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eBook Category: Classic Literature
eBook Description: Oscar Wilde was imprisoned in Reading Gaol (pronounced "jail") in 1895 after losing a criminal suit instigated against him by the Marquess of Queensberry (of boxing rules fame) for moral offenses against the marquess's son. The two-year imprisonment left the incredibly gifted and witty Wilde a broken man, bankrupt and ill. He left England for France where he remained until his death in 1900 at the age of 46. It was there that he wrote perhaps his most famous work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol. The poem, written as a memorial to C.T.W., who died in prison while Wilde was there, tells the emotions of an imprisoned man towards a fellow inmate who is to be hanged. This ballad has brought to the language the words: "For each man kills the thing he loves..." and reveals the insights of a man once the toast of England and America for his writing and witticisms brought through a crucible of humiliation and degradation. It is a beautiful poem; its cadences and imagery mesmerizing, its story a tragedy of the human condition, but also of the truths we must live by. Its message, even so, is one of hope and reconciliation.

eBook Publisher: Fictionwise.com/Fictionwise Classic
Fictionwise Release Date: October 2003

This eBook is also available in the following bundle(s):

• Fictionwise Classics [Authors H-Z Bundle]

4 Reader Ratings:

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Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: eReader (PDB) [137 KB] , ePub (EPUB) [165 KB] , Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [127 KB] , Portable Document Format (PDF) [478 KB] , Palm Doc (PDB) [125 KB] , Microsoft Reader (LIT) [155 KB] , Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [182 KB] , hiebook (KML) [363 KB] , Sony Reader (LRF) [353 KB] , iSilo (PDB) [104 KB] , Mobipocket (PRC) [141 KB] , Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [169 KB] , OEBFF Format (IMP) [201 KB]
Words: 43187
Reading time: 123-172 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Portable Document Format (PDF) Format:  Printing ENABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

To drift with every passion till my soul

Is a stringed lute on which all winds can play,

Is it for this that I have given away

Mine ancient wisdom, and austere control?

Methinks my life is a twice-written scroll

Scrawled over on some boyish holiday

With idle songs for pipe and virelay,

Which do but mar the secret of the whole.

Surely there was a time I might have trod

The sunlit heights, and from life's dissonance

Struck one clear chord to reach the ears of God:

Is that time dead? lo! with a little rod

I did but touch the honey of romance--

And must I lose a soul's inheritance?