Complete Works of Oscar Wilde

by Oscar Wilde

Brings back the swelling tide of memory,

  And wakes again my passionate love for thee:

  Now is the Spring of Love, yet soon will come

  On meadow and tree the Summer’s lordly bloom;

  And soon the grass with brighter flowers will blow,

  And send up lilies for some boy to mow.

  Then before long the Summer’s conqueror,

  Rich Autumn-time, the season’s usurer,

  Will lend his hoarded gold to all the trees,

  And see it scattered by the spendthrift breeze;

  And after that the Winter cold and drear.

  So runs the perfect cycle of the year.

  And so from youth to manhood do we go,

  And fall to weary days and locks of snow.

  Love only knows no winter; never dies:

  Nor cares for frowning storms or leaden skies,

  And mine for thee shall never pass away,

  Though my weak lips may falter in my lay.

  Adieu! Adieu! yon silent evening star,

  The night’s ambassador, doth gleam afar,

  And bid the shepherd bring his flocks to fold.

  Perchance before our inland seas of gold

  Are garnered by the reapers into sheaves,

  Perchance before I see the Autumn leaves,

  I may behold thy city; and lay down

  Low at thy feet the poet’s laurel crown.

  Adieu! Adieu! yon silver lamp, the moon,

  Which turns our midnight into perfect noon,

  Doth surely light thy towers, guarding well

  Where Dante sleeps, where Byron loved to dwell.

  MAGDALEN WALKS

  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.

  THE BURDEN OF ITYS

  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 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 Palestrina, 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 high litter red as blood or sin the Pope is borne

  From 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 West

  In 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 all

  Rome’s lordliest pageants! strange, a year ago

  I knelt before some crimson Cardinal

  Who 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 bring

  Through 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 bird

  Sings overhead, and through the long cool grass

  I see that throbbing throat which once I heard

  On 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 blithe

  To see the heavy-lowing cattle wait

  Stretching 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 dell

  Of warm Arcadia where the corn is gold

  And the slight lithe-limbed reapers dance about the wattled fold.

  And sweet with young Lycoris to recline

  In some Illyrian valley far away,

  Where canopied on herbs amaracine

  We too might waste the summer-trancèd day

  Matching our reeds in sportive rivalry,

  While far beneath us frets the troubled purple of the sea.

  But sweeter far if silver-sandalled foot

  Of some long-hidden God should ever tread

  The Nuneham meadows, if with reeded flute

  Pressed to his lips some Faun might raise his head

  By the green water-flags, ah! sweet indeed

  To see the heavenly herdsman call his white-fleeced flock to feed.

  Then sing to me thou tuneful chorister,

  Though what thou sing’st be thine own requiem!

  Tell me thy tale thou hapless chronicler

  Of thine own tragedies! do not contemn

  These unfamiliar haunts, this English field,

  For many a lovely coronal our northern isle can yield

  Which Grecian meadows know not, many a rose

  Which all day long in vales Aeolian

  A lad might seek in vain for over-grows

  Our hedges like a wanton courtesan

  Unthrifty of its beauty; lilies too

  Ilissos never mirrored star our streams, and cockles blue

  Dot the green wheat which, though they are the signs

  For swallows going south, would n
ever spread

  Their azure tents between the Attic vines;

  Even that little weed of ragged red,

  Which bids the robin pipe, in Arcady

  Would be a trespasser, and many an unsung elegy

  Sleeps in the reeds that fringe our winding Thames

  Which to awake were sweeter ravishment

  Than ever Syrinx wept for, diadems

  Of brown bee-studded orchids which were meant

  For Cytheraea’s brows are hidden here

  Unknown to Cytheraea, and by yonder pasturing steer

  There is a tiny yellow daffodil,

  The butterfly can see it from afar,

  Although one summer evening’s dew could fill

  Its little cup twice over ere the star

  Had called the lazy shepherd to his fold

  And be no prodigal; each leaf is flecked with spotted gold

  As if Jove’s gorgeous leman Danae

  Hot from his gilded arms had stooped to kiss

  The trembling petals, or young Mercury

  Low-flying to the dusky ford of Dis

  Had with one feather of his pinions

  Just brushed them! the slight stem which bears the burden of its suns

  Is hardly thicker than the gossamer,

  Or poor Arachne’s silver tapestry,

  Men say it bloomed upon the sepulchre

  Of One I sometime worshipped, but to me

  It seems to bring diviner memories

  Of faun-loved Heliconian glades and blue nymph-haunted seas,

  Of an untrodden vale at Tempe where

  On the clear river’s marge Narcissus lies,

  The tangle of the forest in his hair,

  The silence of the woodland in his eyes,

  Wooing that drifting imagery which is

  No sooner kissed than broken; memories of Salmacis

  Who is not boy nor girl and yet is both,

  Fed by two fires and unsatisfied

  Through their excess, each passion being loth

  For love’s own sake to leave the other’s side

  Yet killing love by staying; memories

  Of Oreads peeping through the leaves of silent moonlit trees,

  Of lonely Ariadne on the wharf

  At Naxos, when she saw the treacherous crew

  Far out at sea, and waved her crimson scarf

  And called false Theseus back again nor knew

  That Dionysos on an amber pard

  Was close behind her; memories of what Maeonia’s bard

  With sightless eyes beheld, the wall of Troy,

  Queen Helen lying in the Ivory room,

  And at her side an amorous red-lipped boy

  Trimming with dainty hand his helmet’s plume,

  And far away the moil, the shout, the groan,

  As Hector shielded off the spear and Ajax hurled the stone;

  Of winged Perseus with his flawless sword

  Cleaving the snaky tresses of the witch,

  And all those tales imperishably stored

  In little Grecian urns, freightage more rich

  Than any gaudy galleon of Spain

  Bare from the Indies ever! these at least bring back again,

  For well I know they are not dead at all,

  The ancient Gods of Grecian poesy;

  They are asleep, and when they hear thee call

  Will wake and think ‘tis very Thessaly,

  This Thames and Daulian waters, this cool glade

  The yellow-irised mead where once young Itys laughed and played.

