CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 Joseph Whitmore Barry 
 dramatic library 
 
 ■- the gift of 
 ' two friends 
 of Cornell University 
 
 J 934 
 
DATE DUE 
 
 jH M | ft J SSfT 
 
 PR 5812.M4i ne " Universlt >' Libra 'T 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013570910 
 
OSCAR WILDE. 
 
THE BEST OF 
 OSCAR WILDE 
 
 Being a Collection of tke BEST POEMS 
 and PROSE EXTRACTS of tne writer 
 
 Collected by 
 OSCAR HERRMANN 
 
 Edited by 
 W. W. MASSEE 
 
 Drawing) by 
 FREDERICK EHRLICH 
 
 Issued from the Avon Press, New York City; and for 
 sale by Everitt and Francis Co., New York City 
 
 i'S 
 
 t 
 
/^F this edition but two 
 hundred copies were printed. 
 
 This book is Number 
 
 IA3... 
 
 /\kS"iff 
 
 TV f 
 
 ^ 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Helas! 
 
 The Sphinx. 
 
 Prose Extracts. 
 
 The Ballad of Reading Gaol. 
 
 Short Poems. 
 
HELAS! 
 
 To drift with every passion till my soul 
 
 Is a stringed lute on which all winds can play ; 
 Is it for this that I have given away 
 
 Mine ancient wisdom, and austere control ? 
 
 Methinks my life is a twice written scroll 
 Scrawled over on some boyish holiday 
 With idle songs for pipe or virelay 
 
 Which do but mar the secret of the whole. 
 
 Surely there was a time I might have trod 
 The sunlit heights, and from life's dissonance 
 
 Struck one clear chord to reach the ears of God: 
 
 Is that time dead ? lo ! with a little rod 
 I did but touch the honey of romance — 
 And must I lose a soul's inheritance ? 
 
THE SPHINX. 
 
THE SPHINX. 
 
 In a dim corner of my room, 
 
 t for longer than my fancy thinks, 
 A beautiful and silent Sphinx 
 
 has watched me through the shifting gloom. 
 Inviolate and immobile 
 
 she does not rise, she does not stir; 
 For silver moons are nought to her, 
 
 and nought to her the suns that reel. 
 Red follows gray across the air, 
 
 the waves of moonlight ebb and flow, 
 But with the dawn she does not go 
 
 and in the night-time she is there. 
 
 ^Dawn follows Dawn, and Night grows old, 
 
 and all the while this curious cat 
 Lies crouching on the Chinese mat 
 
 with eyes of satin rimmed with gold.-"" 
 Upon the mat she lies and leers, 
 
 and on the tawny throat of her 
 Flutters the soft and silky fur, 
 
 or ripples to her pointed ears. 
 Come forth my lovely seneschal, 
 
 so somnolent, so statuesque, 
 Come forth you exquisite grotesque, 
 
 half woman and half animal. 
 
Come forth my lovely languorous Sphinx, 
 
 and put your head upon my knee, 
 And let me stroke your throat and see 
 
 your body spotted like the lynx, 
 And let me touch those curving claws 
 
 of yellow ivory, and grasp 
 The tail that like a monstrous asp, 
 
 coils round your heavy velvet paws. 
 A thousand weary centuries 
 
 are thine, while I have hardly seen 
 Some twenty summers cast their green 
 
 for autumn's gaudy liveries. 
 
 But you can read the Hieroglyphs 
 
 on the great sandstone obelisks, 
 And you have talked with Basilisks, 
 
 and you have looked on HippogrifFs. 
 O tell me, were you standing by 
 
 when Isis to Osiris knelt, 
 And did you watch the Egyptian melt 
 
 her union for Anthony, 
 And drink the jewel-drunken wine, 
 
 and bend her head in mimic awe 
 To see the huge pro-consul draw 
 
 the salted tunny from the brine ? 
 
 And did you mark the Cyprian kiss 
 white Adon on his catafalque, 
 
 And did you follow Amanalk 
 the god of Heliopolis ? 
 
And did you talk with Thoth, and did 
 
 you hear the moon-horned Io weep, 
 And know the painted kings who sleep 
 
 beneath the wedge-shaped Pyramid ? 
 Lift up your large black satin eyes 
 
 which are like cushions where one sinks, 
 Fawn at my feet, fantastic Sphinx, 
 
 and sing me all your memories. 
 
 Sing to me of the Jewish maid 
 
 who wandered with the Holy Child, 
 -And how you led them through the wild, 
 
 and how they slept beneath your shade. 
 Sing to me of that odorous 
 
 green eve when, crouching by the marge, 
 You heard from Adrian's gilded barge 
 
 the laughter of Antinous, 
 And lapped the stream, and fed your drouth, 
 
 and watched with hot and hungry stare 
 The ivory body of that rare young slave 
 
 with his pomegranate mouth. 
 
 And the priests cursed you with shrill psalms 
 
 as in your claws you seized their snake 
 And crept away with it to slake 
 
 your passion by the shuddering palms. 
 Who were your lovers, who were they 
 
 who wrestled for you in the dust ? 
 Which was the vessel of your Lust, 
 
 what Leman had you every day ? 
 
Did giant lizards come and crouch 
 before you on the reedy banks ? 
 
 Did Gryphons with great metal flanks 
 
 leap on you in your trampled couch? 
 
 Did monstrous hippopotami 
 
 come sidling to you in the mist ? 
 Did gilt-scaled dragons writhe and twist 
 
 with passion as you passed them by ? 
 And from the brick-built Lycian tomb 
 
 what horrible chimaera came 
 With fearful heads and fearful flame 
 
 to breed new wonders from your womb: 
 
 Or had you shameful secret guests 
 
 and did you harry to your home 
 Some Nereid coiled in amber foam 
 
 with curious rock-crystal breasts ; 
 Or did you, treading through the froth, 
 
 call to the brown Sidonian 
 For tidings of Leviathan, 
 
 Leviathan or Behemoth ? 
 Or did you when the sun was set, 
 
 climb up the cactus-covered slope 
 To meet your swarthy Ethiop 
 
 whose body was of polished jet ? 
 
