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- burden-2046.txt
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1890
THE BURDEN OF ITYS
by Oscar Wilde
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!
Those 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! look at those gaudy scales
all green and gold!
The wind the restless prisoner of the trees
Does well for Palaestrina, one would say
The mighty master's hands were on the keys
Of the Maria organ, which they play
When early on some sapphire Easter morn
In a . . .
- Name
- charmide-2046.txt
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- 33.83 KB
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1890
CHARMIDES
by Oscar Wilde
I
He was a Grecian lad, who coming home
With pulpy figs and wine from Sicily
Stood at his galley's prow, and let the foam
Blow through his crisp brown curls unconsciously,
And holding wind and wave in boy's despite
Peered from his dripping seat across the wet and
stormy night.
Till with the dawn he saw a burnished spear
Like a thin thread of gold against the sky,
And hoisted sail, and strained the creeking gear,
And bade the pilot head her lustily
Against the nor-west gale, and all day long
Held on his way, and marked the rowers' time with
measured song.
And when the faint Corinthian hills were red
Dropped anchor in a little sandy bay,
And with fresh boughs of olive crowned his head,
And brushed from cheek and throat the hoary spray, . . .
- Name
- eleuther-2046.txt
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- 10.8 KB
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1890
ELEUTHERIA
by Oscar Wilde
SONNET TO LIBERTY
Not that I love thy children, whose dull eyes
See nothing save their own unlovely woe,
Whose minds know nothing, nothing care to know,-
But that the roar of thy Democracies,
Thy reigns of Terror, thy great Anarchies,
Mirror my wildest passions like the sea,
And give my rage a brother-! Liberty!
For his sake only do thy dissonant cries
Delight my discreet soul, else might all kings
By bloody knout or treacherous cannonades
Rob nations of their rights inviolate
And I remain unmoved- and yet, and yet,
These Christs that die upon the barricades,
God knows it I am with them, in some things.
AVE IMPERATRIX
Set in this stormy Northern sea,
Queen of these restless fields of tide,
England! what shall men say of thee, . . .
- Name
- flo_gold-2046.txt
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- 12.25 KB
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1890
FLOWERS OF GOLD
by Oscar Wilde
IMPRESSIONS
I
Les Silhouettes
The sea is flecked with bars of gray,
The dull dead wind is out of tune,
And like a withered leaf the moon
Is blown across the stormy bay.
Etched clear upon the pallid sand
The black boat lies: a sailor boy
Clambers aboard in careless joy
With laughing face and gleaming hand.
And overhead the curlews cry,
Where through the dusky upland grass
The young brown-throated reapers pass,
Like silhouettes against the sky.
II
La Fuite de la Lune
To outer senses there is peace,
A dreamy peace on either hand,
Deep silence in the shadowy land,
Deep silence where the shadows . . .
- Name
- flo_love-2046.txt
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- 2.99 KB
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1890
FLOWER OR LOVE
by Oscar Wilde
Sweet, I blame you not, for mine the fault was,
Had I not been made of common clay
I had climbed the higher heights unclimbed yet,
Seen the fuller air, the larger day.
From the wildness of my wasted passion I had
Struck a better, clearer song,
Lit some lighter light of freer freedom, battled
With some Hydra-headed wrong.
Had my lips been smitten into music by the
Kisses that but made them bleed,
You had walked with Bice and the angels on
That verdant and enamelled mead.
I had trod the road which Dante treading saw
The suns of seven circles shine,
Ay! perchance had seen the heavens opening, as
They opened to the Florentine.
And the mighty nations would have crowned me,
Who am crownless n . . .
- Name
- fourth-2046.txt
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- 8.18 KB
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1890
THE FOURTH MOVEMENT
by Oscar Wilde
IMPRESSION
Le Reveillon
The sky is laced with fitful red,
The circling mists and shadows flee,
The dawn is rising from the sea,
Like a white lady from her bed.
