"The Ballad of Reading Jail" may not be his best work but it was and is a powerful piece of work especially the part where he describes the grave of the executed man - "For he has a pall, this wretched man, Such as few men can claim: Deep down below a prison-yard, Naked for greater shame, He lies, with fetters on each foot, Wrapt in a sheet of flame."

Also the verses dealing with the work the convicts did has never been so vividly described - "We tore the tarry rope to shreds With blunt and bleeding nails; We rubbed the doors, and scrubbed the floors, And cleaned the shining rails: And, rank by rank, we soaped the plank, And clattered with the pails."

Let's not forget that when that poem was published there was little if any such descriptions of prison life as most of the Victorian works dealt with nature and other nice subjects. There were of course exceptions such as "The Cry of the Children" and "The Ancient Mariner." Wilde was an exception to the rule and of course we all know who acted as prosecution lawyer, his former "friend" Edward Carson. M