This is a very long poem, but worth the read, so I have posted the complete piece also. Here are the first six stanzas, which are sometime recited as a performance piece.
| The Ballad Of Reading Gaol (Excerpt) | |
| In Memoriam | |
| C.T.W. | |
| Sometime Trooper of the Royal Horse Guards. | |
| Obiit H.M. Prison, Reading, Berkshire, | |
| July 7th, 1896 | |
| I | |
| 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, | 5 |
| 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; | 10 |
| 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 | 15 |
| Which prisoners call the sky, | |
| And at every drifting cloud that went | |
| With sails of silver by. | |
| I walked, with other souls in pain, | |
| Within another ring, | 20 |
| And was wondering if the man had done | |
| A great or little thing, | |
| When a voice behind me whispered low, | |
| That fellows got to swing.' | |
| Dear Christ! the very prison walls | 25 |
| Suddenly seemed to reel, | |
| And the sky above my head became | |
| Like a casque of scorching steel; | |
| And, though I was a soul in pain, | |
| My pain I could not feel. | 30 |
| I only knew what hunted thought | |
| Quickened his step, and why | |
| He looked upon the garish day | |
| With such a wistful eye; | |
| The man had killed the thing he loved, | 35 |
| And so he had to die. |
