Poems, with The Ballad of Reading Gaol

NOTE

This collection of Wilde’s Poems contains the volume of 1881 in its entirety, ‘The Sphinx’, ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol,’ and ‘Ravenna.’ Of the Uncollected Poems published in the Uniform Edition of 1908, a few, including the Translations from the Greek and the Polish, are omitted. Two new poems, ‘Désespoir’ and ‘Pan,’ which I have recently discovered in manuscript, are now printed for the first time. Particulars as to the original publication of each poem will be found in ‘A Bibliography of the Poems of Oscar Wilde,’ by Stuart Mason, London 1907.

Robert Ross.

POEMS

HÉLAS!

 
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 there 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?
 

ELEUTHERIA

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 this 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,
   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 sees
 
 
The fleet-foot Marri scout, who comes
   To tell how he hath heard afar
The 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 Circassian
Is 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 wait
To climb upon their father’s knee;
   And in each house made desolate
 
 
Pale 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 are
The 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 far
The young Republic like a sun
   Rise from these crimson seas of war.
 

TO MILTON

 
Milton!  I think thy spirit hath passed away
From these white cliffs and high-embattled towers;
   This gorgeous fiery-coloured world of ours
Seems fallen into ashes dull and grey,
And the age changed unto a mimic play
   Wherein we waste our else too-crowded hours:
   For all our pomp and pageantry and powers
We are but fit to delve the common clay,
Seeing this little isle on which we stand,
   This England, this sea-lion of the sea,
   By ignorant demagogues is held in fee,
Who love her not: Dear God! is this the land
   Which bare a triple empire in her hand
   When Cromwell spake the word Democracy!
 

LOUIS NAPOLEON

 
Eagle of Austerlitz! where were thy wings
   When far away upon a barbarous strand,
   In fight unequal, by an obscure hand,
Fell the last scion of thy brood of Kings!
 
 
Poor boy! thou shalt not flaunt thy cloak of red,
   Or ride in state through Paris in the van
   Of thy returning legions, but instead
Thy mother France, free and republican,
 
 
Shall on thy dead and crownless forehead place
   The better laurels of a soldier’s crown,
   That not dishonoured should thy soul go down
To tell the mighty Sire of thy race
 
 
That France hath kissed the mouth of Liberty,
   And found it sweeter than his honied bees,
   And that the giant wave Democracy
Breaks on the shores where Kings lay couched at ease.
 

SONNET

ON THE MASSACRE OF THE CHRISTIANS IN BULGARIA

 
Christ, dost Thou live indeed? or are Thy bones
Still straitened in their rock-hewn sepulchre?
And was Thy Rising only dreamed by her
Whose love of Thee for all her sin atones?
For here the air is horrid with men’s groans,
The priests who call upon Thy name are slain,
Dost Thou not hear the bitter wail of pain
From those whose children lie upon the stones?
Come down, O Son of God! incestuous gloom
Curtains the land, and through the starless night
Over Thy Cross a Crescent moon I see!
If Thou in very truth didst burst the tomb
Come down, O Son of Man! and show Thy might
Lest Mahomet be crowned instead of Thee!
 

QUANTUM MUTATA

 
There was a time in Europe long ago
   When no man died for freedom anywhere,
   But England’s lion leaping from its lair
Laid hands on the oppressor! it was so
While England could a great Republic show.
   Witness the men of Piedmont, chiefest care
   Of Cromwell, when with impotent despair
The Pontiff in his painted portico
Trembled before our stern ambassadors.
   How comes it then that from such high estate
   We have thus fallen, save that Luxury
With barren merchandise piles up the gate
Where noble thoughts and deeds should enter by:
   Else might we still be Milton’s heritors.
 

LIBERTATIS 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.
Wherefore I love them not whose hands profane
   Plant the red flag upon the piled-up street
   For no right cause, beneath whose ignorant reign
Arts, Culture, Reverence, Honour, all things fade,
   Save Treason and the dagger of her trade,
   Or Murder with his silent bloody feet.
 

THEORETIKOS

 
This mighty empire hath but feet of clay:
   Of all its ancient chivalry and might
   Our little island is forsaken quite:
Some enemy hath stolen its crown of bay,
And from its hills that voice hath passed away
   Which spake of Freedom: O come out of it,
   Come out of it, my Soul, thou art not fit
For this vile traffic-house, where day by day
   Wisdom and reverence are sold at mart,
   And the rude people rage with ignorant cries
Against an heritage of centuries.
   It mars my calm: wherefore in dreams of Art
   And loftiest culture I would stand apart,
Neither for God, nor for his enemies.
 

