repentance is the moment of absolution and self-realisation, that tears
can wash out even blood. In "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" he wrote:

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.

This is the highest height Oscar Wilde ever reached, and alas! he only
trod the summit for a moment. But as he says himself: "One has perhaps
to go to prison to understand that. And, if so, it may be worth while
going to prison." He was by nature a pagan who for a few months became a
Christian, but to live as a lover of Jesus was impossible to this
"Greek born out of due time," and he never even dreamed of a reconciling
synthesis....

The arrest of his development makes him a better representative of his
time: he was an artistic expression of the best English mind: a Pagan
and Epicurean, his rule of conduct was a selfish Individualism:--"Am I
my brother's keeper?" This attitude must entail a dreadful Nemesis, for
it condemns one Briton in every four to a pauper's grave. The result
will convince the most hardened that such selfishness is not a creed by
which human beings can live in society.

* * * * *

This summer of 1897 was the harvest time in Oscar Wilde's Life; and his
golden Indian summer. We owe it "De Profundis," the best pages of prose