The Wisdom of Oscar Wilde

by the Wisdom of

  The plumes upon a hearse:

  And bitter wine upon a sponge

  Was the savour of Remorse.

  The grey cock crew, the red cock crew,

  But never came the day:

  And crooked shapes of Terror crouched,

  In the corners where we lay:

  And each evil sprite that walks by night

  Before us seemed to play.

  They glided past, they glided fast,

  Like travellers through a mist:

  They mocked the moon in a rigadoon

  Of delicate turn and twist,

  And with formal pace and loathsome grace

  The phantoms kept their tryst.

  With mop and mow, we saw them go,

  Slim shadows hand in hand:

  About, about, in ghostly rout

  They trod a saraband:

  And the damned grotesques made arabesques,

  Like the wind upon the sand!

  With the pirouettes of marionettes,

  They tripped on pointed tread:

  But with flutes of Fear they filled the ear,

  As their grisly masque they led,

  And loud they sang, and long they sang,

  For they sang to wake the dead.

  “Oho!” they cried, “The world is wide,

  But fettered limbs go lame!

  And once, or twice, to throw the dice

  Is a gentlemanly game,

  But he does not win who plays with Sin

  In the secret House of Shame.”

  No things of air these antics were,

  That frolicked with such glee:

  To men whose lives were held in gyves,

  And whose feet might not go free,

  Ah! wounds of Christ! they were living things

  Most terrible to see.

  Around, around, they waltzed and wound;

  Some wheeled in smirking pairs;

  With the mincing step of a demirep

  Some sidled up the stairs:

  And with subtle sneer, and fawning leer,

  Each helped us at our prayers.

  The morning wind began to moan,

  But still the night went on:

  Through its giant loom the web of gloom

  Crept till each thread was spun:

  And, as we prayed, we grew afraid

  Of the Justice of the Sun.

  The moaning wind went wandering round

  The weeping prison-wall:

  Till like a wheel of turning steel

  We felt the minutes crawl:

  O moaning wind! what had we done

  To have such a seneschal?

  At last I saw the shadowed bars,

  Like a lattice wrought in lead,

  Move right across the whitewashed wall

  That faced my three-plank bed,

  And I knew that somewhere in the world

  God’s dreadful dawn was red.

  At six o’clock we cleaned our cells,

  At seven all was still,

  But the sough and swing of a mighty wing

  The prison seemed to fill,

  For the Lord of Death with icy breath

  Had entered in to kill.

  He did not pass in purple pomp,

  Nor ride a moon-white steed.

  Three yards of cord and a sliding board

  Are all the gallows’ need:

  So with rope of shame the Herald came

  To do the secret deed.

  We were as men who through a fen

  Of filthy darkness grope:

  We did not dare to breathe a prayer,

  Or to give our anguish scope:

  Something was dead in each of us,

  And what was dead was Hope.

  For Man’s grim Justice goes its way,

  And will not swerve aside:

  It slays the weak, it slays the strong,

  It has a deadly stride:

  With iron heel it slays the strong,

  The monstrous parricide!

  We waited for the stroke of eight:

  Each tongue was thick with thirst:

  For the stroke of eight is the stroke of Fate

  That makes a man accursed,

  And Fate will use a running noose

  For the best man and the worst.

  We had no other thing to do,

  Save to wait for the sign to come:

  So, like things of stone in a valley lone,

  Quiet we sat and dumb:

  But each man’s heart beat thick and quick,

  Like a madman on a drum!

  With sudden shock the prison-clock

  Smote on the shivering air,

  And from all the gaol rose up a wail

  Of impotent despair,

  Like the sound that frightened marshes hear

  From some leper in his lair.

  And as one sees most fearful things

  In the crystal of a dream,

  We saw the greasy hempen rope

  Hooked to the blackened beam,

  And heard the prayer the hangman’s snare

  Strangled in to a scream.

  And all the woe that moved him so

  That he gave that bitter cry,

  And the wild regrets, and the bloody sweats,

  None knew so well as I:

  For he who lives more lives than one

  More deaths than one must die.

