The Ballad

By Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Oscar Wilde and Edna St. Vincent Millay

The ballad is one of the oldest poetic forms in English and are simply poems or songs that tell a story. Traditionally they are composed in quatrains, with common meter that follow an a b c b rhyming structure and this, together with the simple language (often the dialect of the region), made them easier to memorise and recite by wandering minstrels as they were passed down orally.

Originally derived from the Medieval French the name suggests that they were to dance to and whilst widely used around Europe and other parts of the world, became characteristic of British poetry from the Middle Ages to the 19th century when it settled into our current usage of the term as a slow sentimental song.

By the 17th century the printed version of ballads, often with music and illustration, known as Broadsides or Broadsheets, circulated, probably in their millions throughout Britain and remained popular until the Victorian era when they lost prestige.

Whether they be folk, literary or lyrical, most ballads contain a self-contained, concise, plot driven story told in the third person narrative, often featuring dialogue and moving at a pace with an emotional urgency to arrive at a dramatic conclusion. The subject of ballads are limitless and they can be tragic, historical or comic.

Maybe it’s because of childhood associations or that we all enjoy a cracking good story told in rhyme but as this volume demonstrates, the ballad has endless appeal. We include favourites such as Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Edna St Vincent Millay’s The Ballad of the Harp Weaver, Edgar Allan Poe’s Annabel Lee as well as classics such as Sir Patrick Spens, the Ballad of Reading Gaol by Wilde and La Belle Dame Sans Merci by Keats. There’s many more known and lesser known in this volume celebrating this most popular and accessible poetic form.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Portable Poetry
• Release date: Dec 12, 2023
• ISBN: 9781835470701

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) was an English poet and influential figure in the Romantic Movement of the nineteenth century. Born into a large family, Coleridge was the youngest of his father’s 14 children. He attended Jesus College, University of Cambridge with aspirations of becoming a clergyman. Yet, his goals changed when he encountered radical thinkers with different religious views. He befriended several writers and began a new career, publishing a collection called Poems on Various Subjects. Over the years, Coleridge would work as a critic, public speaker, translator and secretary all before his death in 1834.

Book preview

The Ballad

An Introduction

The ballad is one of the oldest poetic forms in English and are simply poems or songs that tell a story.  Traditionally they are composed in quatrains, with common meter that follow an a b c b rhyming structure and this, together with the simple language (often the dialect of the region), made them easier to memorise and recite by wandering minstrels as they were passed down orally. 

Originally derived from the Medieval French the name suggests that they were to dance to and whilst widely used around Europe and other parts of the world, became characteristic of British poetry from the Middle Ages to the 19th century when it settled into our current usage of the term as a slow sentimental song.

By the 17th century the printed version of ballads, often with music and illustration, known as Broadsides or Broadsheets, circulated, probably in their millions throughout Britain and remained popular until the Victorian era when they lost prestige.

Whether they be folk, literary or lyrical, most ballads contain a self-contained, concise, plot driven story told in the third person narrative, often featuring dialogue and moving at a pace with an emotional urgency to arrive at a dramatic conclusion.  The subject of ballads are limitless and they can be tragic, historical or comic.

Maybe it’s because of childhood associations or that we all enjoy a cracking good story told in rhyme but as this volume demonstrates, the ballad has endless appeal.  We include favourites such as Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Edna St Vincent Millay’s The Ballad of the Harp Weaver, Edgar Allan Poe’s Annabel Lee as well as classics such as Sir Patrick Spens, the Ballad of Reading Gaol by Wilde and La Belle Dame Sans Merci by Keats.  There’s many more known and lesser known in this volume celebrating this most popular and accessible poetic form.

Index of Contents

The Ballad of Reading Gaol by Oscar Wilde

Ballad of the Three Spectres by Ivor Gurney

The Ballad Which Anne Askew Made and Sang When She Was in Newgate by Anne Askew

A Ballad of Hell by John Davidson

A Ballad of Death by Algernon Charles Swinburne

Strange Service by Ivor Gurney

Arm The First Rifle Ballad, January 1852 by Martin Farquar Tupper

The Ballad of Agincourt by Michael Drayton

The Ballad of the White Horse - Dedication - An Extract by G K Chesterton

The Ballad of the White Horse - Book I - The Vision of the King - An Extract by G K Chesterton

The Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred Lord Tennyson

The Ballad of East & West by Rudyard Kipling

Ballad of the Army Carts by Du Fu

Gunga Din by Rudyard Kipling

A Ballad of the Ranks by Arthur Conan Doyle

The Song of the Shirt by Thomas Hood

A Dozen Ballads About White Slavery.  II - The Factory Slave by Martin Farquhar Tupper