 Or did you while the earthen skiffs 
 dropt down the gray Nilotic flats 
 
fl t twilight, and the flickering bats 
 
 flew round the temple's triple glyphs, 
 Steal to the border of the bar 
 
 and swim across the silent lake, 
 And slink into the vault and make 
 
 the Pyramid your lupinar, 
 Till from each black sarcophagus 
 
 rose up the painted, swathed dead, 
 Or did you lure unto your bed 
 
 the ivory-horned Trageophos ? 
 
 Or did the huge Apis from his car 
 
 leap down and lay before your feet 
 
 Big blossoms of the honey-sweet 
 and honey-colored nenuphar? 
 
 How subtle secret is your smile ; 
 
 did you love none then ? nay I know 
 Great Ammon was your bedfellow, 
 
 he lay with you beside the Nile. 
 
 The river-horses in the slime 
 
 trumpeted when they saw him come 
 Odorous with Syrian galbanum 
 
 and smeared with spikenard and with thyme. 
 He came along the river bank 
 
 like some tall galley argent-sailed 
 He strode across the waters, mailed 
 
 in beauty and the water sank. 
 
He strode across the desert sand, 
 
 he reached the valley where you lay, 
 
 He waited till the dawn of day, 
 
 then touched your black breasts with his hand. 
 
 You kissed his mouth with mouth of flame, 
 
 you made the horned god your own, 
 You stood behind him on his throne ; 
 
 you called him by his secret name, 
 You whispered monstrous oracles 
 
 into the caverns of his ears, 
 With blood of goats and blood of steers 
 
 you taught him monstrous miracles. 
 While Ammon was your bedfellow 
 
 your chamber was the steaming Nile 
 And with your curved, archaic smile 
 
 you watched his passion come and go. 
 
 With Syrian oils his brows were bright 
 
 and wide-spread as a tent at noon 
 His marble limbs made pale the moon 
 
 and lent the day a larger light, 
 His long hair was nine cubits span 
 
 and colored like that yellow gem 
 Which, hidden in their garments' hem, 
 
 the merchants bring from Kurdistan. 
 His face was as the must that lies 
 
 upon a vat of new-made wine, 
 The seas could not insapphirine 
 
 the perfect azure of his eyes. 
 
His thick, soft throat was white as milk 
 and threaded with thin veins of blue 
 
 And curious pearls like frozen dew 
 
 were broidered on his flowing silk. 
 
 On pearl and porphyry pedestalled 
 he was too bright to look upon 
 
 For on his ivory breast there shone 
 the wondrous ocean-emerald. 
 
 That mystic, moonlight jewel which 
 
 some diver of the Colchian caves 
 Had found beneath the blackening waves 
 
 and carried to the Colchian witch. 
 Before his gilded galiot 
 
 ran naked vine-wreathed corybants 
 And lines of swaying elephants 
 
 knelt down to draw his chariot, 
 And lines of swarthy Nubians 
 
 bore up his litter as he rode 
 Down the great granite-paved road, 
 
 between the nodding peacock fans. 
 
 The merchants brought him steatite 
 
 from Sidon, in their painted ships; 
 
 The meanest cup that touched his lips 
 was fashioned from a chrysolite. 
 
 The merchants brought him cedar chests 
 of rich apparel, bound with cords ; 
 
His train was borne by Memphian lords ; 
 
 young kings were glad to be his guests. 
 Ten hundred shaven priests did bow 
 
 at Amnion's altar day and night, 
 Ten hundred lamps did wave their light 
 
 through Ammon's carven house, — and now 
 
 Foul snake and speckled adder with 
 
 their young ones crawl from stone to stone 
 For ruined is the house, and prone 
 
 the great rose-marble monolith ; 
 Wild ass or strolling jackal comes 
 
 and crouches in the mouldering gates, 
 Wild satyrs call unto their mates 
 
 across the fallen fluted drums. 
 And on the summit of the pile, 
 
 the blue-faced ape of Horus sits 
 And gibbers, while the fig-tree splits 
 
 the pillars of the peristyle. 
 
 The god is scattered here and there ; 
 
 deep hidden in the windy sand 
 I saw his giant granite hand 
 
 still clinched in impotent despair. 
 And many a wandering caravan 
 
 of stately negroes, silken-shawled, 
 Crossing the desert, halts appalled 
 
 before the neck that none can span. 
 And many a bearded Bedouin 
 
 draws back his yellow striped burnous 
 
To gaze upon the Titan thews 
 of him who was thy paladin. 
 
 Go seek his fragments on the moor 
 
 and wash them in the evening dew, 
 
 And from their pieces make anew 
 thy mutilated paramour! 
 
 Go, seek them where they lie alone 
 
 and from their broken pieces make 
 Thy bruised bedfellow ! and awake 
 
 mad passions in the senseless stone ! 
 Charm his dull ear with Syrian hymns ; 
 
 he loved your body : oh be kind ! 
 Pour spikenard on his hair and wind 
 
 soft rolls of linen round his limbs ; 
 Wind round his head the figured coins, 
 
 stain with red fruits the pallid lips ; 
 Weave purple for his shrunken hips, 
 
 and purple for his barren loins ! 
 
