Poems, with The Ballad of Reading Gaol. Wilde Oscar

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 Æolian

      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 never 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 Cytheræa’s brows are hidden here

      Unknown to Cytheræa, 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