The Ballad of Reading Gaol

About

Wilde's last major work (1898), written after his release from Reading Gaol following his imprisonment for 'gross indecency,' is a ballad of enormous moral weight: the story of a soldier hanged for killing his lover, and a meditation on guilt, punishment, and the dehumanizing cruelty of the prison system. The refrain — 'Yet each man kills the thing he loves' — is one of literature's great dark axioms. The poem moves from personal witness to prophetic accusation and is among the most powerful penal reform statements in English verse. It rewards reading aloud for the relentless drive of its ballad stanza.