 Away to Egypt! Have no fear; 
 
 only one God has ever died, 
 Only one God has let His side 
 
 be wounded by a Soldier's spear. 
 But these, thy lovers, are not dead; 
 
 still by the hundred-cubit gate 
 Dog-faced Anubis sits in state 
 
 with lotus-lilies for thy head. 
 
Still from his chair of porphyry 
 
 giant Memnon strains his lidless eyes 
 Across the empty land and cries 
 
 each yellow morning unto thee. 
 
 Back to your Nile ! Or if you are 
 grown sick of dead divinities, 
 
 Follow some roving spoor 
 
 across the copper colored plain. 
 Reach out and hale him by the mane 
 
 and bid him be your paramour! 
 Couch by his side upon the grass 
 
 and set your white teeth in his throat, 
 And when you hear his dying note, 
 
 lash your long flanks of polished brass 
 And take a tiger for your mate 
 
 whose amber sides are flecked with black, 
 And ride upon his gilded back 
 
 in triumph through the Theban gate. 
 
 And toy with him in amorous jests, 
 
 and when he turns and snarls and gnaws, 
 
 Oh smite him with your jasper claws 
 
 and bruise him with your agate breasts ! 
 
 Why are you tarrying? Get hence! 
 I weary of your sullen ways. 
 
I weary of your steadfast gaze, 
 
 your somnolent magnificence. 
 
 Your horrible and heavy breath 
 
 makes the light flicker in the lamp, 
 And on my brow I feel the damp 
 
 and dreadful dews of night and death. 
 Your eyes are like fantastic moons 
 
 That shiver in some stagnant lake, 
 Your tongue is like a scarlet snake 
 
 that dances to fantastic tunes. 
 Your pulse makes poisonous melodies, 
 
 and your black throat is like the hole 
 Left by some torch or burning coal 
 
 on Saracenic tapestries. 
 
 Away! The sulphur-colored stars 
 
 are burning through the Western gate ! 
 Away ! Or it may be too late 
 
 to climb their silent silver cars ! 
 See, the dawn shivers round the gray 
 
 gilt-dialed towers, and the rain 
 Streams down each diamoned pane 
 
 and blurs with tears the wannish day. 
 What snake-tressed fury, fresh from Hell, 
 
 with uncouth gestures and unclean, 
 Stole from the poppy-drowsy queen 
 
 and led you to a student's cell? 
 
 What songless, tongueless ghost of sin 
 
 crept through the curtains of the night 
 
And saw my taper burning bright, 
 
 and knocked and bade you enter in? 
 
 Are there not others more accursed, 
 whiter with leprosies than I ? 
 
 Are Abana and Pharphar dry, 
 
 that you come here to slake your thirst? 
 
 False Sphinx! False Sphinx! By reedy Styx 
 
 old Charon, leaning on his oar, 
 Waits for my coin. Go thou before 
 
 and leave me to my crucifix, 
 Whose pallid burden, sick with pain, 
 
 watches the world with wearied eyes, 
 And weeps for every soul that dies, 
 
 and weeps for every soul in vain. 
 
PROSE EXTRACTS. 
 
AN IDEAL HUSBAND. 
 
 Optimism begins in a broad grin, 
 and Pessimism ends with blue spec- 
 tacles. They are both of them 
 merely poses. 
 
 The strength of women comes 
 from the fact that psychology cannot 
 explain us. Men can be analyzed, 
 women merely adored. 
 
 London is too matrimonial. People 
 are either hunting for husbands, or 
 hiding from them. 
 
 Money that comes from a tainted 
 source is a degradation. 
 
 No man should have a secret from 
 his own wife. She invariably finds it 
 out. Women have a wonderful 
 instinct about things. They can 
 discover everything except the ob- 
 vious. 
 
 Life is never fair. And perhaps 
 it is a good thing for most of us that 
 it is not. 
 
There is some flaw in each one of 
 us. 
 
 Morality is simply the attitude we 
 adopt towards people whom we 
 personally dislike. 
 
 It is not the perfect but the im- 
 perfect who have need of love. It is 
 when we are wounded by our own 
 hands, or by the hands of others, 
 that love should come to cure us — 
 else what use is love at all. 
 
 If there were less sympathy in the 
 world there would be less trouble in 
 the world. 
 
 Women who have common sense 
 are so curiously plain. 
 
 Women are never disarmed by 
 compliments. Men always are. 
 
 There is only one tragedy in a 
 woman's life. The fact that her past 
 is always her lover, and her future 
 invariably her husband. 
 
 If we men married the women we 
 
deserved, we should have a very bad 
 time of it. 
 
 How many men there are in 
 modern life who would like to see 
 their past burning to white ashes 
 before them. 
 
 Women are not meant to judge 
 men but to forgive them when they 
 need forgiveness. 
 
 A woman who can keep a man's 
 love and love him in return, has done 
 all the world want of women, or 
 should want of them. 
 
 Loveless marriages are horrible. 
 But there is one thing worse than an 
 absolutely loveless marriage, — a mar- 
 riage in which there is love, but on 
 one side only. 
 
A WOMAN OF NO 
 IMPORTANCE. 
 
 English women conceal their feel- 
 ings till after they are married. They 
 show them then. 
 
 Nothing should be out of reach of 
 hope. Life is hope. 
 
 The young women of the present 
 day seem to make it the sole object 
 of their lives to be always playing 
 with fire. 
 
 The one advantage with playing 
 with fire is that one never gets even 
 singed. It is the people who don't 
 know how to play with it who get 
 burned up. 
 
 One should sympathise with the 
 joy, the beauty, the color of life. The 
 less said about life's sores the better. 
 
 Curious thing plain women are 
 always jealous of their husbands, 
 beautiful women never are. 
 
THE PORTRAIT OF 
 MR. W. H. 
 
