Oscar Wilde Part 24

"The kindest use a knife because The dead so soon grow old."

It is as we read these lines that our thoughts are immediately directed to "The Dream of Eugene Aram," that incomparable masterpiece of another poet, who likewise was looked upon as a mere jester whose work should not be treated seriously, but who has left us three of the finest and most deeply moving poems in the English language. There is a striking resemblance in the wording between the two poems, but without disparaging Hood's work there can be no possible doubt as to which is the greater and more n.o.ble achievement.

Another stanza elaborates the theme still further and the fact is recorded that though every man kills the thing he loves, yet death is not always meted out to him.

"He does not die a death of shame On a day of dark disgrace, Nor have a noose about his neck, Nor a cloth upon his face Nor drop feet foremost through the floor Into an empty s.p.a.ce."

Within these grim prison walls all the horrible details of execution obtrude themselves upon the wretched captive. He has tasted the horrors of solitary confinement, of being spied on night and day by grim, taciturn warders who, at frequent intervals, slide back the panel in the door to observe through the grated opening that the prisoner is all right. So he can feel all the torture that a man under sentence of death must go through at having to

"Sit with silent men Who watch him night and day, Who watch him when he tries to weep And when he tries to pray."

The ceaseless watch that is kept on the poor wretch lest he should be tempted, given the opportunity, to "rob the prison of its prey" by doing violence on himself, the whole grim ceremonial of the carrying out of the law's decree are conjured up by him. He pictures the doomed man awakened from sleep by the entrance of the Sheriff, and the Governor of the Gaol accompanied by the "shivering Chaplain robed in white." He dwells on the hurried toilet, the putting on of the convict dress for the last time whilst the doctor takes professional stock of every nervous symptom. It is to be hoped that the lines descriptive of the doctor are purely imaginative--one must hope, for the credit of the medical profession, that it has no foundation in personal experience.

Then there is the awful thirst that tortures the victim and another introduction of an apparently trivial detail, "the gardener's gloves"

worn by the hangman. But the detail is not trivial, its introduction adds to the ghastliness of the scene. The reading of the Burial Service over a man yet living is another realistic touch that serves its purpose. With him we can enter into the agony of the condemned wretch as he prays

"with lips of clay For his agony to pa.s.s."

Wilde proceeds with the strict narrative. He tells us how for six weeks that Guardsman walked the prison yard still wearing the same suit and his head covered with the same incongruous headgear.

Still does he cast yearning glances at the sky,

"And at every wandering cloud that trailed Its ravelled fleeces by."

But the man is no coward, he does not wring his hands and bemoan his fate, he merely kept his eyes on the sun "and drank the morning air."

The other convicts, forgetful of themselves and their crimes, watch with silent amazement "The man who had to swing." He still carries himself bravely and they can hardly realise that he will so soon be swept into eternity; and then a perfectly mediaeval note is struck--

"For oak and elm have pleasant leaves That in the springtime 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."

There we have the true spirit of the old ballads. The comparison between the oak and elm in the spring putting forth their leaves, and the gaunt, bare timber of the gibbet with its burden of dead human fruit is a highly imaginative and artistic piece of fantasy, though possibly a poem of Villon's was in Wilde's mind at the time of writing.

He gives us in the next stanza a picture of the murderer with noose adjusted to his neck, taking his last look upon the world, and the drop suggests another finely imaged comparison to him--

"'Tis sweet to dance to violins When Love and Life are fair,"

and goes on so for another two lines before he brings in the ant.i.thesis--

"But it is not sweet with nimble feet To dance upon the air."

The almost morbid fascination the sight of this man with his foot in the grave exercises over him is undiminished, till one day he misses him and knows that he is standing "In black dock's dreadful pen." He himself had been through that dread ordeal and his spirit goes out to him whom he had seen daily for a brief s.p.a.ce without ever holding commune with him.

"Like two doomed ships that pa.s.s in storm We had crossed each other's way,"

he writes, and proceeds to explain that it was impossible for them to exchange word or sign, as they never saw each other in the "holy" night but in the "shameful" day. In a pa.s.sage of rare beauty, one of the finest in the poem, he explains--

"A prison wall was round us both Two outcast men we were The world had thrust us from his heart, And G.o.d from out His care: And the iron gin that waits for Sin Had caught us in its snare."

