Complete Works of Oscar Wilde

by Oscar Wilde

  White lilies, in whose cups the gold bees dream,

  The fallen snow of petals where the breeze

  Scatters the chestnut blossom, or the gleam

  Of boyish limbs in water, – are not these

  Enough for thee, dost thou desire more?

  Alas! the Gods will give nought else from their eternal store.

  For our high Gods have sick and wearied grown

  Of all our endless sins, our vain endeavour

  For wasted days of youth to make atone

  By pain or prayer or priest, and never, never,

  Hearken they now to either good or ill,

  But send their rain upon the just and the unjust at will.

  They sit at ease, our Gods they sit at ease,

  Strewing with leaves of rose their scented wine,

  They sleep, they sleep, beneath the rocking trees

  Where asphodel and yellow lotus twine,

  Mourning the old glad days before they knew

  What evil things the heart of man could dream, and dreaming do.

  And far beneath the brazen floor they see

  Like swarming flies the crowd of little men,

  The bustle of small lives, then wearily

  Back to their lotus-haunts they turn again

  Kissing each others’ mouths, and mix more deep

  The poppy-seeded draught which brings soft purple-lidded sleep.

  There all day long the golden-vestured sun,

  Their torch-bearer, stands with his torch ablaze,

  And, when the gaudy web of noon is spun

  By its twelve maidens, through the crimson haze

  Fresh from Endymion’s arms comes forth the moon,

  And the immortal Gods in toils of mortal passions swoon.

  There walks Queen Juno through some dewy mead,

  Her grand white feet flecked with the saffron dust

  Of wind-stirred lilies, while young Ganymede

  Leaps in the hot and amber-foaming must,

  His curls all tossed, as when the eagle bare

  The frightened boy from Ida through the blue Ionian air.

  There in the green heart of some garden close

  Queen Venus with the shepherd at her side,

  Her warm soft body like the briar rose

  Which would be white yet blushes at its pride,

  Laughs low for love, till jealous Salmacis

  Peers through the myrtle-leaves and sighs for pain of lonely bliss.

  There never does that dreary north-wind blow

  Which leaves our English forests bleak and bare,

  Nor ever falls the swift white-feathered snow,

  Nor ever doth the red-toothed lightning dare

  To wake them in the silver-fretted night

  When we lie weeping for some sweet sad sin, some dead delight.

  Alas! they know the far Lethaean spring,

  The violet-hidden waters well they know,

  Where one whose feet with tired wandering

  Are faint and broken may take heart and go,

  And from those dark depths cool and crystalline

  Drink, and draw balm, and sleep for sleepless souls, and anodyne.

  But we oppress our natures, God or Fate

  Is our enemy, we starve and feed

  On vain repentance – O we are born too late!

  What balm for us in bruised poppy seed

  Who crowd into one finite pulse of time

  The joy of infinite love and the fierce pain of infinite crime.

  O we are wearied of this sense of guilt,

  Wearied of pleasure’s paramour despair,

  Wearied of every temple we have built,

  Wearied of every right, unanswered prayer,

  For man is weak; God sleeps: and heaven is high:

  One fiery-coloured moment: one great love; and lo! we die.

  Ah! but no ferry-man with labouring pole

  Nears his black shallop to the flowerless strand,

  No little coin of bronze can bring the soul

  Over Death’s river to the sunless land,

  Victim and wine and vow are all in vain,

  The tomb is sealed; the soldiers watch; the dead rise not again.

  We are resolved into the supreme air,

  We are made one with what we touch and see,

  With our heart’s blood each crimson sun is fair,

  With our young lives each spring-impassioned tree

  Flames into green, the wildest beasts that range

  The moor our kinsmen are, all life is one, and all is change.

  With beat of systole and of diastole

  One grand great life throbs through earth’s giant heart,

  And mighty waves of single Being roll

  From nerveless germ to man, for we are part

  Of every rock and bird and beast and hill,

  One with the things that prey on us, and one with what we kill.

  From lower cells of waking life we pass

  To full perfection; thus the world grows old:

  We who are godlike now were once a mass

  Of quivering purple flecked with bars of gold,

  Unsentient or of joy or misery,

  And tossed in terrible tangles of some wild and wind-swept sea.

  This hot hard flame with which our bodies burn

  Will make some meadow blaze with daffodil,

  Ay! and those argent breasts of thine will turn

  To water-lilies; the brown fields men till

  Will be more fruitful for our love to-night,

  Nothing is lost in nature, all things live in Death’s despite.

  The boy’s first kiss, the hyacinth’s first bell,

  The man’s last passion, and the last red spear

  That from the lily leaps, the asphodel

  Which will not let its blossoms blow for fear

  Of too much beauty, and the timid shame

  Of the young bridegroom at his lover’s eyes, – these with the same

  One sacrament are consecrate, the earth

  Not we alone hath passions hymeneal,

  The yellow buttercups that shake for mirth

  At daybreak know a pleasure not less real

  Than we do, when in some fresh-blossoming wood,

  We draw the spring into our hearts, and feel that life is good.

