OSCAR WILDE'S Chant de Cygne

PHOTOS:
Oscar Wilde and
Ballad of Reading Gaol
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Notable excerpts of:
"The Ballad of Reading Gaol"
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Several passages from the poem have become famous in their own right:

Yet each man kills the thing he loves
By each let this be heard.
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word.
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!


(The line is a nod to Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice,
when Bassanio asks :
"Do all men kill the things they do not love?")


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A passage from the poem was chosen as
the Epitaph on Wilde's tomb:


"And alien tears will fill for him,
Pity's long-broken urn,
For his mourners will be outcast men,
And outcasts always mourn."

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REFERENCES IN OTHER MEDIA :

During the climax of D.W. Griffith's Intolerance, as The Boy is being led toward the gallows, one of the title-cards quotes the following excerpt:


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.






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