The Ballad of Reading Gaol — Oscar Wilde

Description

Written after his imprisonment for homosexuality, Oscar Wilde's harrowing poem recounts the execution of a fellow inmate and reflects on guilt, cruelty, and the prison system. One of the most powerful protest poems in English literature.

Author: Oscar Wilde

Genre: Poetry

Excerpt

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.