And all the while the burning lime
Eats flesh and bone away,
It eats the brittle bone by night,
And the soft flesh by the day,
It eats the flesh and bones by turns,
But it eats the heart alway.
Everybody knows that Oscar Wilde wrote this beautiful, dark and haunting poem after he was sent to jail for 2 years for just being who he was, a homosexual.
This must have been a dreadful change of life for him, the dandy who loved refinery so much, and totally life-altering to look in the face men that he knew would soon die. By the way, he himself died only two years later.
The poem concentrated mainly on a man who "killed the thing he loved, and so he had to die", but more generally on life in prison.
This is a very short book (my edition, bilingual, was 57 pages long) but deeply moving.
"For oak and elm have pleasant leaves
That in the spring-time shoot :
But grim to see is the gallows-tree,
With its adder-bitten root,
And, green or dry, a man must die
Before it bears its fruit !"
"In Reading gaol by Reading town
There is a pit of shame,
And in it lies a wretched man
Eaten by teeth of flame,
In a burning winding-sheet he lies,
And his grave has got no name.
And there, till Christ call forth the dead,
In silence let him lie :
No need to waste the foolish tear,
Or heave the windy sigh :
The man had killed the thing he loved,
And so he had to die.
And all men kill the thing they love,
By all 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 !"
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