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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=473301" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Ballad Of Reading Gaol</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">(In memoriam<br>C. T. W.<br>Sometime trooper of the Royal Horse Guards<br>obiit H.M. prison, Reading, Berkshire<br>July 7, 1896)</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He did not wear his scarlet coat,<br>For blood and wine are red,<br>And blood and wine were on his hands<br>When they found him with the dead,<br>The poor dead woman whom he loved,<br>And murdered in her bed.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He walked amongst the Trial Men<br>In a suit of shabby grey;<br>A cricket cap was on his head,<br>And his step seemed light and gay;<br>But I never saw a man who looked<br>So wistfully at the day.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I never saw a man who looked<br>With such a wistful eye<br>Upon that little tent of blue<br>Which prisoners call the sky,<br>And at every drifting cloud that went<br>With sails of silver by.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I walked, with other souls in pain,<br>Within another ring,<br>And was wondering if the man had done<br>A great or little thing,<br>When a voice behind me whispered low,<br>'THAT FELLOW'S GOT TO SWING.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Dear Christ! the very prison walls<br>Suddenly seemed to reel,<br>And the sky above my head became<br>Like a casque of scorching steel;<br>And, though I was a soul in pain,<br>My pain I could not feel.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I only knew what hunted thought<br>Quickened his step, and why<br>He looked upon the garish day<br>With such a wistful eye;<br>The man had killed the thing he loved,<br>And so he had to die.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>Yet each man kills the thing he loves,<br>By each let this be heard,<br>Some do it with a bitter look,<br>Some with a flattering word,<br>The coward does it with a kiss,<br>The brave man with a sword!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Some kill their love when they are young,<br>And some when they are old;<br>Some strangle with the hands of Lust,<br>Some with the hands of Gold:<br>The kindest use a knife, because<br>The dead so soon grow cold.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Some love too little, some too long,<br>Some sell, and others buy;<br>Some do the deed with many tears,<br>And some without a sigh:<br>For each man kills the thing he loves,<br>Yet each man does not die.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He does not die a death of shame<br>On a day of dark disgrace,<br>Nor have a noose about his neck,<br>Nor a cloth upon his face,<br>Nor drop feet foremost through the floor<br>Into an empty space.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>He does not sit with silent men<br>Who watch him night and day;<br>Who watch him when he tries to weep,<br>And when he tries to pray;<br>Who watch him lest himself should rob<br>The prison of its prey.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He does not wake at dawn to see<br>Dread figures throng his room,<br>The shivering Chaplain robed in white,<br>The Sheriff stern with gloom,<br>And the Governor all in shiny black,<br>With the yellow face of Doom.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He does not rise in piteous haste<br>To put on convict-clothes,<br>While some coarse-mouthed Doctor gloats,<br>and notes<br>Each new and nerve-twitched pose,<br>Fingering a watch whose little ticks<br>Are like horrible hammer-blows.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He does not know that sickening thirst<br>That sands one's throat, before<br>The hangman with his gardener's gloves<br>Slips through the padded door,<br>And binds one with three leathern thongs,<br>That the throat may thirst no more.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He does not bend his head to hear<br>The Burial Office read,<br>Nor, while the terror of his soul<br>Tells him he is not dead,<br>Cross his own coffin, as he moves<br>Into the hideous shed.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He does not stare upon the air<br>Through a little roof of glass:<br>He does not pray with lips of clay<br>For his agony to pass;<br>Nor feel upon his shuddering cheek<br>The kiss of Caiaphas.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>II</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>Six weeks our guardsman walked the yard,<br>In the suit of shabby grey:<br>His cricket cap was on his head,<br>And his step seemed light and gay,<br>But I never saw a man who looked<br>So wistfully at the day.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I never saw a man who looked<br>With such a wistful eye<br>Upon that little tent of blue<br>Which prisoners call the sky,<br>And at every wandering cloud that trailed<br>Its ravelled fleeces by.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He did not wring his hands, as do<br>Those witless men who dare<br>To try to rear the changeling Hope<br>In the cave of black Despair:<br>He only looked upon the sun,<br>And drank the morning air.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He did not wring his hands nor weep,<br>Nor did he peek or pine,<br>But he drank the air as though it held<br>Some healthful anodyne;<br>With open mouth he drank the sun<br>As though it had been wine!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And I and all the souls in pain,<br>Who tramped the other ring,<br>Forgot if we ourselves had done<br>A great or little thing,<br>And watched with gaze of dull amaze<br>The man who had to swing.