 Art is to a certain degree a mode 
 of acting, an attempt to realize one's 
 own personality on some imaginative 
 plane out of the reach of the tram- 
 meling accidents and limitations of 
 real life. 
 
 Freckles run in Scotch families 
 just as gout does in English families. 
 
 It is always a silly thing to give 
 advice, but to give good advice is 
 absolutely fatal. 
 
 You forget that a thing is not 
 necessarily true because a man dies 
 for it. 
 
 For heaven's sake don't waste 
 your time in a foolish attempt to 
 discover a young Elizabethan actor 
 who never existed and to make a 
 phantom puppet the centre of the 
 great cycle of" Shakespere's Sonnets. 
 
THE PICTURE OF 
 DORIAN GRAY. 
 
 There is only one thing in the 
 world worse than being talked about, 
 and that is not being talked about. 
 
 But beauty, ( of the face) real 
 beauty, ends where an intellectual 
 expression, begins. Intellect is in 
 itself an exaggeration, and destroys 
 the harmony of any face. 
 
 The one, charm of marriage is that 
 it makes a life of deception necessary 
 for both parties. 
 
 Being natural is simply a pose, and 
 the most irritating I know. 
 
 Every portrait that is painted with 
 feeling is a portrait of the artist not 
 of the sitter. 
 
 Lady Brandon treats her guests 
 exactly as an auctioneer treats his 
 goods. She either explains them 
 
entirely away, or tells one everything 
 about them except what one wants 
 to know. 
 
 Conscience and cowardice are 
 really the same things. Conscience 
 is the trade name of the firm. 
 
 Laughter is not a bad beginning 
 for a friendship and it is the best 
 ending for one. 
 
 There is nothing that art cannot 
 express. 
 
 The harmony of soul and body, — 
 how much that is ! 
 
 It is a sad thing to think about, 
 but there is no doubt that Genius 
 lasts longer than Beauty. 
 
 Poets are not so scrupulous. They 
 know how useful passion is for pub- 
 lication. Nowadays a broken heart 
 will run to many editions 
 
 The worst of having a romance 
 is that it leaves one so unromantic. 
 
Those who are faithful know only 
 the pleasures of love; it is the faithless 
 who know love's tragedies. 
 
 One's own soul, and the passions 
 of one's friends, — those are the fas- 
 cinating things of life. 
 
 The aim of life is self-development. 
 To realize one's nature perfectly, 
 that is what each of us is here for. 
 
 The terror of society which is the 
 basis of morals, the terror of God, 
 which is the secret of religion, — these 
 are the two things that govern us. 
 
 The only way to get rid of a 
 temptation is to yield to it. 
 
 The true mystery of the world is 
 the visible, not the invisible. 
 
 Women spoil every romance by 
 trying to make it last forever. 
 
 (People) try to look picturesque, 
 but only succed in being untidy. 
 
 I like Wagner's music better than 
 any other music. It is so loud that 
 
people can talk the whole time with- 
 out people hearing what one says. 
 
 I never talk during music, — at least 
 good music. If one hears bad music, 
 it is one's duty to drown it by con- 
 versation. 
 
 Men marry because they are tired; 
 women, because they are curious; 
 both are disappointed. 
 
 People who only love once in 
 their lives are only shallow people. 
 What they call their loyalty, and 
 their fidelity, I call lethargy of custom 
 or the lack of the imagination. Faith- 
 lessness is to the emotional life what 
 consistency is to the intellectual life, — 
 simply a confession of failure. 
 
 The longer I live, the more keenly 
 I feel that whatever was good enough 
 for our fathers was not good enough 
 for us. 
 
 When one is in love one always 
 begins by deceiving one's self and 
 one always ends by deceiving others. 
 That is what the world calls romance. 
 
The only artists I have ever 
 known who are personally delightful 
 are bad artists. Good artists give 
 everything to their art, and conse- 
 quently are perfectly uninteresting in 
 themselves. 
 
 A cigarette is the perfect type of 
 a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, 
 and it leaves one unsatisfied. 
 
 There are only two kinds of people 
 who are really fascinating, — people 
 who know absolutely everything, and 
 people who know absolutely nothing. 
 
 The secret of remaining young is 
 never to have an emotion that is 
 unbecoming. 
 
 There is always something ridicu- 
 lous about the passions of people 
 whom one has ceased to love. 
 
 We live in an age when only 
 unnecessary things are absolutely 
 necessary to us. 
 
 There is a luxury in self-reproach. 
 When we blame ourselves we feel 
 
that no one else has a right to blame 
 us. It is the confession, not the 
 priest, that gives us absolution. 
 
 Women never know when the cur- 
 tain has fallen. They always want a 
 sixth act, and as soon as the interest 
 of the play is entirely over they pro- 
 pose to continue it. 
 
 Taking some one else's admirer 
 when one loses one's own. In good 
 society that always whitwashes a 
 woman. 
 
 Is insincerity such a terrible thing? 
 It is merely a method by which we 
 can multiply our personalities. 
 
LORD ARTHUR SAVILLE'S 
 CRIME. 
 
 A STUDY OF DUTY. 
 
 The inordinate passion for pleasure 
 is the secret of remaining young. 
 
 But surely that is tempting Provi- 
 dence. Surely Providence can resist 
 temptation by this time. 
 
 The proper basis of marriage is 
 misunderstanding. 
 
 Are we not better than chessmen, 
 moved by an unseen power, vessels 
 the potter fashions at his fancy, for 
 honor or for shame. 
 
 Most men and women are forced 
 to perform parts for which they have 
 no qualifications. The world is a 
 stage, but the play is badly cast. 
 
 Many men prefer the primrose 
 path of alliance to the steep heights 
 of duty. 
 
 True romarfte is not killed by 
 reality. 
 
INTENTIONS. 
 