And jagged brazen arrows fall
Athwart the feathers of the night,
And a long wave of yellow light
Breaks silently on tower and hall,
And spreading wide across the wold
Wakes into flight some fluttering bird,
And all the chestnut tops are stirred,
And all the branches streaked with gold.
AT VERONA
How steep the stairs within Kings' houses are
For exile-wearied feet as mine to tread,
And O how salt and bitter is the bread
Which falls from this Hound's table,- better far
That I . . .
- Name
- gar_eros-2046.txt
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- 13.75 KB
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1890
THE GARDEN OF EROS
by Oscar Wilde
It is full summer now, the heart of June,
Not yet the sun-burnt reapers are a-stir
Upon the upland meadow where too soon
Rich autumn time, the season's usurer,
Will lend his hoarded gold to all the trees,
And see his treasure scattered by the wild and
spendthrift breeze.
Too soon indeed! yet here the daffodil,
That love-child of the Spring, has lingered on
To vex the rose with jealousy, and still
The harebell spreads her azure pavilion,
And like a strayed and wandering reveller
Abandoned of its brothers, whom long since June's
messenger
The missel-thrush has frighted from the glade,
One pale narcissus loiters fearfully
Close to a shadowy nook, where half afraid
Of their own loveliness some violets lie
That will not look the gold sun in the face
F . . .
- Name
- humanita-2046.txt
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- 21.79 KB
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1890
HUMANITAD
by Oscar Wilde
HUMANITAD
It is full winter now: the trees are bare,
Save where the cattle huddle from the cold
Beneath the pine, for it doth never wear
The Autumn's gaudy livery whose gold
Her jealous brother pilfers, but is true
To the green doublet; bitter is the wind, as
though it blew
From Saturn's cave; a few thin wisps of hay
Lie on the sharp black hedges, where the wain
Dragged the sweet pillage of a summer's day
From the low meadows up the narrow lane;
Upon the half-thawed snow the bleating sheep
Press close against the hurdles, and the shivering
housedogs creep
From the shut stable to the frozen stream
And back again disconsolate, and miss
The bawling shepherds and the noisy team;
And overhead in circling listlessness
The cawing rooks whirl round the frosted st . . .
- Name
- panthea-2046.txt
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- 9.35 KB
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1890
PANTHEA
by Oscar Wilde
PANTHEA
Nay, let us walk from fire unto fire,
From passionate pain to deadlier delight,-
I am too young to live without desire,
Too young art thou to waste this summer night
Asking those idle questions which of old
Man sought of seer and oracle, and no reply was told.
For sweet, to feel is better than to know,
And wisdom is a childless heritage,
One pulse of passion-youth's first fiery glow,-
Are worth the hoarded proverbs of the sage:
Vex not thy soul with dead philosophy,
Have we not lips to kiss with, hearts to love, and eyes
to see!
Dost thou not hear the murmuring nightingale
Like water bubbling from a silver jar,
So soft she sings the envious moon is pale,
That high in heaven she hung so far
She cannot hear that love-enraptured tune,-
Mark how she wreath . . .
- Name
- poems-2046.txt
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- 13.08 KB
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1881
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS
by Oscar Wilde
THE TRUE KNOWLEDGE
Thou knowest all- I seek in vain
What lands to till or sow with seed-
The land is black with briar and weed,
Nor cares for falling tears or rain.
Thou knowest all- I sit and wait
With blinded eyes and hands that fail,
Till the last lifting of the veil,
And the first opening of the gate.
Thou knowest all- I cannot see.
I trust I shall not live in vain,
I know that we shall meet again,
In some divine eternity.
A LAMENT
O well for him who lives at ease
With garnered gold in wide domain,
Nor heeds the splashing of the rain,
The crashing down of forest trees.
O well for him who ne'er hath known
The travail of the hungry years, . . .
