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.

* * * * *

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 Ballad of Reading Gaol" is beyond all comparison the greatest
ballad in English: one of the noblest poems in the language. This is
what prison did for Oscar Wilde.

When speaking to him later about this poem I remember assuming that his
prison experiences must have helped him to realise the suffering of the
condemned soldier and certainly lent passion to his verse. But he would
not hear of it.

"Oh, no, Frank," he cried, "never; my experiences in prison were too
horrible, too painful to be used. I simply blotted them out altogether