Selected Poems of Oscar Wilde

POEMSAVE IMPERATRIX

Set in this stormy Northern sea,   Queen of these restless fields of tide,England! what shall men say of thee,   Before whose feet the worlds divide?The earth, a brittle globe of glass,   Lies in the hollow of thy hand,And through its heart of crystal pass,   Like shadows through a twilight land,The spears of crimson-suited war,   The long white-crested waves of fight,And all the deadly fires which are   The torches of the lords of Night.The yellow leopards, strained and lean,   The treacherous Russian knows so well,With gaping blackened jaws are seen   Leap through the hail of screaming shell.The strong sea-lion of England’s wars   Hath left his sapphire cave of sea,To battle with the storm that mars   The stars of England’s chivalry.The brazen-throated clarion blows   Across the Pathan’s reedy fen,And the high steeps of Indian snows   Shake to the tread of armèd men.And many an Afghan chief, who lies   Beneath his cool pomegranate-trees,Clutches his sword in fierce surmise   When on the mountain-side he seesThe fleet-foot Marri scout, who comes   To tell how he hath heard afarThe measured roll of English drums   Beat at the gates of Kandahar.For southern wind and east wind meet   Where, girt and crowned by sword and fire,England with bare and bloody feet   Climbs the steep road of wide empire.O lonely Himalayan height,   Grey pillar of the Indian sky,Where saw’st thou last in clanging flight   Our wingèd dogs of Victory?The almond-groves of Samarcand,   Bokhara, where red lilies blow,And Oxus, by whose yellow sand   The grave white-turbaned merchants go:And on from thence to Ispahan,   The gilded garden of the sun,Whence the long dusty caravan   Brings cedar wood and vermilion;And that dread city of Cabool   Set at the mountain’s scarpèd feet,Whose marble tanks are ever full   With water for the noonday heat:Where through the narrow straight Bazaar   A little maid CircassianIs led, a present from the Czar   Unto some old and bearded Khan, —Here have our wild war-eagles flown,   And flapped wide wings in fiery fight;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 waitTo climb upon their father’s knee;   And in each house made desolatePale 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.For not in quiet English fields   Are these, our brothers, lain to rest,Where we might deck their broken shields   With all the flowers the dead love best.For some are by the Delhi walls,   And many in the Afghan land,And many where the Ganges falls   Through seven mouths of shifting sand.And some in Russian waters lie,   And others in the seas which areThe portals to the East, or by   The wind-swept heights of Trafalgar.O wandering graves!  O restless sleep!   O silence of the sunless day!O still ravine!  O stormy deep!   Give up your prey!  Give up your prey!And thou whose wounds are never healed,   Whose weary race is never won,O Cromwell’s England! must thou yield   For every inch of ground a son?Go! crown with thorns thy gold-crowned head,   Change thy glad song to song of pain;Wind and wild wave have got thy dead,   And will not yield them back again.Wave and wild wind and foreign shore   Possess the flower of English land —Lips that thy lips shall kiss no more,   Hands that shall never clasp thy hand.What profit now that we have bound   The whole round world with nets of gold,If hidden in our heart is found   The care that groweth never old?What profit that our galleys ride,   Pine-forest-like, on every main?Ruin and wreck are at our side,   Grim warders of the House of Pain.Where are the brave, the strong, the fleet?   Where is our English chivalry?Wild grasses are their burial-sheet,   And sobbing waves their threnody.O loved ones lying far away,   What word of love can dead lips send!O wasted dust!  O senseless clay!   Is this the end! is this the end!Peace, peace! we wrong the noble dead   To vex their solemn slumber so;Though childless, and with thorn-crowned head,   Up the steep road must England go,Yet when this fiery web is spun,   Her watchmen shall descry from farThe young Republic like a sun   Rise from these crimson seas of war.

TO MY WIFE WITH A COPY OF MY POEMS

I can write no stately proem   As a prelude to my lay;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.And when wind and winter harden   All the loveless land,It will whisper of the garden,   You will understand.

MAGDALEN 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.]

The little white clouds are racing over the sky,   And the fields are strewn with the gold of the flower of March,   The daffodil breaks under foot, and the tasselled larchSways and swings as the thrush goes hurrying by.A 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,   And the crocus-bed is a quivering moon of fireGirdled round with the belt of an amethyst ring.And the plane to the pine-tree is whispering some tale of love   Till it rustles with laughter and tosses its mantle of green,   And the gloom of the wych-elm’s hollow is lit with the iris sheenOf the burnished rainbow throat and the silver breast of a dove.See! 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.

