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Selected Poems of Oscar Wilde

 
   By his dishonoured grave:
Nor mark it with that blessed Cross
   That Christ for sinners gave,
Because the man was one of those
   Whom Christ came down to save.
 
 
Yet all is well; he has but passed
   To Life’s appointed bourne:
And alien tears will fill for him
   Pity’s long-broken urn,
For his mourners will be outcast men,
   And outcasts always mourn.
 

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 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 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 larch
Sways 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 fire
Girdled 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 sheen
Of 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 desolate
Dost 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 sky
Burned like a heated opal through the air;
   We hoisted sail; the wind was blowing fair
For 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 head
Or 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 upon
Was 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.