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And strange it was to see him pass<br>With a step so light and gay,<br>And strange it was to see him look<br>So wistfully at the day,<br>And strange it was to think that he<br>Had such a debt to pay.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>For oak and elm have pleasant leaves<br>That in the springtime shoot:<br>But grim to see is the gallows-tree,<br>With its adder-bitten root,<br>And, green or dry, a man must die<br>Before it bears its fruit!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The loftiest place is that seat of grace<br>For which all worldlings try:<br>But who would stand in hempen band<br>Upon a scaffold high,<br>And through a murderer's collar take<br>His last look at the sky?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">It is sweet to dance to violins<br>When Love and Life are fair:<br>To dance to flutes, to dance to lutes<br>Is delicate and rare:<br>But it is not sweet with nimble feet<br>To dance upon the air!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">So with curious eyes and sick surmise<br>We watched him day by day,<br>And wondered if each one of us<br>Would end the self-same way,<br>For none can tell to what red Hell<br>His sightless soul may stray.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">At last the dead man walked no more<br>Amongst the Trial Men,<br>And I knew that he was standing up<br>In the black dock's dreadful pen,<br>And that never would I see his face<br>In God's sweet world again.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Like two doomed ships that pass in storm<br>We had crossed each other's way:<br>But we made no sign, we said no word,<br>We had no word to say;<br>For we did not meet in the holy night,<br>But in the shameful day.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">A prison wall was round us both,<br>Two outcast men we were:<br>The world had thrust us from its heart,<br>And God from out His care:<br>And the iron gin that waits for Sin<br>Had caught us in its snare.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>III</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>In Debtors' Yard the stones are hard,<br>And the dripping wall is high,<br>So it was there he took the air<br>Beneath the leaden sky,<br>And by each side a Warder walked,<br>For fear the man might die.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Or else he sat with those who watched<br>His anguish night and day;<br>Who watched him when he rose to weep,<br>And when he crouched to pray;<br>Who watched him lest himself should rob<br>Their scaffold of its prey.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The Governor was strong upon<br>The Regulations Act:<br>The Doctor said that Death was but<br>A scientific fact:<br>And twice a day the Chaplain called,<br>And left a little tract.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And twice a day he smoked his pipe,<br>And drank his quart of beer:<br>His soul was resolute, and held<br>No hiding-place for fear;<br>He often said that he was glad<br>The hangman's hands were near.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But why he said so strange a thing<br>No Warder dared to ask:<br>For he to whom a watcher's doom<br>Is given as his task,<br>Must set a lock upon his lips,<br>And make his face a mask.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Or else he might be moved, and try<br>To comfort or console:<br>And what should Human Pity do<br>Pent up in Murderers' Hole?<br>What word of grace in such a place<br>Could help a brother's soul?</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>With slouch and swing around the ring<br>We trod the Fools' Parade!<br>We did not care: we knew we were<br>The Devil's Own Brigade:<br>And shaven head and feet of lead<br>Make a merry masquerade.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">We tore the tarry rope to shreds<br>With blunt and bleeding nails;<br>We rubbed the doors, and scrubbed the floors,<br>And cleaned the shining rails:<br>And, rank by rank, we soaped the plank,<br>And clattered with the pails.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">We sewed the sacks, we broke the stones,<br>We turned the dusty drill:<br>We banged the tins, and bawled the hymns,<br>And sweated on the mill:<br>But in the heart of every man<br>Terror was lying still.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">So still it lay that every day<br>Crawled like a weed-clogged wave:<br>And we forgot the bitter lot<br>That waits for fool and knave,<br>Till once, as we tramped in from work,<br>We passed an open grave.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">With yawning mouth the yellow hole<br>Gaped for a living thing;<br>The very mud cried out for blood<br>To the thirsty asphalte ring:<br>And we knew that ere one dawn grew fair<br>Some prisoner had to swing.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Right in we went, with soul intent<br>On Death and Dread and Doom:<br>The hangman, with his little bag,<br>Went shuffling through the gloom:<br>And each man trembled as he crept<br>Into his numbered tomb.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>That night the empty corridors<br>Were full of forms of Fear,<br>And up and down the iron town<br>Stole feet we could not hear,<br>And through the bars that hide the stars<br>White faces seemed to peer.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He lay as one who lies and dreams<br>In a pleasant meadow-land,<br>The watchers watched him as he slept,<br>And could not understand<br>How one could sleep so sweet a sleep<br>With a hangman close at hand.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But there is no sleep when men must weep<br>Who never yet have wept:<br>So we - the fool, the fraud, the knave -<br>That endless vigil kept,<br>And through each brain on hands of pain<br>Another's terror crept.