Complete Works of Oscar Wilde

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Complete Works of Oscar Wilde Page 122

by Oscar Wilde


  Hunting the tusked 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 Galilean’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 Actaeons 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 pearled 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!

  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 th
rough 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 star 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 armed 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 winged 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 scarped 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.

  PAN

  Double Villanelle

  1

  O goat-foot God of Arcady!

  This modern world is grey and old,

  And what remains to us of thee?

  No more the shepherd lads in glee

  Throw apples at thy wattled fold,

  O goat-foot God of Arcady!

  Nor through the laurels can one see

  Thy soft brown limbs, thy beard of gold,

  And what remains to us of thee?

  And dull and dead our Thames would be,

  For here the winds are chill and cold,

  O goat-foot God of Arcady!

  Then keep the tomb of Helice,

  Thine olive-woods, thy vine-clad wold,

  And what remains to us of thee?

  Though many an unsung elegy

  Sleeps in the reeds our rivers hold,

  O goat-foot God of Arcady!

  Ah, what remains to us of thee?

  2

  Ah, leave the hills of Arcady,

  Thy satyrs and their wanton play,

  This modern world hath need of thee.

  No nymph or Faun indeed have we,

  For Faun and nymph are old and grey,

  Ah, leave the hills of Arcady!

  This is the land where liberty

  Lit grave-browed Milton on his way,

  This modern world hath need of thee!

  A land of ancient chivalry

  Where gentle Sidney saw the day,

  Ah, leave the hills of Arcady.

  This fierce sea-lion of the sea,

  This England lacks some stronger lay,

  This modern world hath need of thee!

  Then blow some trumpet loud and free,

  And give thine oaten pipe away,

  Ah, leave the hills of Arcady!

  This modern world hath need of thee!

  THE ARTIST’S DREAM OR SEN ARTYSTY

  From the Polish of Madame Helena Modjeska

  I too have had my dreams: ay, known indeed

  The crowded visions of a fiery youth

  Which haunt me still.

  Methought that once I lay

  Within some garden close, what time the Spring

  Breaks like a bird from Winter, and the sky

  Is sapphire-vaulted. The pur
e air was soft,

  And the deep grass I lay on soft as air.

  The strange and secret life of the young trees

  Swelled in the green and tender bark, or burst

  To buds of sheathèd emerald; violets

  Peered from their nooks of hiding, half afraid

  Of their own loveliness; the vermeil rose

  Opened its heart, and the bright star-flower

  Shone like a star of morning. Butterflies,

  In painted liveries of brown and gold,

  Took the shy bluebells as their pavilions

  And seats of pleasaunce; overhead a bird

  Made snow of all the blossoms as it flew

  To charm the woods with singing: the whole world

  Seemed waking to delight!

  And yet – and yet –

  My soul was filled with leaden heaviness:

  I had no joy in Nature; what to me,

 

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