excerpt of Ballad Of Reading Gaol by Oscar Wilde:
I only knew what hunted thought
Quickened his step, and why
He looked upon the garish day
With such a wistful eye;
The man had killed the thing he loved
And so he had to die.
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!
Trooper Charles Wooldridge was hanged at Reading Gaol, while Oscar Wilde was an inmate there, on 7 July 1896, for having slashed his wife's throat in a fit of jealousy.
This was Oscar Wilde's final work, written after his release. He had served two years' hard labour for homosexual offences (homosexuality was illegal at the time), and he died in 1900.
As Wilde says: We were the Devil's Own Brigade.
"There is no man so good that if he placed all his actions and thoughts under the scrutiny of the laws, he would not deserve hanging ten times in his life." - Michel de Montaigne, Book III of Essais