THEOCRITUS A VILLANELLE

O singer of Persephone!   In the dim meadows desolateDost thou remember Sicily?Still through the ivy flits the bee   Where Amaryllis lies in state;O Singer of Persephone!Simætha calls on Hecate   And hears the wild dogs at the gate;Dost thou remember Sicily?Still by the light and laughing sea   Poor Polypheme bemoans his fate;O Singer of Persephone!And still in boyish rivalry   Young Daphnis challenges his mate;Dost thou remember Sicily?Slim Lacon keeps a goat for thee,   For thee the jocund shepherds wait;O Singer of Persephone!Dost thou remember Sicily?

GREECE

The sea was sapphire coloured, and the skyBurned like a heated opal through the air;   We hoisted sail; the wind was blowing fairFor the blue lands that to the eastward lie.From the steep prow I marked with quickening eye   Zakynthos, every olive grove and creek,   Ithaca’s cliff, Lycaon’s snowy peak,And all the flower-strewn hills of Arcady.The flapping of the sail against the mast,   The ripple of the water on the side,   The ripple of girls’ laughter at the stern,The only sounds: – when ’gan the West to burn,   And a red sun upon the seas to ride,   I stood upon the soil of Greece at last!Katakolo.

PORTIA TO ELLEN TERRY

(Written at the Lyceum Theatre)I marvel not Bassanio was so bold   To peril all he had upon the lead,   Or that proud Aragon bent low his headOr that Morocco’s fiery heart grew cold:For in that gorgeous dress of beaten gold   Which is more golden than the golden sun   No woman Veronesé looked uponWas half so fair as thou whom I behold.Yet fairer when with wisdom as your shield   The sober-suited lawyer’s gown you donned,And would not let the laws of Venice yield   Antonio’s heart to that accursèd Jew —   O Portia! take my heart: it is thy due:I think I will not quarrel with the Bond.

FABIEN DEI FRANCHI TO MY FRIEND HENRY IRVING

The silent room, the heavy creeping shade,   The dead that travel fast, the opening door,   The murdered brother rising through the floor,The ghost’s white fingers on thy shoulders laid,And then the lonely duel in the glade,   The broken swords, the stifled scream, the gore,   Thy grand revengeful eyes when all is o’er, —These things are well enough, – but thou wert made   For more august creation! frenzied Lear   Should at thy bidding wander on the heath   With the shrill fool to mock him, RomeoFor thee should lure his love, and desperate fearPluck Richard’s recreant dagger from its sheath —   Thou trumpet set for Shakespeare’s lips to blow!

PHÈDRE TO SARAH BERNHARDT

How vain and dull this common world must seem   To such a One as thou, who should’st have talkedAt Florence with Mirandola, or walkedThrough the cool olives of the Academe:Thou should’st have gathered reeds from a green stream   For Goat-foot Pan’s shrill piping, and have played   With the white girls in that Phæacian gladeWhere grave Odysseus wakened from his dream.Ah! surely once some urn of Attic clay   Held thy wan dust, and thou hast come again   Back to this common world so dull and vain,For thou wert weary of the sunless day,   The heavy fields of scentless asphodel,   The loveless lips with which men kiss in Hell.

SONNET

ON HEARING THE DIES IRÆ SUNG IN THE SISTINE CHAPELNay, Lord, not thus! white lilies in the spring,Sad olive-groves, or silver-breasted dove,   Teach me more clearly of Thy life and loveThan terrors of red flame and thundering.The hillside vines dear memories of Thee bring:   A bird at evening flying to its nest   Tells me of One who had no place of rest:I think it is of Thee the sparrows sing.Come rather on some autumn afternoon,   When red and brown are burnished on the leaves,And the fields echo to the gleaner’s song,Come when the splendid fulness of the moon   Looks down upon the rows of golden sheaves,   And reap Thy harvest: we have waited long.

AVE MARIA GRATIA PLENA

Was this His coming!  I had hoped to see   A scene of wondrous glory, as was told   Of some great God who in a rain of goldBroke open bars and fell on Danae:Or a dread vision as when Semele   Sickening for love and unappeased desire   Prayed to see God’s clear body, and the fireCaught her brown limbs and slew her utterly:With such glad dreams I sought this holy place,   And now with wondering eyes and heart I stand   Before this supreme mystery of Love:Some kneeling girl with passionless pale face,   An angel with a lily in his hand,   And over both the white wings of a Dove.Florence.

