A Saturday Celebration: Oscar Wilde

A One Stop Celebration of Oscar Wilde

"Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not the sitter"

Today we celebrate the birth of Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde, born in Dublin, Ireland, 16th October 1854. Wilde was an Irish writer, poet & a popular playwright who brought us such classics as: The Importance of Being Earnest, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Lady Windermere's Fan, A Woman Of No Importance, and many more. He also left such great quotes as:

"Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every 6 months"

"Illusion is the first of all pleasures"

Oscar  lived a flamboyant life, despite being married, and a father of two children. He is  probably most known for the turbulent period in his life that saw him imprisoned in Reading jail for charges of sodomy & gross indenceny. On 25th May 1895, he was sentenced to two years hard labour. It was during this time in prison that Oscar's health  deteriorated and on his release in 1897, he was to exile himself in France, where he was to write his last piece, The Ballad of Reading Gaol.

"Morality, like art, means drawing a line somewhere"

The Ballad of Reading Gaol is a poem that narrates the execution of a man who murdered his wife for her infidelity. The poem describes the brutality that convicts share and draws very much on his own experiences in Reading jail. This piece was to be his last work, having lived penniless in exile. Oscar Wilde died on 30th, November 1900, at the age of 46, of cerebral meningitis. Oscar is still quoted to this very day and revered, rightly so, in literary circles, today.

 In celebration of his life, One Stop gives you:

The Ballad Of Reading Gaol

a poem by Oscar Wilde

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 place

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 a suit of shabby grey: 

His 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 wandering cloud that trailed 

Its ravelled fleeces by.

He did not wring his hands, as do 

Those witless men who dare 

To try to rear the changeling Hope 

In the cave of black Despair: 

He only looked upon the sun, 

And drank the morning air.

He did not wring his hands nor weep, 

Nor did he peek or pine, 

But he drank the air as though it held 

Some healthful anodyne; 

With open mouth he drank the sun 

As though it had been wine!

And I and all the souls in pain, 

Who tramped the other ring, 

Forgot if we ourselves had done 

A great or little thing, 

And watched with gaze of dull amaze 

The man who had to swing.

And strange it was to see him pass 

With a step so light and gay, 

And strange it was to see him look 

So wistfully at the day, 

And strange it was to think that he 

Had such a debt to pay.

For oak and elm have pleasant leaves 

That in the spring-time shoot: 

But grim to see is the gallows-tree, 

With its adder-bitten root, 

And, green or dry, a man must die 

Before it bears its fruit!

The loftiest place is that seat of grace 

For which all worldlings try: 

But who would stand in hempen band 

Upon a scaffold high, 

And through a murderer's collar take 

His last look at the sky?

It is sweet to dance to violins 

When Love and Life are fair: 

To dance to flutes, to dance to lutes 

Is delicate and rare: 

But it is not sweet with nimble feet 

To dance upon the air!

So with curious eyes and sick surmise 

We watched him day by day, 

And wondered if each one of us 

Would end the self-same way, 

For none can tell to what red Hell 

His sightless soul may stray.

At last the dead man walked no more 

Amongst the Trial Men, 

And I knew that he was standing up 

In the black dock's dreadful pen, 

And that never would I see his face 

In God's sweet world again.

Like two doomed ships that pass in storm 

We had crossed each other's way: 

But we made no sign, we said no word, 

We had no word to say; 

For we did not meet in the holy night, 

But in the shameful day.

A prison wall was round us both, 

Two outcast men were we: 

The world had thrust us from its heart, 

And God from out His care: 

And the iron gin that waits for Sin 

Had caught us in its snare.

III

In Debtors' Yard the stones are hard, 

And the dripping wall is high, 

So it was there he took the air 

Beneath the leaden sky, 

And by each side a Warder walked, 

For fear the man might die.

Or else he sat with those who watched 

His anguish night and day; 

Who watched him when he rose to weep, 

And when he crouched to pray; 

Who watched him lest himself should rob 

Their scaffold of its prey.

The Governor was strong upon 

The Regulations Act: 

The Doctor said that Death was but 

A scientific fact: 

And twice a day the Chaplain called 

And left a little tract.

And twice a day he smoked his pipe, 

And drank his quart of beer: 

His soul was resolute, and held 

No hiding-place for fear; 

He often said that he was glad 

The hangman's hands were near.

But why he said so strange a thing 

No Warder dared to ask: 

For he to whom a watcher's doom 

Is given as his task, 

Must set a lock upon his lips, 

And make his face a mask.

Or else he might be moved, and try 

To comfort or console: 

And what should Human Pity do 

Pent up in Murderers' Hole? 

What word of grace in such a place 

Could help a brother's soul?

With slouch and swing around the ring 

We trod the Fool's Parade! 

