The Ballad of Reading Gaol

So never will wine-red rose or white
Petal by petal, fall

On that stretch of mud and sand that lies

By that hideous prison-wall,

To tell the men who tramp the yard
That God's Son died for all.

Yet though the hideous prison-wall
Still hems him round and round,
And a spirit may not walk by night
That is with fetters bound,
And a spirit may but weep that lies
In such unholy ground,

He is at peace-this wretched man-
At peace, or will be soon:

There is no thing to make him mad,
Nor does Terror walk at noon,
For the lampless Earth in which he lies
Has neither Sun nor Moon.

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:

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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:
And alien tears will fill for him
Pity's long-broken urn,

For his mourners will be outcast men,
And outcasts always mourn.

V

I know not whether Laws be right,
Or whether Laws be wrong;
All that we know who lie in jail
Is that the wall is strong;
And that each day is like a year,

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
If each could know the same-

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
Bloom well in prison-air:
It is only what is good in Man

That wastes and withers there:

Pale Anguish keeps the heavy gate,
And the Warder is Despair.

The Ballad of Reading Gaol

For they starve the little frightened child,
Till it weeps both night and day:

And they scourge the weak, and flog the fool,
And gibe the old and gray,

And some grow mad, and all grow bad,

And none a word may say.

Each narrow cell in which we dwell
Is a foul and dark latrine,

And the fetid breath of living Death
Chokes up each grated screen,
And all, but Lust, is turned to dust
In Humanity's machine.

The brackish water that we drink
Creeps with a loathsome slime,

And the bitter bread they weigh in scales
Is full of chalk and lime,

And Sleep will not lie down, but walks
Wild-eyed, and cries to Time.

But though lean Hunger and green Thirst
Like asp with adder fight,

We have little care of prison fare,

For what chills and kills outright

Is that every stone one lifts by day
Becomes one's heart by night.

With midnight always in one's heart,
And twilight in one's cell,

We turn the crank, or tear the rope,
Each in his separate Hell,

And the silence is more awful far

Than the sound of a brazen bell.

And never a human voice comes near
To speak a gentle word:

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.

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And thus we rust Life's iron chain,

Degraded and alone:

And some men curse, and some men weep,
And some men make no moan:

But God's eternal Laws are kind
And break the heart of stone,

And every human heart that breaks,
In prison-cell or yard,

Is as that broken box that gave
Its treasure to the Lord,

And filled the unclean leper's house
With the scent of costliest nard.

Ah! happy they whose hearts can break
And peace of pardon win!

How else may man make straight his plan
And cleanse his soul from Sin?
How else but through a broken heart
May Lord Christ enter in?

And he of the swollen purple throat,
And the stark and staring eyes,
Waits for the holy hands that took
The Thief to Paradise;

And a broken and a contrite heart
The Lord will not despise.

The man in red who reads the Law
Gave him three weeks of life,
Three little weeks in which to heal

His soul of his soul's strife,

And cleanse from every blot of blood
The hand that held the knife.

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
There is a pit of shame,
And in it lies a wretched man
Eaten by teeth of flame,

In a burning winding-sheet he lies,
And his grave has got no name.

And there, till Christ call forth the dead,
In silence let him lie:

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,
Some with a flattering word,

The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!

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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,
And black was the sky;
Black, black were the broken clouds,
Though the red Moon went by.

'Twas the body of Judas Iscariot
Strangled and dead lay there;
'Twas the soul of Judas Iscariot
Looked on it in despair.