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 cock crew, the red cock 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 passes 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 repetition 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 assisting 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