A review by jakeyjake
The Ballad of Reading Gaol by Oscar Wilde

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.


I never saw sad men who looked
With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue
We prisoners called the sky.

This is Oscar Wilde writing about an execution in Reading Gaol he witnessed while jailed there and sentenced to hard labor for 'gross indecency.'

Yet each man kills the thing he loves
By each 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!


A passage is on Wilde's tomb:

And alien tears will fill for him,
Pity's long-broken urn,
For his mourners will be outcast men,
And outcasts always mourn.