The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Ballad of Reading Gaol, by Oscar Wilde

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Title: The Ballad of Reading Gaol

Author: Oscar Wilde

Posting Date: July 10, 2008 [EBook #301]
Release Date: July, 1995

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BALLAD OF READING GAOL ***

Produced by Faith Knowles and an Anonymous Volunteer

THE BALLAD OF READING GAOL

By Oscar Wilde

In Memoriam
C.T.W.
Sometime Trooper of the Royal Horse Guards.
Obiit H.M. Prison, Reading, Berkshire,
July 7th, 1896
Presented by Project Gutenberg on the 99th Anniversary.

Contents:

Version One

Version Two

Version One

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 wh