  If it was thou dear jasmine-cradled bird

  Who from the leafy stillness of thy throne

  Sang to the wondrous boy, until he heard

  The horn of Atalanta faintly blown

  Across the Cumnor hills, and wandering

  Through Bagley wood at evening found the Attic poets’ spring, –

  Ah! tiny sober-suited advocate

  That pleadest for the moon against the day!

  If thou didst make the shepherd seek his mate

  On that sweet questing, when Proserpina

  Forgot it was not Sicily and leant

  Across the mossy Sandford stile in ravished wonderment, –

  Light-winged and bright-eyed miracle of the wood!

  If ever thou didst soothe with melody

  One of that little clan, that brotherhood

  Which loved the morning-star of Tuscany

  More than the perfect sun of Raphael

  And is immortal, sing to me! for I too love thee well.

  Sing on! Sing on! Let the dull world grow young,

  Let elemental things take form again,

  And the old shapes of Beauty walk among

  The simple garths and open crofts, as when

  The son of Leto bare the willow rod,

  And the soft sheep and shaggy goats followed the boyish God.

  Sing on! Sing on! and Bacchus will be here

  Astride upon his gorgeous Indian throne,

  And over whimpering tigers shake the spear

  With yellow ivy crowned and gummy cone,

  While at his side the wanton Bassarid

  Will throw the lion by the mane and catch the mountain kid!

  Sing on! And I will wear the leopard skin,

  And steal the mooned wings of Ashtaroth,

  Upon whose icy chariot we could win

  Cithaeron in an hour ere the froth

  Has over-brimmed the wine-vat or the Faun

  Ceased from the treading! Ay, before the flickering lamp of dawn

  Has scared the hooting owlet to its nest,

  And warned the bat to close its filmy vans,

  Some Maenad girl with vine-leaves on her breast

  Will filch their beech-nuts from the sleeping Pans

  So softly that the little nested thrush

  Will never wake, and then with shrilly laugh and leap will rush

  Down the green valley where the fallen dew

  Lies thick beneath the elm and count her store,

  Till the brown Satyrs in a jolly crew

  Trample the loosestrife down along the shore,

  And where their horned master sits in state

  Bring strawberries and bloomy plums upon a wicker crate!

  Sing on! and soon with passion-wearied face

  Through the cool leaves Apollo’s lad will come,

  The Tyrian prince his bristled boar will chase

  Adown the chestnut-copses all abloom,

  And ivory-limbed, grey-eyed, with look of pride,

  After yon velvet-coated deer the virgin maid will ride.

  Sing on! and I the dying boy will see

  Stain with his purple blood the waxen bell

  That overweighs the jacinth, and to me

  The wretched Cyprian her woe will tell,

  And I will kiss her mouth and streaming eyes,

  And lead her to the myrtle-hidden grove where Adon lies!

  Cry out aloud on Itys! memory

  That foster-brother of remorse and pain

  Drops poison in mine ear, – O to be free,

  To burn one’s old ships! and to launch again

  Into the white-plumed battle of the waves

  And fight old Proteus for the spoil of coral-flowered caves!

  O for Medea with her poppied spell!

  O for the secret of the Colchian shrine!

  O for one leaf of that pale asphodel

  Which binds the tired brows of Proserpine,

  And sheds such wondrous dews at eve that she

  Dreams of the fields of Enna, by the far Sicilian sea,

  Where oft the golden-girdled bee she chased

  From lily to lily on the level mead,

  Ere yet her sombre Lord had bid her taste

  The deadly fruit of that pomegranate seed,

  Ere the black steeds had harried her away-

  Down to the faint and flowerless land, the sick and sunless day.

  O for
one midnight and as paramour

  The Venus of the little Melian farm!

  O that some antique statue for one hour

  Might wake to passion, and that I could charm

  The Dawn at Florence from its dumb despair,

  Mix with those mighty limbs and make that giant breast my lair!

  Sing on! Sing on! I would be drunk with life,

  Drunk with the trampled vintage of my youth,

  I would forget the wearying wasted strife,

  The riven veil, the Gorgon eyes of Truth,

  The prayerless vigil and the cry for prayer,

  The barren gifts, the lifted arms, the dull insensate air!

  Sing on! Sing on! O feathered Niobe,

  Thou canst make sorrow beautiful, and steal

  From joy its sweetest music, not as we

  Who by dead voiceless silence strive to heal

  Our too untended wounds, and do but keep

  Pain barricadoed in our hearts, and murder pillowed sleep.

  Sing louder yet, why must I still behold

  The wan white face of that deserted Christ,

  Whose bleeding hands my hands did once enfold,

  Whose smitten lips my lips so oft have kissed,

  And now in mute and marble misery

  Sits in his lone dishonoured House and weeps, perchance for me?

  O Memory cast down thy wreathed shell!

  Break thy hoarse lute O sad Melpomene!