 Mr. Hall Caine aims at the 
 grandiose, but then he writes at the 
 top of his voice. He is so loud that 
 one cannot hear what he says. 
 
 Thinking is the most unhealthy 
 thing in the world and people die of 
 it just as they die of any other disease. 
 
 One touch of Nature may make 
 the whole world akin, but two touches 
 of Nature will destroy any work of 
 Art. 
 
 Art itsel is really a form of exag- 
 geration; and selection, which is the 
 very spirit of Art, is nothing more 
 than an intensified mode of over 
 emphasis. 
 
 The only real people are the 
 people who never existed. . 
 
 Literature always* anticipates life. 
 It does not copy it, but moulds it to 
 its purpose. 
 
Personal experience (in art) is a 
 most vicious and limited circle. 
 
 No real artist ever sees things as 
 they really are. 
 
 All bad art comes from returning 
 
 to Life and Nature The 
 
 moment Art surrenders its imagina- 
 tive medium it surrenders everything. 
 
 All beautiful things belong to the 
 same age. 
 
 Sin should be solitary and have no 
 accomplices. 
 
 To be suggestive for fiction is to 
 be of more importance than a fact. 
 
 In literature mere egotism is 
 delightful. 
 
 When people talk to us about 
 others they are usually dull. When 
 they talk to us about themselves they 
 are nearly always interesting, and if 
 one could shut them up when they 
 become wearisome, as easily as one 
 can shut up a book of which one has 
 
grown wearied, they would be perfect 
 absolutely. 
 
 Formerly we used to canonize our 
 heroes. The modern method is to 
 vulgarize them. 
 
 After playing Chopin, I feel as if I 
 had been weeping over sins I had 
 never committed, and mourning over 
 tragedies that were not my own. 
 Music always seems to me to produce 
 that effect. It creates for one a past 
 of which one has been ignorant, and 
 fills one with a sense of sorrows that 
 have been hidden from one's tears. 
 I can fancy a man who has led a per- 
 fectly common-place life, hearing by 
 chance some curious piece of music, 
 and suddenly discovering that his 
 soul, without his being conscious of 
 it, had passed through terrible experi- 
 ences, and known fearful joys, or wild 
 romantic loves, or great renunciations. 
 
 In the best days of art there were 
 no art critics. 
 
 Learned conversation is either the 
 affectation of the ignorant or the 
 
profession of the mentally unem- 
 ployed. 
 
 Education is an admirable thing, 
 but it is well to remember from time 
 to time that nothing that is worth 
 knowing can be taught. 
 
 The accusations of plagiarism are 
 endless, and such accusations proceed 
 either from the thin colourless lips of 
 impotence, or from the grotesque 
 mouths of those who, possessing 
 nothing of their own, fancy that they 
 can gain reputation for wealth by 
 crying out that they have been 
 robbed. 
 
 Cigarettes have at least the charm 
 of leaving one unsatisfied. 
 
 Mediocrity weighing mediocrity in 
 the balance, and incompetence ap- 
 plauding its brother — that is the 
 spectacle which the artistic activity of 
 England affords us from time to time. 
 
 The one duty we owe to history is 
 to re-write it. 
 
If we lived long enough to see the 
 results of our actions it may be that 
 those who call themselves good would 
 be sickened with a dull remorse, and 
 those whom the world calls evil 
 stirred by a noble joy. 
 
 Self-denial is simply a method by 
 which man arrests his progress, and 
 self-sacrifice a survival of the mutila- 
 tion of the savage. 
 
 When a man acts he is a puppet. 
 When he describes he is a poet. 
 
 Dulness is always an irresistible 
 temptation for brilliancy. 
 
 The highest criticism is really a 
 record of one's own soul. 
 
 One may appeal from fiction unto 
 fact. But from the soul there is no 
 appeal. 
 
 Music can never reveal its ultimate 
 secret. 
 
 Life is terribly deficient in form. 
 Its catastrophes happen in the wrong 
 
way and to the wrong people. There 
 is a grotesque horror about its come- 
 dies, and its tragedies seem to culmi- 
 nate in farce. 
 
 Life ! Life ! Don't let us go to 
 life for our fulfilment (in Art) or 
 our experience. 1 1 is a thing narrowed 
 by circumstances, incoherent in its 
 utterance. It makes us pay too high 
 a price for its wares, and we purchase 
 the meanest of its secrets at a cost 
 that is monstrous and infinite. 
 
 (Heredity) is wiser than we are, 
 and its wisdom is bitter. It fills us 
 with impossible desires, and makes us 
 follow what we know we cannot gain. 
 
 What we want (in Art) are un- 
 practical people who see beyond the 
 moment, and think beyond the day. 
 
 It is so easy for people to have 
 sympathy with suffering. It is so 
 difficult for them to have sympathy 
 for thought. 
 
 It is so easy to convert others. It 
 is so difficult to convert oneself. 
 
One tires, in the end, of the work 
 of individuals whose individuality is 
 always noisy, and generally uninter- 
 esting. 
 
 People sometimes say that fiction 
 is getting too morbid. As far as 
 psychology is concerned it has never 
 been morbid enough. 
 
 We teach people how to remember 
 we never teach them how to grow. 
 
 There is one thing worse than 
 Injustice, and that is Justice without 
 her sword in her hand. When Right 
 is not Might, it is Evil. 
 
THE IMPORTANCE OF 
 BEING EARNEST. 
 
 When one is in town one amuses 
 oneself. When one is in the coun- 
 try one amuses other people. 
 
 The very essence of romance is 
 uncertainty. If ever I get married, 
 I'll certainly try to forget the fact. 
 
 Girls never marry the men they 
 flirt with. Girls don't think it right. 
 
