sale was made. However, the poem sold very well and very quickly, and caused such a stir that subsequent printings also sold well for more than a year, assuring Wilde of a steady income which he did not outlive, as he died less than three years after the Ballad first appeared. It has been suggested that Wilde was, to some degree, inspired by poem IX in A. E. Housman's A Shropshire Lad (1896), which alludes to the hanging of condemned prisoners: They hang us now in Shrewsbury jail: The whistles blow forlorn, And trains all night groan on the rail To men that die at dawn. Although there is no specific documentation to show Wilde's active revising after the appearance of the first edition, there were some slight changes made in the second edition, which was printed only two weeks after the first edition went on sale. For example, in the first edition a line read "And his step was light", and in the second edition it becomes "And his step seemed light". These tiny alterations persisted through the seventh edition, the last edition handled by Smithers, and thereafter to most of the reprints. Since Smithers had the printers retain the plates from the first edition, it seems plausible that these were deliberate revisions done at Wilde's request. Wilde did acknowledge (evidently to several people, since numerous separate sources recalled this) a glaring error in the very first line of the poem, "He did not wear his scarlet coat"—because Wooldridge, as a member of the Royal Horse Guards, had a blue uniform—but justified this poetic licence because the second line would make no sense if it said "For blood and wine are blue". Notable excerpts Several passages from the poem have become famous: 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! The line is a nod to Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, when Bassanio asks "Do all men kill the things they do not love?" A passage from the poem was chosen as the epitaph on Wilde's tomb; And alien tears will fill for him, Pity's long-broken urn, For his mourners will be outcast men, And outcasts always mourn. References in other media W. E. B. Du Bois quotes