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Alas! it is a fearful thing<br>To feel another's guilt!<br>For, right within, the sword of Sin<br>Pierced to its poisoned hilt,<br>And as molten lead were the tears we shed<br>For the blood we had not spilt.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The Warders with their shoes of felt<br>Crept by each padlocked door,<br>And peeped and saw, with eyes of awe,<br>Grey figures on the floor,<br>And wondered why men knelt to pray<br>Who never prayed before.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">All through the night we knelt and prayed,<br>Mad mourners of a corse!<br>The troubled plumes of midnight were<br>The plumes upon a hearse:<br>And bitter wine upon a sponge<br>Was the savour of Remorse.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>The grey cock crew, the red cock crew,<br>But never came the day:<br>And crooked shapes of Terror crouched,<br>In the corners where we lay:<br>And each evil sprite that walks by night<br>Before us seemed to play.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">They glided past, they glided fast,<br>Like travellers through a mist:<br>They mocked the moon in a rigadoon<br>Of delicate turn and twist,<br>And with formal pace and loathsome grace<br>The phantoms kept their tryst.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">With mop and mow, we saw them go,<br>Slim shadows hand in hand:<br>About, about, in ghostly rout<br>They trod a saraband:<br>And the damned grotesques made arabesques,<br>Like the wind upon the sand!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">With the pirouettes of marionettes,<br>They tripped on pointed tread:<br>But with flutes of Fear they filled the ear,<br>As their grisly masque they led,<br>And loud they sang, and long they sang,<br>For they sang to wake the dead.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Oho!' they cried, 'The world is wide,<br>But fettered limbs go lame!<br>And once, or twice, to throw the dice<br>Is a gentlemanly game,<br>But he does not win who plays with Sin<br>In the secret House of Shame.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">No things of air these antics were,<br>That frolicked with such glee:<br>To men whose lives were held in gyves,<br>And whose feet might not go free,<br>Ah! wounds of Christ! they were living things,<br>Most terrible to see.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Around, around, they waltzed and wound;<br>Some wheeled in smirking pairs;<br>With the mincing step of a demirep<br>Some sidled up the stairs:<br>And with subtle sneer, and fawning leer,<br>Each helped us at our prayers.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The morning wind began to moan,<br>But still the night went on:<br>Through its giant loom the web of gloom<br>Crept till each thread was spun:<br>And, as we prayed, we grew afraid<br>Of the Justice of the Sun.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The moaning wind went wandering round<br>The weeping prison-wall:<br>Till like a wheel of turning steel<br>We felt the minutes crawl:<br>O moaning wind! what had we done<br>To have such a seneschal?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">At last I saw the shadowed bars,<br>Like a lattice wrought in lead,<br>Move right across the whitewashed wall<br>That faced my three-plank bed,<br>And I knew that somewhere in the world<br>God's dreadful dawn was red.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">At six o'clock we cleaned our cells,<br>At seven all was still,<br>But the sough and swing of a mighty wing<br>The prison seemed to fill,<br>For the Lord of Death with icy breath<br>Had entered in to kill.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He did not pass in purple pomp,<br>Nor ride a moon-white steed.<br>Three yards of cord and a sliding board<br>Are all the gallows' need:<br>So with rope of shame the Herald came<br>To do the secret deed.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">We were as men who through a fen<br>Of filthy darkness grope:<br>We did not dare to breathe a prayer,<br>Or to give our anguish scope:<br>Something was dead in each of us,<br>And what was dead was Hope.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">For Man's grim Justice goes its way,<br>And will not swerve aside:<br>It slays the weak, it slays the strong,<br>It has a deadly stride:<br>With iron heel it slays the strong,<br>The monstrous parricide!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">We waited for the stroke of eight:<br>Each tongue was thick with thirst:<br>For the stroke of eight is the stroke of Fate<br>That makes a man accursed,<br>And Fate will use a running noose<br>For the best man and the worst.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">We had no other thing to do,<br>Save to wait for the sign to come:<br>So, like things of stone in a valley lone,<br>Quiet we sat and dumb:<br>But each man's heart beat thick and quick,<br>Like a madman on a drum!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">With sudden shock the prison-clock<br>Smote on the shivering air,<br>And from all the gaol rose up a wail<br>Of impotent despair,<br>Like the sound that frightened marshes hear<br>From some leper in his lair.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And as one sees most fearful things<br>In the crystal of a dream,<br>We saw the greasy hempen rope<br>Hooked to the blackened beam,<br>And heard the prayer the hangman's snare<br>Strangled into a scream.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And all the woe that moved him so<br>That he gave that bitter cry,<br>And the wild regrets, and the bloody sweats,<br>None knew so well as I:<br>For he who lives more lives than one<br>More deaths than one must die.