 More than half of modern culture 
 depends on what one shouldn't read. 
 
 Nothing annoys people so much 
 as not receiving invitations. 
 
 In married life three is company 
 and two is none. 
 
 I do not approve of the modern 
 sympathy with invalids. I consider 
 it morbid. Illness of any kind is 
 hardly a thing to be encouraged in 
 others. Health is the primary duty 
 of life. 
 
If one plays good music people 
 don't listen, and if one plays bad 
 music people don't talk. 
 
 A man who desires to get married 
 should know either everything or 
 nothing. 
 
 Relations are a pack of people who 
 haven't got the remotest knowledge 
 of how to live, nor the smallest in- 
 stinct about when to die. 
 
 All women become like their 
 mothers. That is their tragedy. No 
 man does. That's his. 
 
 The only way to behave to a 
 woman is to make love to her, if she 
 is pretty, and to some one else if she 
 is plain. 
 
 I am not in favor of long engage- 
 ments. They give people the oppor- t 
 tunity of finding out each others 
 character before marriage, which I 
 think is never advisable. 
 
 No woman should be ever quite 
 accurate about her age. It looks so 
 calculating. 
 
One should never trust a woman 
 who tells one her real age. A woman 
 who would tell one that, would tell 
 one anything. 
 
 What do you call a bad man ? The 
 sort of a man who admires innocence. 
 
 What do you call a bad woman ? 
 The sort of a woman a man never 
 gets tired of. 
 
 Define woman as a sex. They 
 are sphinxes without secrets. 
 
 The soul is born old but grows 
 young. That is the comedy of life. 
 The body is born young but grows 
 old. That is life's tragedy. 
 
 My husband is a sort of promissory 
 note ; I am tired of meeting him. 
 
 Life is simply a mauvais quart 
 d'heure made up of exquisite mo- 
 ments. 
 
 Men always want to be a woman's 
 first love. That is their clumsy 
 vanity. We women have a more 
 
subtle instinct about things. What 
 we like is to be a man's last romance. 
 
 How can a woman expect to be 
 happy with a man who insists on 
 treating her as if she were a perfectly 
 rational being ? 
 
 If a man and woman have sinned, 
 let them both go forth into the 
 desert to love or loathe each other 
 there. Let them both be branded, 
 but don't punish the one and let the 
 other go free. Don't have one law 
 for men and another for women. 
 
 When a man is old enough to do 
 wrong, he should be old enough to 
 do right also. 
 
 Duty is what one expects from 
 others, it is not what one does one's- 
 self. 
 
 Discontent is the first step in the 
 progress of a man or a nation. 
 
 To get into the best society, now- 
 a-days, one has either to feed people, 
 amuse people, or shock people — that 
 
 is all. 
 
Men marry because they are tired; 
 women because they are curious. 
 Both are disappointed. 
 
 The only difference between the 
 saint and the sinner is that every 
 saint has a past, and every sinner 
 has a future. 
 
 Men know life too early; women 
 know life too late. That is the 
 difference between men and women. 
 
LADY WINDERMERE'S 
 
 FAN. 
 
 Now-a-days we are all of us so 
 hard up, that the only pleasant things 
 to pay are compliments. They're 
 the only things we can pay. 
 
 I don't like compliments, and I 
 don't see why a man should think 
 he is pleasing a woman enormously 
 when he says to her a whole heap of 
 things that he does'nt mean. 
 
 If you pretend to be good, the 
 world takes you very seriously. If 
 you pretend to be bad, it doesn't. 
 Such is the astounding stupidity of 
 criticism. 
 
 She taught me, what the world is 
 forgetting, the difference that there 
 is between what is right and what is 
 wrong. 
 
 Now-a-days people seem to look 
 on life as a speculation. It is not a 
 speculation. It is a sacrament. It's 
 
ideal is love. It's purification is 
 sacrifice. 
 
 Because the husband is vile — 
 should the wife be vile also ? 
 
 It is absurd to divide people into 
 good and bad. People are either 
 charming or tedius. 
 
 Some people can resist everything 
 except temptation. 
 
 Our husbands would really forget 
 our existence if we didn't nag at 
 them from time to time, just to 
 remind them that we have a perfect 
 legal right to do so. 
 
 It is a curious thing about the 
 game of marriage — a game, by the 
 way, which is going out of fashion — 
 the wives hold all the honors, and 
 invariably loose the odd trick. 
 
 It is a dangerous thing to reform 
 anyone. 
 
 Men become old but they never 
 become good. 
 
Crying is the refugue of plain 
 women, but the ruin of pretty ones. 
 
 It is strange that men who love 
 and who teach their wives to love, 
 should pass from the love that is 
 given to the love that is bought. 
 
 Misfortunes one can endure — they 
 come from the outside, they are 
 accidents. But to suffer for one's 
 own faults — Ah ! There is the sting 
 of life. 
 
 If a woman really repents, she 
 never wishes to return to the society 
 that has made or seen her ruin. 
 
 How hard good women are ! 
 How weak bad men are ! 
 
 My experience is that as soon as 
 people are old enough to know 
 better, they don't know anything 
 at all. 
 
 It's most dangerous for a husband 
 to pay any attentions to his wife in 
 public. It always makes people 
 
think that he beats her when they're 
 alone. 
 
 London is full of women who 
 trust their husbands. One can 
 always recognize them. They look 
 so thoroughly unhappy. 
 
 Some women look like an edition 
 de luxe of a wicked French novel, 
 meant specially for the English 
 market. 
 
 It takes a thoroughly good women 
 to do a thoroughly stupid thing. 
 
 A man can't tell mean things 
 about another man. 
 
 Between men and women there is 
 no friendship possible. There is 
 passion, enmity, worship, love, but 
 no friendship. 
 
