Amira Zaidi’s Reviews > Selected poems of Oscar Wilde including the ballad of Reading Gaol > Status Update

I have made my choice, have lived my poems,
and, though youth is gone in wasted days, I have
found the lover's crown of myrtle better
than the poet's crown of bays.

But neither milk-white rose nor red
May bloom in prison-air,
The shard, the pebble, and the flint,
Are what they give us there:
For flowers have been known to heal
A common man's despair.