- Name
- ravenna-2046.txt
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- 15.68 KB
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1878
RAVENNA
by Oscar Wilde
I
A year ago I breathed the Italian air,-
And yet, methinks this northern Spring is fair,-
These fields made golden with the flower of March,
The throstle singing on the fathered larch,
The cawing rooks, the wood-doves fluttering by,
The little clouds that race across the sky;
And fair the violet's gentle drooping head,
The primrose, pale for love uncomforted,
The rose that burgeons on the climbing briar,
The crocus-bed, (that seems a moon of fire
Round-girdled with a purple marriage-ring);
And all the flowers of oar English Spring,
Fond snow-drops, and the bright-starred daffodil.
Up starts the lark beside the murmuring mill,
And breaks the gossamer-threads of early dew;
And down the river, like a flame of blue,
Keene as an arrow flies the water-king,
Wh . . .
- Name
- r_gaol-2046.txt
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- 26.6 KB
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1898
THE BALLAD OF READING GAOL
by Oscar Wilde
I
He did not wear his scarlet coat,
For blood and wine are red,
And blood and wine were on his hands
When they found him with the dead,
The poor dead woman whom he loved,
And murdered in her bed.
He walked amongst the Trial Men
In a suit of shabby gray;
A cricket cap was on his head,
And his step seemed light and gay;
But I never saw a man who looked
So wistfully at the day.
I never saw a man who looked
With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue
Which prisoners call the sky,
And at every drifting cloud that went
With sails of silver by.
I walked, with other souls in pain,
Within another ring,
And was wondering if the man . . .
- Name
- rosa_mys-2046.txt
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- 17.83 KB
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1890
ROSA MYSTICA
by Oscar Wilde
HELAS
To drift with every passion till my soul
Is a stringed lute on which all winds can play,
Is it for this that I have given away
Mine ancient wisdom, and austere control?-
Methinks my life is a twice-written scroll
Scrawled over on some boyish holiday
With idle songs for pipe and virelay
Which do but mar the secret of the whole.
Surely that was a time I might have trod
The sunlit heights, and from life's dissonance
Struck one clear chord to reach the ears of God;
is that time dead? lo! with a little rod
I did but touch the honey of romance-
And must I lose a soul's inheritance?
REQUIESCAT
Tread lightly, she is near
Under the snow,
Spea . . .
- Name
- sphinx-2046.txt
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- 14.51 KB
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1894
THE SPHINX
by Oscar Wilde
In a dim corner of my room
For longer than my fancy thinks,
A beautiful and silent Sphinx
Has watched me through the shifting gloom.
Inviolate and immobile
She does not rise, she does not stir
For silver moons are nought to her,
And nought to her the suns that reel.
Red follows grey across the air
The waves of moonlight ebb and flow
But with the dawn she does not go
And in the night-time she is there.
Dawn follows Dawn, and Nights grow old
And all the while this curious cat
Lies crouching on the Chinese mat
With eyes of satin rimmed with gold.
Upon the mat she lies and leers,
And on the tawny throat of her
Flutters the soft and fur
Or ripples to her pointed ears. . . .
- Name
- theatre-2046.txt
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- 4.24 KB
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1890
IMPRESSIONS DE THEATRE
by Oscar Wilde
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, Romeo
For thee should lure his love, and desperate fear
Pluck Richard's recreant dagger from its sheath-
Thou trumpet set for Shakespeare's lips to blow! . . .
- Name
- wind_flo-2046.txt
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- 10.58 KB
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1890
WIND FLOWERS
by Oscar Wilde
IMPRESSION DU MATIN
The Thames nocturne of blue and gold
Changed to a Harmony in gray:
A barge with ochre-colored hay
Dropt from the wharf: and chill and cold
The yellow fog came creeping down
The bridges, till the houses' walls
Seemed changed to shadows, and St. Paul's
Loomed like a bubble o'er the town.
Then suddenly arose the clang
Of waking life; the streets were stirred
With country waggons: and a bird
Flew to the glistening roofs and sang.
But one pale woman all alone,
The daylight kissing her wan hair,
Loitered beneath the gas lamp's flare,
With lips of flame and heart of stone.
MAGDALEN WALKS
The little white clouds are racing over the sky,
And t . . .