 There are moments when one has 
 to choose between living one's own 
 life, fully, entirely, completely — or 
 dragging out some false, shallow, de- 
 grading existence that the world in 
 its hypocrisy demands. 
 
Windermere knows that nothing 
 looks so much like innocence as an 
 indiscretion. 
 
 There is a great deal of good in 
 Lord Augustus. Fortunately it is 
 all on the surface. Just where good 
 qualities should be. 
 
 With a proper background women 
 can do anything. 
 
 When men give up saying what is 
 charming they give up thinking what 
 is charming. 
 
 If a women wants to hold a man 
 she has merely to appeal to what is 
 worst in him. We make gods of 
 men and they leave us. Others 
 make brutes of them and they fawn 
 and are faithful. 
 
 Men are such . cowards. They 
 outrage every law of the world, and 
 are afraid of the world's tongue. 
 
 You don't know what it is to fall 
 in the pit ... . and all the while to 
 
hear the laughter, the fearful laughter 
 of the world, a thing more tragic 
 than all the tears the world has ever 
 shed. 
 
 One pays for one's sin, and then 
 one pays again, and all one's life one 
 pays. 
 
 Wicked women bother one. Good 
 women bore one. That's the only 
 difference between them. 
 
 What is the difference between 
 scandal and gossip ? Gossip is 
 charming; but scandal is gossip made 
 tedious by morality. 
 
 How marriage ruins a man ! It's 
 as demoralizing as cigarettes, and far 
 more expensive. 
 
 Women like to find us (men) 
 irretrievably bad, and to leave us 
 quite unattractively good. 
 
 In this world there are only two 
 tragedies. One is not getting what 
 one wants, and the other is getting. 
 The last is a real tragedy. 
 
What is a cynic? A man who 
 knows the price of everything, and 
 the value of nothing. 
 
 A sentimentalist is a man who sees 
 an absurd value in everything, and 
 doesn't know the market price of 
 any single thing. 
 
 Experience is the name everyone 
 gives to their mistakes. 
 
 If one really loves a woman, all 
 other women in the world become 
 absolutely meaningless to him. Love 
 changes one. 
 
 There is a bitter irony in things, 
 a bitter irony in the way we talk of 
 good and bad women. 
 
 What a pity in life that we get our 
 lessons when they are of no use to us. 
 
 Actions are the first tragedy in 
 life, words are the second. Words 
 are perhaps the worst. Words are 
 merciless. 
 
 People cannot be divided into the 
 good and the bad, as though they 
 
were two separate races or creations. 
 What are called good women may 
 have terrible things in them, mad 
 mood of recklessness, assertion, jeal- 
 ousy, sin. Bad women, as they are 
 termed, may have in them sorrow, 
 repentance, pity, sacrifice. 
 
 (When one has sinned) what con- 
 soles one now-a-days is not repen- 
 tance, but pleasure. Repentance is 
 quite out of date. 
 
 Ideals are dangerous things. Reali- 
 ties are better. They wound, but 
 they are better. 
 
 Love is easily killed. 
 
 There is the same world for all of 
 us, and good and evil, sin and inno- 
 cence, go through it hand in hand. 
 To shut one's eyes to half of life 
 that one may live securely is as 
 though one blinded one's self that 
 one might walk with more safety in 
 a land of pit and precipice. 
 
THE BALLAD OF 
 
 READING 
 
 GAOL. 
 
THE BALLAD OF READING GAOL. 
 
 He did not wear his scarlet coat, 
 
 For blood and wine are red, 
 And blood and wine were on his hands 
 
 VVhen they found him with the dead, 
 The poor dead woman whom he loved, 
 
 And murdered in her bed. 
 
 He walked amongst the Trial Men 
 
 In a suit of shabby gray ; 
 A crickel_cap was on his head, 
 
 And his step seemed light and gay ; 
 But I never saw a man who looked 
 
 So wistfully at the day. 
 
 I never saw a man who looked 
 
 With such a wistful eye 
 Upon that little tent of blue 
 
 Which prisoners call the sky, 
 And at every drifting cloud that went 
 
 With sails of silver by. 
 
 I walked with other souls in pain, 
 
 Within another ring, 
 And was wondering if the man had done 
 
 A great or little thing, 
 When a voice behind me whispered low 
 
 "That fellow s got tq swing." 
 
Yet each man kills the thing he loves, 
 
 By each let this be heard : 
 Some do it with a bitter look, 
 
 Some with a flattering word; 
 The coward does it with a kiss, 
 
 The brave man with a sword ! 
 
 Some kill their love when they are young, 
 And some when they are old ; 
 
 Some strangle with the hands of Lust, 
 Some with the hands of Gold : 
 
 The kindest use a knife, because 
 The dead so soon grow cold. 
 
 Some love too little, some too long, 
 
 Some sell, and others buy ; 
 Some do the deed with many tears, 
 
 And some without a sigh : 
 For each man kills the thing he loves, 
 
 Yet each man does not die. 
 
 He does not sit with silent men 
 Who watch him night and day ; 
 
 Who watch him when he tries to weep, 
 And when he tries to pray ; 
 
 Who watch him lest himself should rob 
 The prison of its prey. 
 
He does not rise in piteous haste 
 And put on convict clothes, 
 
 While some coarse-mouthed Doctor 
 gloats and notes 
 Each new and nerve-twitched pose, 
 
 Fingering a watch whose little ticks 
 Are like horrible hammer-blows. 
 
 He does not know that sickening thirst 
 That sands one's throat, before 
 
 The hangman with hi s gardener's glove s 
 Slips through the padded door, 
 
 And binds one with three leathern thongs 
 That the throat may thirst no more. 
 
