I still dont get it

@@kaankaral yes me either.

No idea what it means

My understanding is that, in those three stanzas beginning "For each man kills the thing he loves," Wilde segues from the physical murder of the guardsman's love to the metaphysical killing of one's love through carelessness, callousness, or simply falling out of love, and breaking someone's heart - something each of us, at one time or another, may be guilty of. "The kindest use a knife/because the dead so soon grow cold," laments how, often, the end of a love affair is drawn out and the (now formerly) loved one tortured, and better to end the affair swiftly so that the heart-broken can move on (grow cold).

@@clairelambe6699 Thank you, I enjoyed reading your interpretation and I believe it to be right at the heart of this poem.

I agree. This and " If " by Kipling.

By an Irishman in his occupying language.

​@Gene Tyburn :'ode to a nightingale' by John Keats. 'the second coming ' by William Butler Yeats. ' ode: intimations of immortality ' by William Wordsworth.

Ulysses by Tennyson

Yep. To disrupt this beautiful reading I would have kicked them out😒

Please read it yourself for the full appreciation. What a work of art!

Yeah..theres loads missing from this version...well read though..

I have to agree. This poem needs a reader who can evoke sympathy and express the desperation that Mr. Wilde wrote of. This was a very pedestrian reading.

If anyone's reading this, may I suggest Niall Tobín's reading. Being Irish etc. he recorded my favourite reading of this poem! Peace to all here.

Rupert Everett is quite a character! - as Oscar Wilde was - and he writes beautifully himself, and in a small way, (comparatively speaking), Rupert Everett has paid a price for coming out as gay. He reads clearly & with intensity. He knows of that thereof he speaks: as we all do. We have all looked wistfully at the day, we know what it is "to kill" with a look, or an exclusion, or a dampening remark. I'm happy to listen to Rupert, knowing he is a nan who seeks to be honest, to be true to himself, in all his vagaries, and insofar as one can. I would like to hear Niall Tóibín read the ballad; it's not on KZfaq, but this is: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/g7ldp8Z3kse8oqs.html

Yeah seriously, he plain skipped over several excellent stanzas.

Football Stat’66 The Murderer was in the Horse Guards - they wore a blue tunic, not red like the Infantry Guards Regiments. Wilde had already developed the scarlet...blood...wine imagery by the time someone pointed out his error. He preferred the poetic licence which had Christlike connotations to prosaic accuracy.

In the context of the artistic license that Wilde took regarding the color of the uniform, he didn't wear the Scarlett coat because the color was a reminder of the crime, of the blood and wine; the guardsman regrets the murder (and this was true for the guardsman for whom the poem is dedicated). This isn't a murder story where the murderer is trying to escape detection.

We have similar taste… Houseman’s prose is sublime. My favorite is “to an Athlete dying young”

bloodandwinearered Then do it. I’ll look forward to it.

😂😂😂 dick.

Then my I suggest you record your narration so that we may decide for ourselves?

This version is better, Cowell is too theatrical