Explore "Hangman's Oak" by Edna St. Vincent Millay on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Before the cock in the barnyard spoke, / Before it well was day,
Horror like a serpent from about the Hangman's Oak / Uncoiled and slid away.
Pity and Peace were on the limb / That bore such bitter fruit.
Deep he lies, and the desperate blood of him / Befriends the innocent root.
Brother, I said to the air beneath the bough / Whence he had swung,
It will not be long for any of us now;
/ We do not grow young.
It will not be long for the knotter of ropes, not long / For the sheriff or for me,
Or for any of them that came five hundred strong / To see you swing from a tree.
Side by side together in the belly of Death / We sit without hope,
You, and I, and the mother that gave you breath, / And the tree, and the rope.