Last night as I slept I dreamed a vivid dream.
I dreamed it was late afternoon and I was locked in a condemned
cell, sentenced to die. I would be led out and hanged on a gallows
the following morning at day-break. I dreamed I sat beneath a narrow
window in the cell through which shone the light of the waning
afternoon. The light was very pale, as of sunshine long dead. I
dreamed I held on my knees a small block of paper which had a
half-inch blue border at the top to mark a perforation, and in my
hand I had a red pencil. And I dreamed I had cheated the gallows and
was writing a little ballad about it in sudden rhymes and rhythms
quite alien to my waking forms. When I awoke the song was still
beating time in my brain. And with my black awake-time pencil I
wrote, except for two words, the rhyme, title and all, as I dreamed: