The Ballad of Reading Gaol So never will wine-red rose or white On that stretch of mud and sand that lies By that hideous prison-wall, To tell the men who tramp the yard Yet though the hideous prison-wall He is at peace-this wretched man- There is no thing to make him mad, They hanged him as a beast is hanged: A requiem that might have brought And hid him in a hole. They stripped him of his canvas clothes, They mocked the swollen purple throat, And the stark and staring eyes: 2701 And with laughter loud they heaped the shroud In which their convict lies. The Chaplain would not kneel to pray By his dishonored grave: Nor mark it with that blessed Cross That Christ for sinners gave, Because the man was one of those Whom Christ came down to save. Yet all is well; he has but passed To Life's appointed bourne: For his mourners will be outcast men, V I know not whether Laws be right, A year whose days are long. But this I know, that every Law That men have made for Man, Since first Man took his brother's life, And this sad world began, But straws the wheat and saves the chaff With a most evil fan. This too I know-and wise it were That every prison that men build Is built with bricks of shame, And bound with bars lest Christ should see How men their brothers maim. With bars they blur the gracious moon, And blind the goodly sun: And they do well to hide their Hell, For in it things are done That Son of God nor son of Man Ever should look upon! The vilest deeds like poison weeds That wastes and withers there: Pale Anguish keeps the heavy gate, The Ballad of Reading Gaol For they starve the little frightened child, And they scourge the weak, and flog the fool, And some grow mad, and all grow bad, And none a word may say. Each narrow cell in which we dwell And the fetid breath of living Death The brackish water that we drink And the bitter bread they weigh in scales And Sleep will not lie down, but walks But though lean Hunger and green Thirst We have little care of prison fare, For what chills and kills outright Is that every stone one lifts by day With midnight always in one's heart, We turn the crank, or tear the rope, And the silence is more awful far Than the sound of a brazen bell. And never a human voice comes near And the eye that watches through the door Is pitiless and hard: And by all forgot, we rot and rot, With soul and body marred. 2703 And thus we rust Life's iron chain, Degraded and alone: And some men curse, and some men weep, But God's eternal Laws are kind And every human heart that breaks, Is as that broken box that gave And filled the unclean leper's house Ah! happy they whose hearts can break How else may man make straight his plan And he of the swollen purple throat, And a broken and a contrite heart The man in red who reads the Law His soul of his soul's strife, And cleanse from every blot of blood And with tears of blood he cleansed the hand, The hand that held the steel: For only blood can wipe out blood, And only tears can heal: And the crimson stain that was of Cain Became Christ's snow-white seal. The Ballad of Judas Iscariot VI In Reading gaol by Reading town In a burning winding-sheet he lies, And there, till Christ call forth the dead, No need to waste the foolish tear, Or heave the windy sigh: The man had killed the thing he loved, And so he had to die. And all men kill the thing they love, By all let this be heard, Some do it with a bitter look, The coward does it with a kiss, 2705 Oscar Wilde [1856-1900] THE BALLAD OF JUDAS ISCARIOT 'TWAS the body of Judas Iscariot Lay in the Field of Blood; 'Twas the soul of Judas Iscariot Beside the body stood. Black was the earth by night, 'Twas the body of Judas Iscariot |