And sharp the link of life will snap,
      And dead on air will stand
    Heels that held up as straight a chap
      As treads upon the land.

    So here I’ll watch the night and wait
      To see the morning shine
    When he will hear the stroke of eight
      And not the stroke of nine;

    And wish my friend as sound a sleep
      As lads I did not know,
    That shepherded the moonlit sheep
      A hundred years ago.

THE BALLAD OF READING GAOL

    It is sweet to dance to violins
      When Love and Life are fair: 
    To dance to flutes, to dance to lutes,
      Is delicate and rare: 
    But it is not sweet with nimble feet
      To dance upon the air!

    And as one sees most fearful things
      In the crystal of a dream,
    We saw the greasy hempen rope
      Hooked to the blackened beam
    And heard the prayer the hangman’s snare
      Strangled into a scream.

    And all the woe that moved him so
      That he gave that bitter cry,
    And the wild regrets, and the bloody sweats,
      None knew so well as I: 
    For he who lives more lives than one
      More deaths than one must die.

There are better things in “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” than those inspired by Housman.  In the last of the three verses I quote there is a distinction of thought which Housman hardly reached.

    “For he who lives more lives than one
      More deaths than one must die.”

There are verses, too, wrung from the heart which have a diviner influence than any product of the intellect: 

The Chaplain would not kneel to pray
By his dishonoured grave: 
Nor mark it with that blessed Cross
That Christ for sinners gave,
Because the man was one of those
Whom Christ came down to save.

* * * * *

This too I know—­and wise were it
If each could know the same—­
That every prison that men build
Is built with bricks of shame,
And bound with bars lest Christ should see
How men their brothers maim.

With bars they blur the gracious moon,
And blind the goodly sun: 
And they do well to hide their Hell,
For in it things are done
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.