LIBERTATIS SACRA FAMES

Albeit nurtured in democracy,   And liking best that state republican   Where every man is Kinglike and no manIs 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 betrayOur freedom with the kiss of anarchy.Wherefore I love them not whose hands profane   Plant the red flag upon the piled-up street   For no right cause, beneath whose ignorant reignArts, Culture, Reverence, Honour, all things fade,   Save Treason and the dagger of her trade,   Or Murder with his silent bloody feet.

ROSES AND RUE

(To L. L.)Could we dig up this long-buried treasure,   Were it worth the pleasure,We never could learn love’s song,   We are parted too long.Could the passionate past that is fled   Call back its dead,Could we live it all over again,   Were it worth the pain!I remember we used to meet   By an ivied seat,And you warbled each pretty word   With the air of a bird;And your voice had a quaver in it,   Just like a linnet,And shook, as the blackbird’s throat   With its last big note;And your eyes, they were green and grey   Like an April day,But lit into amethyst   When I stooped and kissed;And your mouth, it would never smile   For a long, long while,Then it rippled all over with laughter   Five minutes after.You were always afraid of a shower,   Just like a flower:I remember you started and ran   When the rain began.I remember I never could catch you,   For no one could match you,You had wonderful, luminous, fleet,   Little wings to your feet.I remember your hair – did I tie it?   For it always ran riot —Like a tangled sunbeam of gold:   These things are old.I remember so well the room,   And the lilac bloomThat beat at the dripping pane   In the warm June rain;And the colour of your gown,   It was amber-brown,And two yellow satin bows   From your shoulders rose.And the handkerchief of French lace   Which you held to your face —Had a small tear left a stain?   Or was it the rain?On your hand as it waved adieu   There were veins of blue;In your voice as it said good-bye   Was a petulant cry,‘You have only wasted your life.’   (Ah, that was the knife!)When I rushed through the garden gate   It was all too late.Could we live it over again,   Were it worth the pain,Could the passionate past that is fled   Call back its dead!Well, if my heart must break,   Dear love, for your sake,It will break in music, I know,   Poets’ hearts break so.But strange that I was not told   That the brain can holdIn a tiny ivory cell   God’s heaven and hell.

FROM ‘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.]

Nay, when Keats died the Muses still had left   One silver voice to sing his threnody,1But ah! too soon of it we were bereft   When on that riven night and stormy seaPanthea claimed her singer as her own,And slew the mouth that praised her; since which time we walk alone,Save for that fiery heart, that morning star2   Of re-arisen England, whose clear eyeSaw from our tottering throne and waste of war   The grand Greek limbs of young DemocracyRise mightily like Hesperus and bringThe great Republic! him at least thy love hath taught to sing,And he hath been with thee at Thessaly,   And seen white Atalanta fleet of footIn passionless and fierce virginity   Hunting the tuskèd boar, his honied luteHath pierced the cavern of the hollow hill,And Venus laughs to know one knee will bow before her still.And he hath kissed the lips of Proserpine,   And sung the Galilæan’s requiem,That wounded forehead dashed with blood and wine   He hath discrowned, the Ancient Gods in himHave found their last, most ardent worshipper,And the new Sign grows grey and dim before its conqueror.Spirit of Beauty! tarry with us still,   It is not quenched the torch of poesy,The star that shook above the Eastern hill   Holds unassailed its argent armouryFrom all the gathering gloom and fretful fight —O tarry with us still! for through the long and common night,Morris, our sweet and simple Chaucer’s child,   Dear heritor of Spenser’s tuneful reed,With soft and sylvan pipe has oft beguiled   The weary soul of man in troublous need,And from the far and flowerless fields of iceHas brought fair flowers to make an earthly paradise.We know them all, Gudrun the strong men’s bride,   Aslaug and Olafson we know them all,How giant Grettir fought and Sigurd died,   And what enchantment held the king in thrallWhen lonely Brynhild wrestled with the powersThat war against all passion, ah! how oft through summer hours,Long listless summer hours when the noon   Being enamoured of a damask roseForgets to journey westward, till the moon   The pale usurper of its tribute growsFrom a thin sickle to a silver shieldAnd chides its loitering car – how oft, in some cool grassy fieldFar from the cricket-ground and noisy eight,   At Bagley, where the rustling bluebells comeAlmost before the blackbird finds a mate   And overstay the swallow, and the humOf many murmuring bees flits through the leaves,Have I lain poring on the dreamy tales his fancy weaves,And through their unreal woes and mimic pain   Wept for myself, and so was purified,And in their simple mirth grew glad again;   For as I sailed upon that pictured tideThe strength and splendour of the storm was mineWithout the storm’s red ruin, for the singer is divine;The little laugh of water falling down   Is not so musical, the clammy goldClose hoarded in the tiny waxen town   Has less of sweetness in it, and the oldHalf-withered reeds that waved in ArcadyTouched by his lips break forth again to fresher harmony.Spirit of Beauty, tarry yet awhile!   Although the cheating merchants of the martWith iron roads profane our lovely isle,   And break on whirling wheels the limbs of Art,Ay! though the crowded factories begetThe blindworm Ignorance that slays the soul, O tarry yet!For One at least there is, – He bears his name   From Dante and the seraph Gabriel, —3Whose double laurels burn with deathless flame   To light thine altar; He4 too loves thee well,Who saw old Merlin lured in Vivien’s snare,And the white feet of angels coming down the golden stair,Loves thee so well, that all the World for him   A gorgeous-coloured vestiture must wear,And Sorrow take a purple diadem,   Or else be no more Sorrow, and DespairGild its own thorns, and Pain, like Adon, beEven in anguish beautiful; – such is the emperyWhich Painters hold, and such the heritage   This gentle solemn Spirit doth possess,Being a better mirror of his age   In all his pity, love, and weariness,Than those who can but copy common things,And leave the Soul unpainted with its mighty questionings.But they are few, and all romance has flown,   And men can prophesy about the sun,And lecture on his arrows – how, alone,   Through a waste void the soulless atoms run,How from each tree its weeping nymph has fled,And that no more ’mid English reeds a Naiad shows her head.