THE GARDEN OF EROS

 
It is full summer now, the heart of June;
   Not yet the sunburnt reapers are astir
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
For fear of too much splendour, – ah! methinks it is a place
 
 
Which should be trodden by Persephone
   When wearied of the flowerless fields of Dis!
Or danced on by the lads of Arcady!
   The hidden secret of eternal bliss
Known to the Grecian here a man might find,
Ah! you and I may find it now if Love and Sleep be kind.
 
 
There are the flowers which mourning Herakles
   Strewed on the tomb of Hylas, columbine,
Its white doves all a-flutter where the breeze
   Kissed them too harshly, the small celandine,
That yellow-kirtled chorister of eve,
And lilac lady’s-smock, – but let them bloom alone, and leave
 
 
Yon spirèd hollyhock red-crocketed
   To sway its silent chimes, else must the bee,
Its little bellringer, go seek instead
   Some other pleasaunce; the anemone
That weeps at daybreak, like a silly girl
Before her love, and hardly lets the butterflies unfurl
 
 
Their painted wings beside it, – bid it pine
   In pale virginity; the winter snow
Will suit it better than those lips of thine
   Whose fires would but scorch it, rather go
And pluck that amorous flower which blooms alone,
Fed by the pander wind with dust of kisses not its own.
 
 
The trumpet-mouths of red convolvulus
   So dear to maidens, creamy meadow-sweet
Whiter than Juno’s throat and odorous
   As all Arabia, hyacinths the feet
Of Huntress Dian would be loth to mar
For any dappled fawn, – pluck these, and those fond flowers which are
 
 
Fairer than what Queen Venus trod upon
   Beneath the pines of Ida, eucharis,
That morning star which does not dread the sun,
   And budding marjoram which but to kiss
Would sweeten Cytheræa’s lips and make
Adonis jealous, – these for thy head, – and for thy girdle take
 
 
Yon curving spray of purple clematis
   Whose gorgeous dye outflames the Tyrian King,
And foxgloves with their nodding chalices,
   But that one narciss which the startled Spring
Let from her kirtle fall when first she heard
In her own woods the wild tempestuous song of summer’s bird,
 
 
Ah! leave it for a subtle memory
   Of those sweet tremulous days of rain and sun,
When April laughed between her tears to see
   The early primrose with shy footsteps run
From the gnarled oak-tree roots till all the wold,
Spite of its brown and trampled leaves, grew bright with shimmering gold.
 
 
Nay, pluck it too, it is not half so sweet
   As thou thyself, my soul’s idolatry!
And when thou art a-wearied at thy feet
   Shall oxlips weave their brightest tapestry,
For thee the woodbine shall forget its pride
And veil its tangled whorls, and thou shalt walk on daisies pied.
 
 
And I will cut a reed by yonder spring
   And make the wood-gods jealous, and old Pan
Wonder what young intruder dares to sing
   In these still haunts, where never foot of man
Should tread at evening, lest he chance to spy
The marble limbs of Artemis and all her company.
 
 
And I will tell thee why the jacinth wears
   Such dread embroidery of dolorous moan,
And why the hapless nightingale forbears
   To sing her song at noon, but weeps alone
When the fleet swallow sleeps, and rich men feast,
And why the laurel trembles when she sees the lightening east.
 
 
And I will sing how sad Proserpina
   Unto a grave and gloomy Lord was wed,
And lure the silver-breasted Helena
   Back from the lotus meadows of the dead,
So shalt thou see that awful loveliness
For which two mighty Hosts met fearfully in war’s abyss!
 
 
And then I’ll pipe to thee that Grecian tale
   How Cynthia loves the lad Endymion,
And hidden in a grey and misty veil
   Hies to the cliffs of Latmos once the Sun
Leaps from his ocean bed in fruitless chase
Of those pale flying feet which fade away in his embrace.
 
 
And if my flute can breathe sweet melody,
   We may behold Her face who long ago
Dwelt among men by the Ægean sea,
   And whose sad house with pillaged portico
And friezeless wall and columns toppled down
Looms o’er the ruins of that fair and violet cinctured town.
 
 
Spirit of Beauty! tarry still awhile,
   They are not dead, thine ancient votaries;
Some few there are to whom thy radiant smile
   Is better than a thousand victories,
Though all the nobly slain of Waterloo
Rise up in wrath against them! tarry still, there are a few
 
 
Who for thy sake would give their manlihood
   And consecrate their being; I at least
Have done so, made thy lips my daily food,
   And in thy temples found a goodlier feast
Than this starved age can give me, spite of all
Its new-found creeds so sceptical and so dogmatical.
 
