Oscar Wilde’s “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” contains six sections, each with varying numbers of sestets; each sestet features the rime scheme, ABCBDB. The poem has a sing-song gait with intermittent internal rimes. The poem dramatizes a prisoner’s experience in “Reading Gaol,” with special emphasis upon his unfortunate incarceration at the same time another prisoner was hanged.
Wilde’s speaker asserts a bold and bizarre claim that all men kill the thing they love, yet they do not have to hang for it as the prisoner he describes did. This poem is widely touted as an indictment of the prison system in England, while, in fact, it offers only a useful description of one man’s experience. Because Wilde did suffer the incarceration he describes, the poem’s descriptions are believable, even if some of his philosophical conclusions are questionable.
First Section: “He did not wear his scarlet coat”
The speaker begins his long dissertation by asserting that the man who is going to the gallows “did not wear his scarlet coat / For blood and wine are red.” The man had killed his wife, whom he supposedly loved. He killed her while she was sleeping, slitting her throat. The speaker asserts that the accused was apprehended at the scene of the crime, thus, accounting for the dramatic “scarlet coat,” which was likely covered with blood.
This section features the several threads that the speaker will weave throughout his narrative: that all men kill what they love, that prisoners feel that the sky is like a leaden helmet, the prisoners continually go about with a “wistful” look in their eyes. The speaker also refers to the convicted man’s trial.
Second Section: “Six weeks our guardsman walked the yard”
The speaker reports that the guardsman dressed in “shabby gray” and walked in the prison yard for six weeks – and image that again presents the drama that creates the “wistful” look in each prisoner’s face.
The speaker again emphasizes the pain of prison and the strangeness of seeing the condemned man who would have to swing from the gallows.
Third Section: “In Debtors' Yard the stones are hard”
The speaker demonstrates his fascination with the guards who are so careful to make sure the condemned prisoner does not commit suicide and “rob / Their scaffold of its prey.” He reports the various activities of the Governor, the Doctor, and the Chaplain.
The night before the hanging affects the prisoners greatly, and the speaker describes the phantom-like movements throughout the prison; his descriptions seem like dream sequences that call forth even more despair and wistfulness: “That night the empty corridors / Were full of forms of Fear.”
Fourth Section: “There is no chapel on the day”
The speaker explains that after the hanging, the dead man is laid in a grave next to the prison wall, covered with lime, where his body will be allowed to decay into the earth. The speaker makes the bizarre claim that the lime eats the flesh by day and the bones by night.
He reports that no flowers can be planted over the dead man’s grave, and that they had hanged him as they would a beast. The veracity of these claims remains questionable.
The speaker becomes quite spiritual in his abhorrence of his prison experience; he says, “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.” In choosing to be on the side of right, the speaker chooses Christ over the cruelty he perceives from the prison personnel.
Fifth Section: “I know not whether Laws be right”
If Oscar Wilde, the poet, were primarily interested in indicting the prison system, it is doubtful that he would set down the following lines: “I know not whether Laws be right, / Or whether Laws be wrong.” His speaker then goes on to report his own harrowing experience and imply that no man should have to endure such depravity at the hands of his fellows.
He laments: “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.” But still such lamentation can be understood as personal experience, not as indictment of an existing system. He later avers, “But God's eternal Laws are kind / And break the heart of stone.” This claim reveals the speaker’s ultimate understanding of karma or sowing and reaping.
The most important lesson that the speaker has learned from his incarceration is framed beautifully in the following well-crafted sestet: “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?”
The speaker has come to the realization that “pain is the prod to remembrance,” as quoted by Paramahansa Yogananda in his Autobiography of a Yogi.
Sixth Section: “In Reading gaol by Reading town”
In the final section, the speaker repeats his bizarre claim that all men kill the thing they love. He asserts that some commit this killing with “a bitter look” or “some flattering word” – clearly the latter killing is metaphorical, but it remains questionable that such a metaphorical killing truly compares to an actual taking of life.
Linda Sue Grimes - As a writer, researcher, and SRF devotee, Linda Sue Grimes has studied poetry and practiced Kriya Yoga for over thirty years..