We did not care: we knew we were 

The Devil's Own Brigade: 

And shaven head and feet of lead 

Make a merry masquerade.

We tore the tarry rope to shreds 

With blunt and bleeding nails; 

We rubbed the doors, and scrubbed the floors, 

And cleaned the shining rails: 

And, rank by rank, we soaped the plank, 

And clattered with the pails.

We sewed the sacks, we broke the stones, 

We turned the dusty drill: 

We banged the tins, and bawled the hymns, 

And sweated on the mill: 

But in the heart of every man 

Terror was lying still.

So still it lay that every day 

Crawled like a weed-clogged wave: 

And we forgot the bitter lot 

That waits for fool and knave, 

Till once, as we tramped in from work, 

We passed an open grave.

With yawning mouth the yellow hole 

Gaped for a living thing; 

The very mud cried out for blood 

To the thirsty asphalte ring: 

And we knew that ere one dawn grew fair 

Some prisoner had to swing.

Right in we went, with soul intent 

On Death and Dread and Doom: 

The hangman, with his little bag, 

Went shuffling through the gloom 

And each man trembled as he crept 

Into his numbered tomb.

That night the empty corridors 

Were full of forms of Fear, 

And up and down the iron town 

Stole feet we could not hear, 

And through the bars that hide the stars 

White faces seemed to peer.

He lay as one who lies and dreams 

In a pleasant meadow-land, 

The watcher watched him as he slept, 

And could not understand 

How one could sleep so sweet a sleep 

With a hangman close at hand?

But there is no sleep when men must weep 

Who never yet have wept: 

So we—the fool, the fraud, the knave—

That endless vigil kept, 

And through each brain on hands of pain 

Another's terror crept.

Alas! it is a fearful thing 

To feel another's guilt! 

For, right within, the sword of Sin 

Pierced to its poisoned hilt, 

And as molten lead were the tears we shed 

For the blood we had not spilt.

The Warders with their shoes of felt 

Crept by each padlocked door, 

And peeped and saw, with eyes of awe, 

Grey figures on the floor, 

And wondered why men knelt to pray 

Who never prayed before.

All through the night we knelt and prayed, 

Mad mourners of a corpse! 

The troubled plumes of midnight were 

The plumes upon a hearse: 

And bitter wine upon a sponge 

Was the savour of Remorse.

The cock crew, the red cock crew, 

But never came the day: 

And crooked shape of Terror crouched, 

In the corners where we lay: 

And each evil sprite that walks by night 

Before us seemed to play.

They glided past, they glided fast, 

Like travellers through a mist: 

They mocked the moon in a rigadoon 

Of delicate turn and twist, 

And with formal pace and loathsome grace 

The phantoms kept their tryst.

With mop and mow, we saw them go, 

Slim shadows hand in hand: 

About, about, in ghostly rout 

They trod a saraband: 

And the damned grotesques made arabesques, 

Like the wind upon the sand!

With the pirouettes of marionettes, 

They tripped on pointed tread: 

But with flutes of Fear they filled the ear, 

As their grisly masque they led, 

And loud they sang, and loud they sang, 

For they sang to wake the dead.

"Oho!" they cried, "The world is wide, 

But fettered limbs go lame! 

And once, or twice, to throw the dice 

Is a gentlemanly game, 

But he does not win who plays with Sin 

In the secret House of Shame."

No things of air these antics were 

That frolicked with such glee: 

To men whose lives were held in gyves, 

And whose feet might not go free, 

Ah! wounds of Christ! they were living things, 

Most terrible to see.

Around, around, they waltzed and wound; 

Some wheeled in smirking pairs: 

With the mincing step of demirep 

Some sidled up the stairs: 

And with subtle sneer, and fawning leer, 

Each helped us at our prayers.

The morning wind began to moan, 

But still the night went on: 

Through its giant loom the web of gloom 

Crept till each thread was spun: 

And, as we prayed, we grew afraid 

Of the Justice of the Sun.

The moaning wind went wandering round 

The weeping prison-wall: 

Till like a wheel of turning-steel 

We felt the minutes crawl: 

O moaning wind! what had we done 

To have such a seneschal?

At last I saw the shadowed bars 

Like a lattice wrought in lead, 

Move right across the whitewashed wall 

That faced my three-plank bed, 

And I knew that somewhere in the world 

God's dreadful dawn was red.

At six o'clock we cleaned our cells, 

At seven all was still, 

But the sough and swing of a mighty wing 

The prison seemed to fill, 

For the Lord of Death with icy breath 

Had entered in to kill.

He did not pass in purple pomp, 

Nor ride a moon-white steed. 

Three yards of cord and a sliding board 

Are all the gallows' need: 

So with rope of shame the Herald came 

To do the secret deed.

We were as men who through a fen 

Of filthy darkness grope: 

We did not dare to breathe a prayer, 

Or give our anguish scope: 

Something was dead in each of us, 

And what was dead was Hope.