THE HARLOT’S HOUSE

We caught the tread of dancing feet,We loitered down the moonlit street,And stopped beneath the harlot’s house.Inside, above the din and fray,We heard the loud musicians playThe ‘Treues Liebes Herz’ of Strauss.Like strange mechanical grotesques,Making fantastic arabesques,The shadows raced across the blind.We watched the ghostly dancers spinTo sound of horn and violin,Like black leaves wheeling in the wind.Like wire-pulled automatons,Slim silhouetted skeletonsWent sidling through the slow quadrille,Then took each other by the hand,And danced a stately saraband;Their laughter echoed thin and shrill.Sometimes a clockwork puppet pressedA phantom lover to her breast,Sometimes they seemed to try to sing.Sometimes a horrible marionetteCame out, and smoked its cigaretteUpon the steps like a live thing.Then, turning to my love, I said,‘The dead are dancing with the dead,The dust is whirling with the dust.’But she – she heard the violin,And left my side, and entered in:Love passed into the house of lust.Then suddenly the tune went false,The dancers wearied of the waltz,The shadows ceased to wheel and whirl.And down the long and silent street,The dawn, with silver-sandalled feet,Crept like a frightened girl.

FROM ‘THE BURDEN OF ITYS’

This English Thames is holier far than Rome,   Those harebells like a sudden flush of seaBreaking across the woodland, with the foam   Of meadow-sweet and white anemoneTo fleck their blue waves, – God is likelier thereThan hidden in that crystal-hearted star the pale monks bear!Those violet-gleaming butterflies that take   Yon creamy lily for their pavilionAre monsignores, and where the rushes shake   A lazy pike lies basking in the sun,His eyes half shut, – he is some mitred oldBishop in partibus! look at those gaudy scales all green and gold.The wind the restless prisoner of the trees   Does well for Palæstrina, one would sayThe mighty master’s hands were on the keys   Of the Maria organ, which they playWhen early on some sapphire Easter mornIn a high litter red as blood or sin the Pope is borneFrom his dark House out to the Balcony   Above the bronze gates and the crowded square,Whose very fountains seem for ecstasy   To toss their silver lances in the air,And stretching out weak hands to East and WestIn vain sends peace to peaceless lands, to restless nations rest.Is not yon lingering orange after-glow   That stays to vex the moon more fair than allRome’s lordliest pageants! strange, a year ago   I knelt before some crimson CardinalWho bare the Host across the Esquiline,And now – those common poppies in the wheat seem twice as fine.The blue-green beanfields yonder, tremulous   With the last shower, sweeter perfume bringThrough 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.Poor Fra Giovanni bawling at the Mass   Were out of tune now, for a small brown birdSings overhead, and through the long cool grass   I see that throbbing throat which once I heardOn starlit hills of flower-starred Arcady,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 blitheTo see the heavy-lowing cattle waitStretching their huge and dripping mouths across the farmyard gate.And sweet the hops upon the Kentish leas,   And sweet the wind that lifts the new-mown hay,And sweet the fretful swarms of grumbling bees   That round and round the linden blossoms play;And sweet the heifer breathing in the stall,And the green bursting figs that hang upon the red-brick wall,And sweet to hear the cuckoo mock the spring   While the last violet loiters by the well,And sweet to hear the shepherd Daphnis sing   The song of Linus through a sunny dellOf warm Arcadia where the corn is goldAnd 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 bareFled is young Bacchus with his revelry,Yet still from Nuneham wood there comes that thrilling melodySo sad, that one might think a human heart   Brake in each separate note, a qualityWhich music sometimes has, being the Art   Which is most nigh to tears and memory;Poor mourning Philomel, what dost thou fear?Thy sister doth not haunt these fields, Pandion is not here,Here is no cruel Lord with murderous blade,   No woven