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The Ballad of Reading Gaol Oscar Wilde Lines and Stanza

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The Ballad of Reading Gaol

1898

Oscar Wilde
1854 - 1900

The Carol of Reading Gaol (1898)

Oscar Wilde

Oxford English Dictionary (OED) Links Off

Merely lines i-36 should exist recited, as shown beneath

He did not vesture his scarlet coat,
For blood and wine are ruddy,
And blood and wine were on his hands
When they found him with the dead,
The poor dead woman whom he loved,
And murdered in her bed.

He walked amidst the Trial Men
In a suit of shabby grey;
A cricket cap was on his head,
And his footstep seemed lite and gay;
Just I never saw a man who looked
So wistfully at the day.

I never saw a man who looked
With such a contemplative heart
Upon that little tent of blue
Which prisoners call the heaven,
And at every drifting cloud that went
With sails of silver by.

I walked, with other souls in pain,
Within another ring,
And was wondering if the man had done
A great or little thing,
When a voice backside me whispered low,
'That fellow's got to swing.'

Honey Christ! the very prison walls
Suddenly seemed to reel,
And the sky higher up my head became
Like a casque of scorching steel;
And, though I was a soul in pain,
My pain I could non feel.

I simply knew what hunted thought
Quickened his step, and why
He looked upon the garish day
With such a wistful eye;
The man had killed the matter he loved,
And and so he had to dice.

Image © Oscar Wilde by Elliott & Fry, half-plate drinking glass negative, 1881 © National Portrait Gallery, London

Verse form © Out of copyright

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This is the opening section of a long verse form written by Oscar Wilde after his release from Reading Gaol. He had served a two‑yr sentence for gross indecency afterward his homosexuality was exposed in a famous trial. In exile, and shattered by his experiences in gaol, he uses the trial and execution of a soldier for the murder of his wife to reflect upon morality, the capital punishment and the penal arrangement.

Notice the rhythm of the ballad. Does the thumping iambic tetrameter possibly reflect the grinding, laborious hard labour performed by inmates? The yearning for liberty is captured in verses three and four as the prisoners look at the sky while walking in a circumvolve in the prison chiliad. What is the impact on the narrator in the k when he learns of the expected fate of the imprisoned soldier?

In a poem that is full of paradoxes, the penultimate line in this extract, 'The man had killed the thing he loved', is repeated elsewhere in the poem. What do you think Wilde ways by this line and why might information technology be such an important line for him?

About Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde'southward imprisonment for homosexuality in 1895 ended a spectacularly successful career. Although he lived for a few more years in exile in France after his release and produced some moving poetry, his life was finer over.

He had been a remarkably talented and prize‑winning educatee at university in Dublin and Oxford, and embarked on lengthy lecture tours of America, United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland and Ireland. In a society that was suspicious of art, he lived life every bit an aesthete.

He began to write stories for children and produced his simply novel, The Picture of Dorian Greyness, in 1890. Its homoerotic elements were controversial and were used by the prosecution during Wilde's trial to help prove his guilt.

Betwixt 1892 and 1895 Wilde wrote hugely successful comedies for the stage, including The Importance of beingness Earnest. His polished, witty and amusing plays offered a satirical perspective on Victorian lodge and its morals and manners.

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Source: https://www.poetrybyheart.org.uk/poems/the-ballad-of-reading-gaol/

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