  4

  There is no chapel on the day

  On which they hang a man:

  The Chaplain’s heart is far too sick,

  Or his face is far too wan,

  Or there is that written in his eyes

  Which none should look upon.

  So they kept us close till nigh on noon,

  And then they rang the bell,

  And the warders with their jingling keys

  Opened each listening cell,

  And down the iron stair we tramped,

  Each from his separate Hell.

  Out into God’s sweet air we went,

  But not in wonted way,

  For this man’s face was white with fear,

  And that man’s face was grey,

  And I never saw sad men who looked

  So wistfully at the day.

  I never saw sad men who looked

  With such a wistful eye

  Upon the little tent of blue

  We prisoners called the sky,

  And at every happy cloud that passed

  In such strange freedom by.

  But there were those amongst us all

  Who walked with downcast head,

  And knew that, had each got his due,

  They should have died instead:

  He had but killed a thing that lived,

  Whilst they had killed the dead.

  For he who sins a second time

  Wakes a dead soul to pain,

  And draws it from its spotted shroud,

  And makes it bleed again,

  And makes it bleed great gouts of blood,

  And makes it bleed in vain!

  Like ape or clown, in monstrous garb

  With crooked arrows starred,

  Silently we went round and round

  The slippery asphalte yard;

  Silently we went round and round,

  And no man spoke a word.

  Silently we went round and round,

  And through each hollow mind

  The Memory of dreadful things

  Rushed like a dreadful wind,

  And Horror stalked before each man,

  And Terror crept behind.

  The warders strutted up and down,

  And watched their herd of brutes,

  Their uniforms were spick and span,

  And they wore their Sunday suits,

  But we knew the work they had been at,

  By the quicklime on their boots.

  For where a grave had opened wide,

  There was no grave at all:

  Only a stretch of mu
d and sand

  By the hideous prison-wall,

  And a little heap of burning lime,

  That the man should have his pall.

  For he has a pall, this wretched man,

  Such as few men can claim:

  Deep down below a prison-yard,

  Naked for greater shame,

  He lies, with fetters on each foot,

  Wrapt in a sheet of flame!

  And all the while the burning lime

  Eats flesh and bone away,

  It eats the brittle bone by night,

  And the soft flesh by day,

  It eats the flesh and bone by turns,

  But it eats the heart alway.

  For three long years they will not sow

  Or root or seedling there:

  For three long years the unblessed spot

  Will sterile be and bare,

  And look upon the wondering sky

  With unreproachful stare,

  They think a murderer’s heart would taint

  Each simple seed they sow.

  It is not true! God’s kindly earth

  Is kindlier than men know,

  And the red rose would but blow more red,

  The white rose whiter blow.

  Out of his mouth a red, red rose!

  Out of his heart a white!

  For who can say by what strange way,

  Christ brings His will to light,

  Since the barren staff the pilgrim bore

  Bloomed in the great Pope’s sight?

  But neither milk-white rose nor red

  May bloom in prison-air;

  The shard, the pebble, and the flint,

  Are what they give us there:

  For flowers have been known to heal

  A common man’s despair.

  So never will wine-red rose or white,

  Petal by petal, fall

  On that stretch of mud and sand that lies

  By the hideous prison-wall,

  To tell the men who tramp the yard

  That God’s Son died for all.

  Yet though the hideous prison-wall

  Still hems him round and round,

  And a spirit may not walk by night

  That is with fetters bound,

  And a spirit may but weep that lies

  In such unholy ground,

  He is at peace—this wretched man—

  At peace, or will be soon:

  There is no thing to make him mad,

  Nor does Terror walk at noon,

  For the lampless Earth in which he lies

  Has neither Sun nor Moon.

  They hanged him as a beast is hanged!

  They did not even toll

  A requiem that might have brought

  Rest to his startled soul,

  But hurriedly they took him out,

  And hid him in a hole.