  So when men bury us beneath the yew

  Thy crimson-stained mouth a rose will be,

  And thy soft eyes lush bluebells dimmed with dew,

  And when the white narcissus wantonly

  Kisses the wind its playmate some faint joy

  Will thrill our dust, and we will be again fond maid and boy.

  And thus without life’s conscious torturing pain

  In some sweet flower we will feel the sun,

  And from the linnet’s throat will sing again,

  And as two gorgeous-mailed snakes will run

  Over our graves, or as two tigers creep

  Through the hot jungle where the yellow-eyed huge lions sleep

  And give them battle! how my heart leaps up

  To think of that grand living after death

  In beast and bird and flower, when this cup,

  Being filled too full of spirit, bursts for breath,

  And with the pale leaves of some autumn day

  The soul earth’s earliest conqueror becomes earth’s last great prey.

  O think of it! we shall inform ourselves

  Into all sensuous life, the goat-foot Faun,

  The Centaur, or the merry bright-eyed Elves

  That leave their dancing rings to spite the dawn

  Upon the meadows, shall not be more near

  Than you and I to nature’s mysteries, for we shall hear

  The thrush’s heart beat, and the daisies grow,

  And the wan snowdrop sighing for the sun

  On sunless days in winter, we shall know

  By whom the silver gossamer is spun,

&nbs
p; Who paints the diapered fritillaries,

  On what wide wings from shivering pine to pine the eagle flies.

  Ay! had we never loved at all, who knows

  If yonder daffodil had lured the bee

  Into its gilded womb, or any rose

  Had hung with crimson lamps its little tree!

  Methinks no leaf would ever bud in spring,

  But for lovers’ lips that kiss, the poets’ lips that sing.

  Is the light vanished from our golden sun,

  Or is this daedal-fashioned earth less fair,

  That we are nature’s heritors, and one

  With every pulse of life that beats the air?

  Rather new suns across the sky shall pass,

  New splendour come unto the flower, new glory to the grass.

  And we two lovers shall not sit afar,

  Critics of nature, but the joyous sea

  Shall be our raiment, and the bearded star

  Shoot arrows at our pleasure! We shall be

  Part of the mighty universal whole,

  And through all aeons mix and mingle with the Kosmic Soul!

  We shall be notes in that great Symphony

  Whose cadence circles through the rhythmic spheres,

  And all the live World’s throbbing heart shall be

  One with our heart; the stealthy creeping years

  Have lost their terrors now, we shall not die,

  The Universe itself shall be our Immortality.

  PHÈDRE

  To Sarah Bernhardt

  How vain and dull this common world must seem

  To such a One as thou, who should’st have talked

  At Florence with Mirandola, or walked

  Through 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 Phaeacian glade

  Where 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.

  QUEEN HENRIETTA MARIA

  To Ellen Terry

  In the lone tent, waiting for victory,

  She stands with eyes marred by the mists of pain,

  Like some wan lily overdrenched with rain:

  The clamorous clang of arms, the ensanguined sky,

  War’s ruin, and the wreck of chivalry

  To her proud soul no common fear can bring:

  Bravely she tarrieth for her Lord the King,

  Her soul a-flame with passionate ecstasy.

  O Hair of Gold! O Crimson Lips! O Face

  Made for the luring and the love of man!

  With thee I do forget the toil and stress,

  The loveless road that knows no resting place,

  Time’s straitened pulse, the soul’s dread weariness,

  My freedom, and my life republican!

  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.

  MADONNA MIA

  A lily-girl, not made for this world’s pain,

  With brown, soft hair close braided by her ears,

  And longing eyes half veiled by slumberous tears

  Like bluest water seen through mists of rain:

  Pale cheeks whereon no love hath left its stain,

  Red underlip drawn in for fear of love,

  And white throat, whiter than the silvered dove,

  Through whose wan marble creeps one purple vein.

  Yet, though my lips shall praise her without cease,

  Even to kiss her feet I am not bold,

  Being o’ershadowed by the wings of awe,

  Like Dante, when he stood with Beatrice

  Beneath the flaming Lion’s breast, and saw

  The seventh Crystal, and the Stair of Gold.

  ROSES AND RUE

  To L.L.1

  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 bloom

  That 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 hold

  In a tiny ivory cell,

  God’s heaven and hell.

  PORTIA

  To Ellen Terry

  I marvel not Bassanio was so bold

  To peril all he had upon the lead,

&nb
sp; 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 Veronese 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 accursed Jew –

  O Portia! Take my heart: it is thy due:

  I think I will not quarrel with the Bond.

  APOLOGIA

  Is it thy will that I should wax and wane,

  Barter my cloth of gold for hodden grey,

  And at thy pleasure weave that web of pain

  Whose brightest threads are each a wasted day?

  Is it thy will – Love that I love so well –

  That my Soul’s House should be a tortured spot

  Wherein, like evil paramours, must dwell

  The quenchless flame, the worm that dieth not?

  Nay, if it be thy will I shall endure,

  And sell ambition at the common mart,

  And let dull failure be my vestiture,