This too I know--and wise were it
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.
* * * * *
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 Ballad of Reading Gaol" is beyond all comparison the greatest
ballad in English: one of the noblest poems in the language. This is
what prison did for Oscar Wilde.
When speaking to him later about this poem I remember assuming that his
prison experiences must have helped him to realise the suffering of the
condemned soldier and certainly lent passion to his verse. But he would
not hear of it.
"Oh, no, Frank," he cried, "never; my experiences in prison were too
horrible, too painful to be used. I simply blotted them out altogether
and refused to recall them."
"What about the verse?" I asked:
"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:
And in the heart of every man
Terror was lying still."
"Characteristic details, Frank, merely the _decor_ of prison life, not
its reality; that no one could paint, not even Dante, who had to turn
away his eyes from lesser suffering."
It may be worth while to notice here, as an example of the hatred with
which Oscar Wilde's name and work were regarded, that even after he had
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