For Man's grim Justice goes its way, 

And will not swerve aside: 

It slays the weak, it slays the strong, 

It has a deadly stride: 

With iron heel it slays the strong, 

The monstrous parricide!

We waited for the stroke of eight: 

Each tongue was thick with thirst: 

For the stroke of eight is the stroke of Fate 

That makes a man accursed, 

And Fate will use a running noose 

For the best man and the worst.

We had no other thing to do, 

Save to wait for the sign to come: 

So, like things of stone in a valley lone, 

Quiet we sat and dumb: 

But each man's heart beat thick and quick 

Like a madman on a drum!

With sudden shock the prison-clock 

Smote on the shivering air, 

And from all the gaol rose up a wail 

Of impotent despair, 

Like the sound that frightened marshes hear 

>From a leper in his lair.

And as one sees most fearful things 

In the crystal of a dream, 

We saw the greasy hempen rope 

Hooked to the blackened beam, 

And heard the prayer the hangman's snare 

Strangled into a scream.

And all the woe that moved him so 

That he gave that bitter cry, 

And the wild regrets, and the bloody sweats, 

None knew so well as I: 

For he who live more lives than one 

More deaths than one must die.

IV

There is no chapel on the day 

On which they hang a man: 

The Chaplain's heart is far too sick, 

Or his face is far to wan, 

Or there is that written in his eyes 

Which none should look upon.

So they kept us close till nigh on noon, 

And then they rang the bell, 

And the Warders with their jingling keys 

Opened each listening cell, 

And down the iron stair we tramped, 

Each from his separate Hell.

Out into God's sweet air we went, 

But not in wonted way, 

For this man's face was white with fear, 

And that man's face was grey, 

And I never saw sad men who looked 

So wistfully at the day.

I never saw sad men who looked 

With such a wistful eye 

Upon that little tent of blue 

We prisoners called the sky, 

And at every careless cloud that passed 

In happy freedom by.

But their were those amongst us all 

Who walked with downcast head, 

And knew that, had each got his due, 

They should have died instead: 

He had but killed a thing that lived 

Whilst they had killed the dead.

For he who sins a second time 

Wakes a dead soul to pain, 

And draws it from its spotted shroud, 

And makes it bleed again, 

And makes it bleed great gouts of blood 

And makes it bleed in vain!

Like ape or clown, in monstrous garb 

With crooked arrows starred, 

Silently we went round and round 

The slippery asphalte yard; 

Silently we went round and round, 

And no man spoke a word.

Silently we went round and round, 

And through each hollow mind 

The memory of dreadful things 

Rushed like a dreadful wind, 

An Horror stalked before each man, 

And terror crept behind.

The Warders strutted up and down, 

And kept their herd of brutes, 

Their uniforms were spick and span, 

And they wore their Sunday suits, 

But we knew the work they had been at 

By the quicklime on their boots.

For where a grave had opened wide, 

There was no grave at all: 

Only a stretch of mud and sand 

By the hideous prison-wall, 

And a little heap of burning lime, 

That the man should have his pall.

For he has a pall, this wretched man, 

Such as few men can claim: 

Deep down below a prison-yard, 

Naked for greater shame, 

He lies, with fetters on each foot, 

Wrapt in a sheet of flame!

And all the while the burning lime 

Eats flesh and bone away, 

It eats the brittle bone by night, 

And the soft flesh by the day, 

It eats the flesh and bones by turns, 

But it eats the heart alway.

For three long years they will not sow 

Or root or seedling there: 

For three long years the unblessed spot 

Will sterile be and bare, 

And look upon the wondering sky 

With unreproachful stare.

They think a murderer's heart would taint 

Each simple seed they sow. 

It is not true! God's kindly earth 

Is kindlier than men know, 

And the red rose would but blow more red, 

The white rose whiter blow.

Out of his mouth a red, red rose! 

Out of his heart a white! 

For who can say by what strange way, 

Christ brings his will to light, 

Since the barren staff the pilgrim bore 

Bloomed in the great Pope's sight?

But neither milk-white rose nor red 

May bloom in prison air; 

The shard, the pebble, and the flint, 

Are what they give us there: 

For flowers have been known to heal 

A common man's despair.

So never will wine-red rose or white, 

Petal by petal, fall 

On that stretch of mud and sand that lies 

By the 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 man not walk by night 

That is with fetters bound, 

And a spirit may not 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: 

And with laughter loud they heaped the shroud 

In which their convict lies.

The Chaplain would not kneel to pray 

By his dishonoured 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 mourner 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 goal 

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 the 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

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 grey, 

And some grow mad, and all grow bad, 

And none a word may say.

Each narrow cell in which we dwell 

Is 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.

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 day 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.

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 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!