  The warders stripped him of his clothes,

  And gave him to the flies:

  They mocked the swollen purple throat,

  And the stark and staring eyes:

  And with laughter loud they heaped the shroud

  In which the convict lies.

  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.

  Yet all is well; he has but passed

  To Life’s appointed bourne:

  And alien tears will fill for him

  Pity’s long-broken urn,

  For his mourners will be outcast men,

  And outcasts always mourn.

  5

  I know not whether Laws be right,

  Or whether Laws be wrong;

  All that we know who lie in gaol

  Is that the wall is strong;

  And that each day is like a year,

  A year whose days are long.

  But this I know, that every Law

  That men hath made for Man,

  Since first Man took his brother’s life,

  And the sad world began,

  But straws the wheat and saves the chaff

  With a most evil fan.

  This too I know—and wise it were

  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.

  For they starve the little frightened child

  Till it weeps both night and day:

  And they scourge the weak, and flog the fool,

  And gibe the old and grey,

  And some grow mad, and all grow bad,

  And none a word may say.

  Each narrow cell in which we dwell

  Is a foul and dark latrine,

  And the fetid breath of living Death

  Chokes up each grated screen,

  And all, but Lust, is turned to dust

  In Humanity’s machine.

  The brackish water that we drink

  Creeps with a loathsome slime,

  And the bitter bread they weigh in scales

  Is full of chalk and lime,

  And sleep will not lie down, but walks

  Wild-eyed, and cries to Time.

  But though lean Hunger and green Thirst

  Like asp with adder fight,

  We have little care of prison fare,

  For what chills and kills outright

  Is that every stone one lifts by day

  Becomes one’s heart by night.

  With midnight always in one’s heart,

  And twilight in one’s cell,

  We turn the crank, or tear the rope,

  Each in his separate Hell,

  And the silence is more awful far

  Than the sound of a brazen bell.

  And never a human voice comes near

  To speak a gentle word:

  And the eye that watches through the door

  Is pitiless and hard:

  And by all forgot, we rot and rot,

  With soul and body marred.

  And thus we rust Life’s iron chain

  Degraded and alone:

  And some men curse, and some men weep,

  And some men make no moan:

  But God’s eternal Laws are kind

  And break the heart of stone.

  And every human heart that breaks,

  In prison-cell or yard,

  Is as that broken box that gave

  Its treasure to the Lord,

  And filled the unclean leper’s house

  With the scent of costliest nard.

  Ah! happy 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?

  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 man in red who reads the Law

  Gave him three weeks of life,

  Three little weeks in which to heal

  His soul of his soul’s
strife,

  And cleanse from every blot of blood

  The hand that held the knife.

  And with tears of blood he cleansed the hand,

  The hand that held the steel:

  For only blood can wipe out blood,

  And only tears can heal:

  And the crimson stain that was of Cain

  Became Christ’s snow-white seal.

  6

  In Reading gaol by Reading town

  There is a pit of shame,

  And in it lies a wretched man

  Eaten by teeth of flame,

  In a burning winding-sheet he lies,

  And his grave has got no name.

  And there, till Christ call forth the dead,

  In silence let him lie:

  No need to waste the foolish tear,

  Or heave the windy sigh:

  The man had killed the thing he loved,

  And so he had to die.

  And all men kill the thing they love,

  By all let this be heard,

  Some do it with a bitter look,

  Some with a flattering word,

  The coward does it with a kiss,

  The brave man with a sword!

  DE PROFUNDIS (1905)

  I was a man who stood in symbolic relations to the art and culture of my age. I had realised this for myself at the very dawn of my manhood, and had forced my age to realise it afterwards. Few men hold such a position in their own lifetime and have it so acknowledged. It is usually discerned, if discerned at all, by the historian, or the critic, long after both the man and his age have passed away. With me it was different. I felt it myself, and made others feel it. Byron was a symbolic figure, but his relations were to the passion of his age and its weariness of passion. Mine were to something more noble, more permanent, of more vital issue, of larger scope.