Poems, with The Ballad of Reading Gaol. Wilde Oscar

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 Actæons 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 pearlèd 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!

      ROSA MYSTICA

      REQUIESCAT

      Tread lightly, she is near

         Under the snow,

      Speak gently, she can hear

         The daisies grow.

      All her bright golden hair

         Tarnished with rust,

      She that was young and fair

         Fallen to dust.

      Lily-like, white as snow,

         She hardly knew

      She was a woman, so

         Sweetly she grew.

      Coffin-board, heavy stone,

         Lie on her breast,

      I vex my heart alone,

         She is at rest.

      Peace, Peace, she cannot hear

         Lyre or sonnet,

      All my life’s buried here,

         Heap earth upon it.

Avignon.

      SONNET ON APPROACHING ITALY

      I reached the Alps: the soul within me burned,

         Italia, my Italia, at thy name:

         And when from out the mountain’s heart I came

      And saw the land for which my life had yearned,

      I laughed as one who some great