Oscar Wilde

“ But the sad dove, that sits alone
In England—she hath no delight.
In vain the laughing girl will lean
To greet her love with love-lit eyes:
Down in some treacherous black ravine,
Clutching his flag, the dead boy lies.
And many a moon and sun will see
The lingering wistful children wait
To climb upon their father’s knee;
And in each house made desolate
p. 95Pale women who have lost their lord
Will kiss the relics of the slain—
Some tarnished epaulette—some sword—
Poor toys to soothe such anguished pain. ”

“ Once where the white and crescent sand of Salamis meets sea.
Sweet is the swallow twittering on the eaves
At daybreak, when the mower whets his scythe,
And stock-doves murmur, and the milkmaid leaves
Her little lonely bed, and carols blithe
To see the heavy-lowing cattle wait
Stretching their huge and dripping mouths across the farmyard gate. ”

“ The daffodil breaks under foot, and the tasselled larch
Sways and swings as the thrush goes hurrying by.
p. 103A delicate odour is borne on the wings of the morning breeze,
The odour of deep wet grass, and of brown new-furrowed earth,
The birds are singing for joy of the Spring’s glad birth,
Hopping from branch to branch on the rocking trees.
And all the woods are alive with the murmur and sound of Spring,
And the rose-bud breaks into pink on the climbing briar,
p. 104And the crocus-bed is a quivering moon of fire
Girdled round with the belt of an amethyst ring. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Of the burnished rainbow throat and the silver breast of a dove.
p. 105See! the lark starts up from his bed in the meadow there,
Breaking the gossamer threads and the nets of dew,
And flashing adown the river, a flame of blue!
The kingfisher flies like an arrow, and wounds the air. ”

“ Crept like a frightened girl.
p. 144FROM ‘THE BURDEN OF ITYS’ This English Thames is holier far than Rome,
Those harebells like a sudden flush of sea
Breaking across the woodland, with the foam
Of meadow-sweet and white anemone
To fleck their blue waves,—God is likelier there
Than hidden in that crystal-hearted star the pale monks bear!
p. 145Those violet-gleaming butterflies that take
Yon creamy lily for their pavilion
Are monsignores, and where the rushes shake
A lazy pike lies basking in the sun,
His eyes half shut,—he is some mitred old
Bishop in partibus! ”

“ From a poet to a poem
I would dare to say.
For if of these fallen petals
One to you seem fair,
Love will waft it till it settles
On your hair.
p. 101And when wind and winter harden
All the loveless land,
It will whisper of the garden,
You will understand.
p. 102MAGDALEN WALKS
[After gaining the Berkeley Gold Medal for Greek at Trinity College, Dublin, in 1874, Oscar Wilde proceeded to Oxford, where he obtained a demyship at Magdalen College. He is the only real poet on the books of that institution.] ”

“ And the slight lithe-limbed reapers dance about the wattled fold.
* * * * *
It was a dream, the glade is tenantless,
No soft Ionian laughter moves the air,
The Thames creeps on in sluggish leadenness,
And from the copse left desolate and bare
Fled is young Bacchus with his revelry,
Yet still from Nuneham wood there comes that thrilling melody
p. 152So sad, that one might think a human heart
Brake in each separate note, a quality
Which music sometimes has, being the Art
Which is most nigh to tears and memory ”

“ And all men kill the thing they love,
By all 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!
p. 59APPENDIXp. 61THE BALLAD OF READING GAOL A VERSION BASED ON THE ORIGINAL DRAFT OF THE POEM
p. ”

“ And now—those common poppies in the wheat seem twice as fine.
The blue-green beanfields yonder, tremulous
With the last shower, sweeter perfume bring
p. 148Through this cool evening than the odorous
Flame-jewelled censers the young deacons swing,
When the grey priest unlocks the curtained shrine,
And makes God’s body from the common fruit of corn and vine. ”

“ And over both the white wings of a Dove.
Florence.
p. 120LIBERTATIS SACRA FAMES Albeit nurtured in democracy,
And liking best that state republican
Where every man is Kinglike and no man
Is crowned above his fellows, yet I see,
Spite of this modern fret for Liberty,
Better the rule of One, whom all obey,
Than to let clamorous demagogues betray
Our freedom with the kiss of anarchy. ”

“ That the brain can hold
In a tiny ivory cell
God’s heaven and hell.
p. 128FROM ‘THE GARDEN OF EROS’
[In this poem the author laments the growth of materialism in the nineteenth century. He hails Keats and Shelley and some of the poets and artists who were his contemporaries, although his seniors, as the torch-bearers of the intellectual life. Among these are Swinburne, William Morris, Rossetti, and Brune-Jones.] ”

“ Readers will be able to make for themselves the obvious and striking contrasts p. vibetween these first and last phases of Oscar Wilde’s literary activity. The intervening period was devoted almost entirely to dramas, prose, fiction, essays, and criticism.
ROBERT ROSS
Reform Club,
April 5, 1911.
CONTENTS p. ixNOTE
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. ”

“ And Desire shudders into ashes, and the tree
of Passion bears no fruit.
p. 163Ah! what else had I to do but love you?
God’s own mother was less dear to me,
And less dear the Cytheræan rising like an
argent lily from the sea.
I have made my choice, have lived my
poems, and, though youth is gone in wasted days,
I have found the lover’s crown of myrtle better
than the poet’s crown of bays.
FOOTNOTES
[128] Shelley.
[129] Swinburne.
[136] Rossetti. ”