Ballad of Reading Gaol, The

The wonderful descriptive force of the Ballad of Reading Gaol; the perfect, torturing self-analysis of De Profundis speak eloquently of powers unimpaired; but they were the swan-songs of a once great mind.

In "The Ballad of Reading Gaol", the image of the flowering staff resurfaces, in the hope that, as a sign of salvation, it will bring "Christ's will to light".

As in that memoir of another Irish Prisoner-Playwright, The Ballad of Reading Gaol, The Quare Fellow records the atmosphere, the emotions, the tensions of convicts and gaolers as execution nears.