Selected Poems of Oscar Wilde. Wilde Oscar

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      Selected Poems of Oscar Wilde

      PREFACE

      It is thought that a selection from Oscar Wilde’s early verses may be of interest to a large public at present familiar only with the always popular Ballad of Reading Gaol, also included in this volume. The poems were first collected by their author when he was twenty-sex years old, and though never, until recently, well received by the critics, have survived the test of NINE editions. Readers will be able to make for themselves the obvious and striking contrasts between these first and last phases of Oscar Wilde’s literary activity. The intervening period was devoted almost entirely to dramas, prose, fiction, essays, and criticism.

ROBERT ROSS

      Reform Club,

      April 5, 1911.

      NOTE

      At the end of the complete text will be found a shorter version based on the original draft of the poem. This is included for the benefit of reciters and their audiences who have found the entire poem too long for declamation. I have tried to obviate a difficulty, without officiously exercising the ungrateful prerogatives of a literary executor, by falling back on a text which represents the author’s first scheme for a poem – never intended of course for recitation.

ROBERT ROSSIN MEMORIAMC. T. WSometimes trooper ofThe Royal Horse GuardsObiit H.M. PrisonReading, BerkshireJuly 7th, 1896

      THE BALLAD OF READING GAOL

I

      He did not wear his scarlet coat,

         For blood and wine are red,

      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 amongst the Trial Men

         In a suit of shabby grey;

      A cricket cap was on his head,

         And his step seemed light and gay;

      But I never saw a man who looked

         So wistfully at the day.

      I never saw a man who looked

         With such a wistful eye

      Upon that little tent of blue

         Which prisoners call the sky,

      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 behind me whispered low,

         ‘That fellow’s got to swing.’

      Dear Christ! the very prison walls

         Suddenly seemed to reel,

      And the sky above my head became

         Like a casque of scorching steel;

      And, though I was a soul in pain,

         My pain I could not feel.

      I only 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 thing he loved,

         And so he had to die.

      Yet each man kills the thing he loves,

         By each 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!

      Some kill their love when they are young,

         And some when they are old;

      Some strangle with the hands of Lust,

         Some with the hands of Gold:

      The kindest use a knife, because

         The dead so soon grow cold.

      Some love too little, some too long,

         Some sell, and others buy;

      Some do the deed with many tears,

         And some without a sigh:

      For each man kills the thing he loves,

         Yet each man does not die.

      He does not die a death of shame

         On a day of dark disgrace,

      Nor have a noose about his neck,

         Nor a cloth upon his face,

      Nor drop feet foremost through the floor

         Into an empty space.

      He does not sit with silent men

         Who watch him night and day;

      Who watch him when he tries to weep,

         And when he tries to pray;

      Who watch him lest himself should rob

         The prison of its prey.

      He does not wake at dawn to see

         Dread figures throng his room,

      The shivering Chaplain robed in white,

         The Sheriff stern with gloom,

      And the Governor all in shiny black,

         With the yellow face of Doom.

      He does not rise in piteous haste

         To put on convict-clothes,

      While some coarse-mouthed Doctor gloats, and notes

         Each new and nerve-twitched pose,

      Fingering a watch whose little ticks

         Are like horrible hammer-blows.

      He does not know that sickening thirst

         That sands one’s throat, before

      The hangman with his gardener’s gloves

         Slips through the padded door,

      And binds one with three leathern thongs,

         That the throat may thirst no more.

      He does not bend his head to hear

         The Burial Office read,

      Nor, while the terror of his soul

         Tells him he is not dead,

      Cross his own coffin, as he moves

         Into the hideous shed.

      He does not stare upon the air

         Through a little roof of glass:

      He does not pray with lips of clay

         For his agony to pass;

      Nor feel upon his shuddering cheek

         The kiss of Caiaphas.

II

      Six weeks our guardsman walked the yard,

         In the suit of shabby grey:

      His cricket cap was on his head,

         And his step seemed light and gay,

      But