coffin, as he moves Into the hideous shed.He does not stare upon the air Through a little roof of glass: He does not pray with lips of clay For his agony to pass; Nor feel upon his shuddering cheek The kiss of Caiaphas."

"They hanged him as a beast is hanged: They did not even toll A requiem that might have brought Rest to his startled soul, But hurriedly they took him out, And hid him in a hole.They stripped him of his canvas clothes, And gave him to the flies: They mocked the swollen purple throat, And the stark and staring eyes: ..."

"What, still alive at twenty-two, A clean, upstanding chap like you? Sure, if your throat ’tis hard to slit, Slit your girl’s, and swing for it.Like enough, you won’t be glad, When they come to hang you, lad: But bacon’s not the only thing That’s cured by hanging from a string."

"Bill Stein: Howdy, folks, howdy. This is your old friend, Bill Stein, bringing you a jerk-by-jerk description of the triple hanging of the Mushroom Murder Mob. This broadcast is coming to you from Hangemall Prison. We’re at the gallows site, and it’s a beautiful day for a hanging."

"Quick? I thought of the Austrian executioners who had hung on to the legs of their strangling prisoner to finish the job, until I brought them the British method."