The lines in their supreme reticence indicate precisely the agony and despair that filled the heart of C33, and once again a comparison with "Eugene Aram" is forced upon us.

The third period starts with a picture of the doomed man and a scathing bit of satire directed against the prison officials. The wretch is shown to us watched day and night by keen, sleepless eyes, debarred even for a brief second of the privilege of being alone with his thoughts and his misery.

Then a small detail is introduced to heighten the effect of the grim picture--

"And thrice a day he smoked his pipe And drank his quart of beer."

There is quite a Shakespearean note in this introduction of these commonplace details, which proves how thoroughly Oscar Wilde had studied the methods of the great dramatist.

But he leaves the condemned cell to paint the effect the whole ghastly tragedy being enacted within those grey walls had upon the other prisoners. To a highly strung and supersensitive nature like the writer's the strain must have been terrible. The captives went through the allotted tasks of picking oak.u.m till the fingers bled, scrubbing the floors, polishing the rails, sewing sacks, and all the other daily routine of prison life.

"But in the heart of every man Terror was lying still--"

until one day, returning from their labours, they "pa.s.sed an open grave," and they knew that the execution would take place on the morrow.

They saw the hangman with his black bag shuffling through the gloom, and like cowed hounds they crept silently back to their cells. Then night comes and Fear stalks through the prison, but the man himself is wrapt in peaceful slumbers. The watching warders cannot make out

"How one could sleep so sweet a sleep With a hangman close at hand."

Not so with the other prisoners--"the fool, the fraud, the knave"--sleep is banished from their cells, they are feeling another's guilt, and the hardened hearts melt at the thought of another's agony. The warders, making their noiseless round, are surprised as they look through the wickets to see "gray figures on the floor." They are puzzled and wonder--

"Why men knelt to pray Who never prayed before."

All through the long night they keep their sacred vigil.

"The grey c.o.c.k crew, the red c.o.c.k crew But never came the day,"

and their imaginations people the corners and shadows with shapes of terror. The marionette dance of death of these ghostly visitants is as fine a bit of word-painting as can be found any where. The idea is an amplification of the _motif_ of "The Harlot's House," but how immeasurably superior, how much more artistically effective the most cursory comparison of the two poems will make apparent.

At last the first faint streaks of day steal through the prison bars and the daily task of cleaning the cells is performed as usual, but the Angel of Death pa.s.ses through the prison, and with parched throats the prisoners, who were kept in their cells while the grim tragedy was being enacted, wait for the stroke of eight, the hour fixed for the carrying out of the sentence. As the first chimes of the prison clock are heard a moan arises from those imprisoned wretches. At noon they are marched out into the yard, and each man's eye is turned wistfully to the sky, just as the condemned man's had been. They notice that the warders are wearing their best uniforms, but the task they have just been engaged upon is revealed "by the quicklime on their boots." The murderer has expiated his crime,

"And the crimson stain that was of Cain Became Christ's snow-white seal."

In his dishonoured grave he lies in a winding-sheet of quicklime; no rose or flower shall bloom above it, no tear shall water it, no prayer or benison be uttered over it.

"In Reading Gaol by Reading Town," with a repet.i.tion of the stanza embodying the theme that "all men kill the thing they love," the poem ends.

Truly a wonderful poem this. We close the covers of the book slowly, almost reverently, our minds all saddened and attuned to a low note by this gloomy picture of agony, torture and horror. We feel as if we had been a.s.sisting at a funeral, and with hushed voices slowly make our way back to the world of life and bustle.

Wilde's place in poetry has yet to be settled, we have not yet had time to focus his work into perspective. That he will rank amongst the very greatest creative geniuses of the world, the men whose songs sway nations, is doubtful, though time alone can tell us.

The least that can be said is that there is a distinction about Wilde's poetry that will always stamp it as the work of a great artist, and as such it commands a high place amongst the best literary work that this country has produced.

PART VI

THE FICTION WRITER