The Ballad of Reading Gaol the poem was chosen as the epitaph on Wilde's tomb; <poem>And alien tears will fill for him, For his mourners will be outcast men, <poem>So with curious eyes and sick surmise We watched him day by day, And wondered if each one of us Would end the self-same way, For none can tell to what red Hell His sightless soul may stray.</poem> The Ballad of Reading Gaol The Ballad of Reading Gaol is a poem by Oscar Wilde, written in exile in Berneval-le-Grand, after his release from Reading Gaol () on 19 May 1897. Wilde had been incarcerated in Reading
Oscar Wilde His discussion of the dismissal of Warder Martin for giving biscuits to an anaemic child prisoner, repeated the themes of the corruption and degeneration of punishment that he had earlier outlined in "The Soul of Man under Socialism". Wilde spent mid-1897 with Robert Ross in the seaside village of Berneval-le-Grand in northern France, where he wrote "The Ballad of Reading Gaol", narrating the execution of Charles Thomas Wooldridge, who murdered his wife in a rage at her infidelity. It moves from an objective story-telling to symbolic identification with the prisoners. No attempt is made to assess the justice of the