Selected Poems of Oscar Wilde_{İncluding the Ballad of Reading Gaol}

At the end of the complete text will be found a shorter version based on the original draft of the
poem. This is included for the benefit of reciters and their audiences who have found the entire
poem too long for declamation. I have tried to obviate a difficulty, without officiously exercising
the ungrateful prerogatives of a literary executor, by falling back on a text which represents the author's first scheme for a poem—never intended of course for recitation.