“ Foul snake and speckled adder with their young ones crawl from stone to stone For ruined is the house and prone the great rose-marble monolith!Wild ass or trotting jackal comes and couches in the mouldering gates: Wild satyrs call unto their mates across the fallen fluted drums.And on the summit of the pile the blue-faced ape of Horus sits And gibbers while the fig-tree splits the pillars of the peristyleThe god is scattered here and there: deep hidden in the windy sand I saw his giant granite hand still clenched in impotent despair. ”
Oscar Wilde
Summary
Quotes from The Sphinx (Oscar Wilde)
“ Your tongue is like a scarlet snake that dances to fantastic tunes,Your pulse makes poisonous melodies, and your black throat is like the hole Left by some torch or burning coal on Saracenic tapestries. ”
“ And let me stroke your throat and see your body spotted like the Lynx!And let me touch those curving claws of yellow ivory and grasp The tail that like a monstrous Asp coils round your heavy velvet paws! A thousand weary centuries are thine while I have hardly seen Some twenty summers cast their green for Autumn's gaudy liveries. ”