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>IV</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>There is no chapel on the day<br>On which they hang a man:<br>The Chaplain's heart is far too sick,<br>Or his face is far too wan,<br>Or there is that written in his eyes<br>Which none should look upon.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">So they kept us close till nigh on noon,<br>And then they rang the bell,<br>And the Warders with their jingling keys<br>Opened each listening cell,<br>And down the iron stair we tramped,<br>Each from his separate Hell.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Out into God's sweet air we went,<br>But not in wonted way,<br>For this man's face was white with fear,<br>And that man's face was grey,<br>And I never saw sad men who looked<br>So wistfully at the day.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I never saw sad men who looked<br>With such a wistful eye<br>Upon that little tent of blue<br>We prisoners called the sky,<br>And at every careless cloud that passed<br>In happy freedom by.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But there were those amongst us all<br>Who walked with downcast head,<br>And knew that, had each got his due,<br>They should have died instead:<br>He had but killed a thing that lived,<br>Whilst they had killed the dead.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">For he who sins a second time<br>Wakes a dead soul to pain,<br>And draws it from its spotted shroud,<br>And makes it bleed again,<br>And makes it bleed great gouts of blood,<br>And makes it bleed in vain!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>Like ape or clown, in monstrous garb<br>With crooked arrows starred,<br>Silently we went round and round<br>The slippery asphalte yard;<br>Silently we went round and round,<br>And no man spoke a word.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Silently we went round and round,<br>And through each hollow mind<br>The Memory of dreadful things<br>Rushed like a dreadful wind,<br>And Horror stalked before each man,<br>And Terror crept behind.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>The Warders strutted up and down,<br>And kept their herd of brutes,<br>Their uniforms were spick and span,<br>And they wore their Sunday suits,<br>But we knew the work they had been at,<br>By the quicklime on their boots.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">For where a grave had opened wide,<br>There was no grave at all:<br>Only a stretch of mud and sand<br>By the hideous prison-wall,<br>And a little heap of burning lime,<br>That the man should have his pall.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">For he has a pall, this wretched man,<br>Such as few men can claim:<br>Deep down below a prison-yard,<br>Naked for greater shame,<br>He lies, with fetters on each foot,<br>Wrapt in a sheet of flame!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And all the while the burning lime<br>Eats flesh and bone away,<br>It eats the brittle bone by night,<br>And the soft flesh by day,<br>It eats the flesh and bone by turns,<br>But it eats the heart alway.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>For three long years they will not sow<br>Or root or seedling there:<br>For three long years the unblessed spot<br>Will sterile be and bare,<br>And look upon the wondering sky<br>With unreproachful stare.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">They think a murderer's heart would taint<br>Each simple seed they sow.<br>It is not true! God's kindly earth<br>Is kindlier than men know,<br>And the red rose would but blow more red,<br>The white rose whiter blow.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Out of his mouth a red, red rose!<br>Out of his heart a white!<br>For who can say by what strange way,<br>Christ brings His will to light,<br>Since the barren staff the pilgrim bore<br>Bloomed in the great Pope's sight?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But neither milk-white rose nor red<br>May bloom in prison-air;<br>The shard, the pebble, and the flint,<br>Are what they give us there:<br>For flowers have been known to heal<br>A common man's despair.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">So never will wine-red rose or white,<br>Petal by petal, fall<br>On that stretch of mud and sand that lies<br>By the hideous prison-wall,<br>To tell the men who tramp the yard<br>That God's Son died for all.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>Yet though the hideous prison-wall<br>Still hems him round and round,<br>And a spirit may not walk by night<br>That is with fetters bound,<br>And a spirit may but weep that lies<br>In such unholy ground,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He is at peace - this wretched man -<br>At peace, or will be soon:<br>There is no thing to make him mad,<br>Nor does Terror walk at noon,<br>For the lampless Earth in which he lies<br>Has neither Sun nor Moon.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">They hanged him as a beast is hanged:<br>They did not even toll<br>A requiem that might have brought<br>Rest to his startled soul,<br>But hurriedly they took him out,<br>And hid him in a hole.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">They stripped him of his canvas clothes,<br>And gave him to the flies:<br>They mocked the swollen purple throat,<br>And the stark and staring eyes:<br>And with laughter loud they heaped the shroud<br>In which their convict lies.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The Chaplain would not kneel to pray<br>By his dishonoured grave:<br>Nor mark it with that blessed Cross<br>That Christ for sinners gave,<br>Because the man was one of those<br>Whom Christ came down to save.