The poet emphasizes on saying that when all men kill what they love, “yet each man does not die.” The speaker argues that men have always killed the thing they loved, but they have never been hanged for it. This is an outcome of his frustration at the hypocrisy of the sentencing. The speaker points out every different possible way in which men have killed the thing they loved. This incident compels the speaker to split the attention from the point of the events that are actually happening in the world of his own self-analysis, to if the inmate’s crime was really a that great crime. Soon, the poet learns about the fact that the inmate has been sentenced to death. Later on, the poet describes the psychological condition of the prisoner. It is completely clear by now that the crime has been done with consent. These incidents are placed close together for contrasting by the poet with his repenting attitude towards the crime he committed. In the second part, the poet describes the hardships the inmate is facing. This might have compelled him to do something he wouldn’t have committed or even think of it if he were in his senses. The “blood” obviously symbolizes the blood of his wife, but the “wine” symbolizes that he is intoxicated during the time of committing the crime. It talks about the inmate who has killed his wife, the thing he loved, and how his hand are contaminated with “blood and wine”.

Later in this stanza, the complete murder scene is portrayed. It is only because the speaker wishes to humanize the act of the prisoner. Interestingly the poem repeatedly emphasizes the fact that the inmate has murdered “the thing he loved”. The ballad starts with describing the “blood and wine” incident which symbolizes murder by the inmate of Oscar Wilde.

Wilde the ballad of reading gaol