A Ballad of Whitechapel by Isaac Rosenberg

Ballade of a Special Edition by Amy Levy

Ballade of the 'Cheshire Cheese' in Fleet Street by T W Rolleston

Ballade of An Omnibus by Amy Levy

The Ballad of Hampstead Heath by James Elroy Flecker

Ballad of the Londoner by James Elroy Flecker

The Ballad of Camden Town by James Elroy Flecker

The Ballad of the Student in the South by James Elroy Flecker

The Bridal Ballad by Edgar Allan Poe

The Solitary Reaper by William Wordsworth

Ballade of the Making of Songs by Richard Le Gallienne

A Ballad of Dreamland by Algernon Charles Swinburne

Ballad of the Ancient Cypress by Du Fu

Ballad by Thomas Hood

A Ballad of Gentleness by Chaucer

An Excellent Ballad of Charity by Thomas Chaterton

The Ballad of a Nun by John Davidson

Ballad of the Moon by Frederico Garcia Lorca

The Owl and the Pussycat by Edward Lear

The Water Ballad by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The Ballad of Persse O'Reilly by James Joyce

The First Walpurgis Night (Extract) by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe

The TWA Corbies by Anonymous

A Ballad of the Kind Little Creatures by Richard Le Gallienne

The Walrus and the Carpenter by Lewis Carroll

The Angler's Ballad by Charles Cotton

Ballade of Cricket by Andrew Lang

Casey at the Bat by Ernest L Thayer

Song of the Democratic Review of It's Birthday, October 1st 1857 by William Ross Wallace

A Ballad of the Boston Tea Party by Oliver Wendell Holmes

The Song of Right and Wrong by G K Chesterton

The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes

John Barleycorn, A Ballad by Robert Burns

Sir Patrick Spens by Anonymous

Lord Ullin's Daughter by Thomas Campbell

The Ballad of the Harp Weaver by Edna St Vincent Millay

La Belle Dame Sans Merci By John Keats

The Lady of Shalott by Alfred Lord Tennyson

Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

THE BALLAD

The Ballad of Reading Gaol by Oscar Wilde

I

He did not wear his scarlet coat,

For blood and wine are red,

And blood and wine were on his hands

When they found him with the dead,

The poor dead woman whom he loved,

And murdered in her bed.

He walked amongst the Trial Men

In a suit of shabby gray;

A cricket cap was on his head,

And his step seemed light and gay;

But I never saw a man who looked

So wistfully at the day.

I never saw a man who looked

With such a wistful eye

Upon that little tent of blue

Which prisoners call the sky,

And at every drifting cloud that went

With sails of silver by.

I walked, with other souls in pain,

Within another ring,

And was wondering if the man had done

A great or little thing,

When a voice behind me whispered low,

That fellow's got to swing.

Dear Christ! the very prison walls

Suddenly seemed to reel,

And the sky above my head became

Like a casque of scorching steel;

And, though I was a soul in pain,

My pain I could not feel.

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!

Some kill their love when they are young,

And some when they are old;

Some strangle with the hands of Lust,

Some with the hands of Gold:

The kindest use a knife, because

The dead so soon grow cold.

Some love too little, some too long,

Some sell, and others buy;

Some do the deed with many tears,

And some without a sigh:

For each man kills the thing he loves,

Yet each man does not die.

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 space.

He does not sit with silent men

Who watch him night and day;

Who watch him when he tries to weep,

And when he tries to pray;

Who watch him lest himself should rob

The prison of its prey.

He does not wake at dawn to see

Dread figures throng his room,

The shivering Chaplain robed in white,

The Sheriff stern with gloom,

And the Governor all in shiny black,

With the yellow face of Doom.

He does not rise in piteous haste

To put on convict-clothes,

While some coarse-mouthed Doctor gloats, and notes

Each new and nerve-twitched pose,

Fingering a watch whose little ticks

Are like horrible hammer-blows.

He does not know that sickening thirst

That sands one's throat, before

The hangman with his gardener's gloves

Slips through the padded door,

And binds one with three leathern thongs,

That the throat may thirst no more.

He does not bend his head to hear

The Burial Office read,

Nor while the terror of his soul

Tells him he is not dead,

Cross his own coffin, as he moves

Into the hideous shed.

He does not stare upon the air

Through a little roof of glass:

He does not pray with lips of clay

For his agony to pass;

Nor feel upon his shuddering cheek

The kiss of Caiaphas.

II

Six weeks the guardsman walked the yard,

In the suit of shabby gray:

His cricket cap was on his head,

And his step seemed light and gay,

But I never saw a man who looked

So wistfully at the day.

I never saw a man who looked

With such a wistful eye

Upon that little tent of blue

Which prisoners call the sky,

And at every wandering cloud that trailed

Its ravelled fleeces by.

He did not wring his hands, as do

Those witless men who dare

To try to rear the changeling Hope

In the cave of black Despair:

He only looked upon the sun,

And drank the morning air.

He did not wring his hands nor weep,

Nor did he peek or pine,

But he drank the air as though it held

Some healthful anodyne;

With open mouth he drank the sun

As though it had been wine!

And I and all the souls in pain,

Who tramped the other ring,

Forgot if we ourselves had done

A great or little thing,

And watched with gaze of dull amaze

The