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Yet all is well; he has but passed<br>To Life's appointed bourne:<br>And alien tears will fill for him<br>Pity's long-broken urn,<br>For his mourners will be outcast men,<br>And outcasts always mourn</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>V</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>I know not whether Laws be right,<br>Or whether Laws be wrong;<br>All that we know who lie in gaol<br>Is that the wall is strong;<br>And that each day is like a year,<br>A year whose days are long.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But this I know, that every Law<br>That men have made for Man,<br>Since first Man took his brother's life,<br>And the sad world began,<br>But straws the wheat and saves the chaff<br>With a most evil fan.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">This too I know - and wise it were<br>If each could know the same -<br>That every prison that men build<br>Is built with bricks of shame,<br>And bound with bars lest Christ should see<br>How men their brothers maim.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">With bars they blur the gracious moon,<br>And blind the goodly sun:<br>And they do well to hide their Hell,<br>For in it things are done<br>That Son of God nor son of Man<br>Ever should look upon!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>The vilest deeds like poison weeds,<br>Bloom well in prison-air;<br>It is only what is good in Man<br>That wastes and withers there:<br>Pale Anguish keeps the heavy gate,<br>And the Warder is Despair.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">For they starve the little frightened child<br>Till it weeps both night and day:<br>And they scourge the weak, and flog the fool,<br>And gibe the old and grey,<br>And some grow mad, and all grow bad,<br>And none a word may say.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Each narrow cell in which we dwell<br>Is a foul and dark latrine,<br>And the fetid breath of living Death<br>Chokes up each grated screen,<br>And all, but Lust, is turned to dust<br>In Humanity's machine.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The brackish water that we drink<br>Creeps with a loathsome slime,<br>And the bitter bread they weigh in scales<br>Is full of chalk and lime,<br>And Sleep will not lie down, but walks<br>Wild-eyed, and cries to Time.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>But though lean Hunger and green Thirst<br>Like asp with adder fight,<br>We have little care of prison fare,<br>For what chills and kills outright<br>Is that every stone one lifts by day<br>Becomes one's heart by night.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">With midnight always in one's heart,<br>And twilight in one's cell,<br>We turn the crank, or tear the rope,<br>Each in his separate Hell,<br>And the silence is more awful far<br>Than the sound of a brazen bell.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And never a human voice comes near<br>To speak a gentle word:<br>And the eye that watches through the door<br>Is pitiless and hard:<br>And by all forgot, we rot and rot,<br>With soul and body marred.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And thus we rust Life's iron chain<br>Degraded and alone:<br>And some men curse, and some men weep,<br>And some men make no moan:<br>But God's eternal Laws are kind<br>And break the heart of stone.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>And every human heart that breaks,<br>In prison-cell or yard,<br>Is as that broken box that gave<br>Its treasure to the Lord,<br>And filled the unclean leper's house<br>With the scent of costliest nard.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Ah! happy they whose hearts can break<br>And peace of pardon win!<br>How else may man make straight his plan<br>And cleanse his soul from Sin?<br>How else but through a broken heart<br>May Lord Christ enter in?</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>And he of the swollen purple throat,<br>And the stark and staring eyes,<br>Waits for the holy hands that took<br>The Thief to Paradise;<br>And a broken and a contrite heart<br>The Lord will not despise.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The man in red who reads the Law<br>Gave him three weeks of life,<br>Three little weeks in which to heal<br>His soul of his soul's strife,<br>And cleanse from every blot of blood<br>The hand that held the knife.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And with tears of blood he cleansed the hand,<br>The hand that held the steel:<br>For only blood can wipe out blood,<br>And only tears can heal:<br>And the crimson stain that was of Cain<br>Became Christ's snow-white seal.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>VI</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>In Reading gaol by Reading town<br>There is a pit of shame,<br>And in it lies a wretched man<br>Eaten by teeth of flame,<br>In a burning winding-sheet he lies,<br>And his grave has got no name.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And there, till Christ call forth the dead,<br>In silence let him lie:<br>No need to waste the foolish tear,<br>Or heave the windy sigh:<br>The man had killed the thing he loved,<br>And so he had to die.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And all men kill the thing they love,<br>By all let this be heard,<br>Some do it with a bitter look,<br>Some with a flattering word,<br>The coward does it with a kiss,<br>The brave man with a sword!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Oscar+Wilde">Oscar Wilde</a><div class=q>
<img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share">
<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=473301" data-title="The Ballad Of Reading Gaol de Oscar Wilde" data-description="(In memoriam
C. T. W.
Sometime trooper of the Royal Horse Guards
obiit H.M. prison, Reading, Berkshire
July 7, 1896)

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 th..."></div>
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