The Ballad of Reading Gaol as C.3.3., although many reviewers, and of course those who bought the numbered and autographed third edition copies, knew that Wilde was the author, but the seventh edition, printed on 23 June 1899, actually revealed the author's identity, putting the name Oscar Wilde, in square brackets, below the C.3.3.. It brought him a small income in his remaining lifetime. The poem consists of 109 stanzas of 6 lines, of 8-6-8-6-8-6 syllables, and rhyming a-b-c-b-d-b. Some stanzas incorporate rhymes within some or all of the 8-syllable lines. The whole poem is grouped into 6 untitled sections of 16, 13, 37, 23,
Ballad of the Goodly Fere offensive. Edward Marsh sought permission to reprint "Fere", which Pound denied because he wished to reprint it himself. T. S. Eliot said that "Fere" showed Pound's "great knowledge of the ballad form". William Butler Yeats said that "Fere" "will last". Ambrose Bierce is said to have "consistently disapproved" the poems of a "young poet", until one came to him which impressed him so much he wore "out the paper and the patience of friends by reading it at them", namely "Fere". Ballad of the Goodly Fere The Ballad of the Goodly Fere is a poem by Ezra Pound, first published