web of bloody heraldries,But mossy dells for roving comrades made,   Warm valleys where the tired student liesWith half-shut book, and many a winding walkWhere rustic lovers stray at eve in happy simple talk.The harmless rabbit gambols with its young   Across the trampled towing-path, where lateA troop of laughing boys in jostling throng   Cheered with their noisy cries the racing eight;The gossamer, with ravelled silver threads,Works at its little loom, and from the dusky red-eaved shedsOf the lone Farm a flickering light shines out   Where the swinked shepherd drives his bleating flockBack to their wattled sheep-cotes, a faint shout   Comes from some Oxford boat at Sandford lock,And starts the moor-hen from the sedgy rill,And the dim lengthening shadows flit like swallows up the hill.The heron passes homeward to the mere,   The blue mist creeps among the shivering trees,Gold world by world the silent stars appear,   And like a blossom blown before the breezeA white moon drifts across the shimmering sky,Mute arbitress of all thy sad, thy rapturous threnody.She does not heed thee, wherefore should she heed,   She knows Endymion is not far away;’Tis I, ’tis I, whose soul is as the reed   Which has no message of its own to play,So pipes another’s bidding, it is I,Drifting with every wind on the wide sea of misery.Ah! the brown bird has ceased: one exquisite trill   About the sombre woodland seems to clingDying in music, else the air is still,   So still that one might hear the bat’s small wingWander and wheel above the pines, or tellEach tiny dew-drop dripping from the bluebell’s brimming cell.And far away across the lengthening wold,   Across the willowy flats and thickets brown,Magdalen’s tall tower tipped with tremulous gold   Marks the long High Street of the little town,And warns me to return; I must not wait,Hark! ’t is the curfew booming from the bell at Christ Church gate.

FLOWER OF LOVE

Sweet, I blame you not, for mine the faultwas, had I not been made of common clayI had climbed the higher heights unclimbedyet, seen the fuller air, the larger day.From the wildness of my wasted passion I hadstruck a better, clearer song,Lit some lighter light of freer freedom, battledwith some Hydra-headed wrong.Had my lips been smitten into music by thekisses that but made them bleed,You had walked with Bice and the angels onthat verdant and enamelled mead.I had trod the road which Dante treading sawthe suns of seven circles shine,Ay! perchance had seen the heavens opening,as they opened to the Florentine.And the mighty nations would have crownedme, who am crownless now and without name,And some orient dawn had found me kneelingon the threshold of the House of Fame.I had sat within that marble circle where theoldest bard is as the young,And the pipe is ever dropping honey, and thelyre’s strings are ever strung.Keats had lifted up his hymeneal curls from outthe poppy-seeded wine,With ambrosial mouth had kissed my forehead,clasped the hand of noble love in mine.And at springtide, when the apple-blossomsbrush the burnished bosom of the dove,Two young lovers lying in an orchard wouldhave read the story of our love;Would have read the legend of my passion,known the bitter secret of my heart,Kissed as we have kissed, but never parted aswe two are fated now to part.For the crimson flower of our life is eaten bythe cankerworm of truth,And no hand can gather up the fallen witheredpetals of the rose of youth.Yet I am not sorry that I loved you – ah!what else had I a boy to do, —For the hungry teeth of time devour, and thesilent-footed years pursue.Rudderless, we drift athwart a tempest, andwhen once the storm of youth is past,Without lyre, without lute or chorus, Deaththe silent pilot comes at last.And within the grave there is no pleasure,for the blindworm battens on the root,And Desire shudders into ashes, and the treeof Passion bears no fruit.Ah! 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 anargent lily from the sea.I have made my choice, have lived mypoems, and, though youth is gone in wasted days,I have found the lover’s crown of myrtle betterthan the poet’s crown of bays.