 
Here not Cephissos, not Ilissos flows,
   The woods of white Colonos are not here,
On our bleak hills the olive never blows,
   No simple priest conducts his lowing steer
Up the steep marble way, nor through the town
Do laughing maidens bear to thee the crocus-flowered gown.
 
 
Yet tarry! for the boy who loved thee best,
   Whose very name should be a memory
To make thee linger, sleeps in silent rest
   Beneath the Roman walls, and melody
Still mourns her sweetest lyre; none can play
The lute of Adonais: with his lips Song passed away.
 
 
Nay, when Keats died the Muses still had left
   One silver voice to sing his threnody,
But ah! too soon of it we were bereft
   When on that riven night and stormy sea
Panthea 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 star
   Of re-arisen England, whose clear eye
Saw from our tottering throne and waste of war
   The grand Greek limbs of young Democracy
Rise mightily like Hesperus and bring
The 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 foot
In passionless and fierce virginity
   Hunting the tuskèd boar, his honied lute
Hath 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 him
Have 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 armoury
From 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 ice
Has 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 thrall
When lonely Brynhild wrestled with the powers
That war against all passion, ah! how oft through summer hours,
 
 
Long listless summer hours when the noon
   Being enamoured of a damask rose
Forgets to journey westward, till the moon
   The pale usurper of its tribute grows
From a thin sickle to a silver shield
And chides its loitering car – how oft, in some cool grassy field
 
 
Far from the cricket-ground and noisy eight,
   At Bagley, where the rustling bluebells come
Almost before the blackbird finds a mate
   And overstay the swallow, and the hum
Of 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 tide
The strength and splendour of the storm was mine
Without the storm’s red ruin, for the singer is divine;
 
 
The little laugh of water falling down
   Is not so musical, the clammy gold
Close hoarded in the tiny waxen town
   Has less of sweetness in it, and the old
Half-withered reeds that waved in Arcady
Touched by his lips break forth again to fresher harmony.
 
 
Spirit of Beauty, tarry yet awhile!
   Although the cheating merchants of the mart
With iron roads profane our lovely isle,
   And break on whirling wheels the limbs of Art,
Ay! though the crowded factories beget
The 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, —
Whose double laurels burn with deathless flame
   To light thine altar; He 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 Despair
Gild its own thorns, and Pain, like Adon, be
Even in anguish beautiful; – such is the empery
 
 
Which 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.
 
 
Methinks these new Actæons boast too soon
   That they have spied on beauty; what if we
Have analysed the rainbow, robbed the moon
   Of her most ancient, chastest mystery,
Shall I, the last Endymion, lose all hope
Because rude eyes peer at my mistress through a telescope!
 
 
What profit if this scientific age
   Burst through our gates with all its retinue
Of modern miracles!  Can it assuage
   One lover’s breaking heart? what can it do
To make one life more beautiful, one day
More godlike in its period? but now the Age of Clay
 
 
Returns in horrid cycle, and the earth
   Hath borne again a noisy progeny
Of ignorant Titans, whose ungodly birth
   Hurls them against the august hierarchy
Which sat upon Olympus; to the Dust
They have appealed, and to that barren arbiter they must
 
 
Repair for judgment; let them, if they can,
   From Natural Warfare and insensate Chance,
Create the new Ideal rule for man!
   Methinks that was not my inheritance;
For I was nurtured otherwise, my soul
Passes from higher heights of life to a more supreme goal.
 
 
Lo! while we spake the earth did turn away
   Her visage from the God, and Hecate’s boat
Rose silver-laden, till the jealous day
   Blew all its torches out: I did not note
The waning hours, to young Endymions
Time’s palsied fingers count in vain his rosary of suns!
 
 
Mark how the yellow iris wearily
   Leans back its throat, as though it would be kissed
By its false chamberer, the dragon-fly,
   Who, like a blue vein on a girl’s white wrist,
Sleeps on that snowy primrose of the night,
Which ’gins to flush with crimson shame, and die beneath the light.
 
 
Come let us go, against the pallid shield
   Of the wan sky the almond blossoms gleam,
The corncrake nested in the unmown field
   Answers its mate, across the misty stream
On fitful wing the startled curlews fly,
And in his sedgy bed the lark, for joy that Day is nigh,
 
 
Scatters the pearlèd dew from off the grass,
   In tremulous ecstasy to greet the sun,
Who soon in gilded panoply will pass
   Forth from yon orange-curtained pavilion
Hung in the burning east: see, the red rim
O’ertops the expectant hills! it is the God! for love of him
 
 
Already the shrill lark is out of sight,
   Flooding with waves of song this silent dell, —
Ah! there is something more in that bird’s flight
   Than could be tested in a crucible! —
But the air freshens, let us go, why soon
The woodmen will be here; how we have lived this night of June!