Poems, with The Ballad of Reading Gaol. Wilde Oscar

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