 He does not stare upon the air 
 Through a little roof of glass ; 
 
 He does not pray with lips of clay 
 For his agony to pass ; 
 
 Nor feel upon his shuddering cheek 
 The kiss of Caiaphas. 
 
 II. 
 
 I never saw a man who looked 
 With such a wistful eye 
 
 Upon that little tent of blue 
 Which prisoners call the sky, 
 
And at every wandering cloud that trailed 
 Its ravelled fleeces by. 
 
 (He did not wring his hands or weep, 
 Nor did he peek or pine, 
 But he drank the air as though it held 
 Some healthful anodyne ; 
 With open mouth he drank the sun 
 As though it had been wine ! 
 
 For the oak and elm have pleasant leaves 
 That in the spring-time shoot : 
 
 But grim to see is the gallows-tree, 
 With its adder-bitten root, 
 
 And green or dry a man must die 
 Before it bears its fruit ! 
 
 The loftiest place is that seat of grace 
 For which all worldlings try ; 
 
 But who would stand in hempen band 
 Upon a scaffold high, 
 
 And through a murderer's collar take 
 His last look at the sky? 
 
 It is sweet to dance to violins 
 When Love and Life are fair : 
 
 To dance to flutes, to dance to lutes 
 Is delicate and rare: 
 
But it is not sweet with nimble feet 
 To dance upon the air ! 
 
 III. 
 
 In Debtor's Yard the stones are hard 
 And the dripping wall is high, 
 
 So it was there he took the air 
 Beneath - u ° '"ndP" "*H r 
 
 And by each side a Warder walked, 
 For fear the man might die. 
 
 Or else he sat with those who watched 
 
 His anguish night and day; 
 Who watched him when he rose to weep, 
 
 And when he crouched to pray ; 
 Who watched him lest himself should rob 
 
 Their scaffold of its prey. 
 
 We sewed the sacks, we broke the stones, 
 
 We turned the dusty drill : 
 We banged the tins, and bawled the hymns, 
 
 And sweated on the mill: 
 And in t he heart , of every .man 
 
 Terror was lying still. 
 
So still it lay that every day 
 
 Crawled like a weed-clogged wave : 
 
 And we forgot the bitter lot 
 That waits for fool and knave, 
 
 Till once, as we tramped in from work, 
 We passed an open grave. 
 
 With yawning mouth the yellow hole 
 
 Gaped for a living thing ; 
 The very mud cried out for blood 
 
 To the thirsty asphalt ring : 
 And we knew that ere one dawn grew fair 
 
 Some prisoner had to swing. 
 
 That night the empty corridors 
 Were full of forms of Fear, 
 
 And up and down the iron town 
 Stole feet we could not hear, 
 
 And through the bars that hide the stars 
 White faces seemed to peer. 
 
 He lay as one who lies and dreams 
 
 In a pleasant meadow-land, 
 The watchers watched him as he slept, 
 
 And could not understand 
 How one could sleep so sweet a sleep 
 
 With a hangman close at hand. 
 
The gray cock crew, the red cock crew, 
 
 But never came the day : 
 And crooked shapes of Terror crouched, 
 
 In the corners where we lay: 
 And each evil sprite that walked by night 
 
 Before us seemed to play. 
 
 They glided past, they glided fast, 
 Like travelers through a mist : 
 
 They mocked the moon in a rigadoon 
 Of delicate turn and twist, 
 
 And with a formal pace and loathsome grace 
 The phantoms kept their tryst. 
 
 The morning wind began to moan, 
 
 But still the night went on : 
 Through its giant loom the web of gloom 
 
 Crept till each thread was spun : 
 And, as we prayed, we grew afraid 
 
 Of the Justice of the Sun. 
 
 At last I saw the shadowed bars, 
 Like a lattice wrought in lead, 
 
 Move right across the whitewashed wall 
 That faced my three-plank bed, 
 
 And I knew that somewhere in the world 
 God's dreadful dawn was red. 
 
He did not pass in purple pomp, 
 Nor ride a moon-white steed. 
 
 Three yards of cord and a sliding board 
 Are all the gallows need, 
 
 So with a rope of shame the Herald came 
 To do the secret deed. 
 
 We waited for the stroke of eight : 
 Each tongue was thick with thirst : 
 
 For the stroke of eight is the stroke of Fate 
 That makes a man accursed, 
 
 And Fate will use a running noose 
 For the best man and the worst. 
 
 With sudden shock the prison clock 
 
 Smote on the shivering air, 
 And from all the gaol rose up a wail 
 
 Of impotent despair, 
 Like the sound that frightened marshes hear 
 
 From some leper in his lair. 
 
 And as one sees most fearful things 
 
 In the crystal of a dream, 
 We saw the greasy hempen rope 
 
 Hooked to the blackened beam, 
 And heard the prayer the hangman's snare 
 
 Strangled into a scream. 
 
IV. 
 
 1 never saw sad men who looked 
 
 With such a wistful eye 
 Upon that little tent of blue 
 
 We prisoners call the sky, 
 And at every careless cloud that passed 
 
 In happy freedom by. 
 
 For he who sins a second time 
 
 Wakes a dead soul to pain, 
 And draws it from its spotted shroud, 
 
 And makes it bleed again, 
 And makes it bleed great gouts of blood, 
 
 And makes it bleed in vain ! 
 
 The Warders strutted up and down, 
 And kept their herd of brutes, 
 
 Their uniforms were spick and span, 
 And they wore their Sunday suits, 
 
 But we knew the work they had been at, 
 By the quicklime on their boots. 
 
 For where a grave had opened wide, 
 
 There was no grave at all : 
 Only a stretch of mud and sand 
 
 By the hideous prison-wall, 
 ' And a little heap of burning lime, 
 
 That the man should have his pall. 
 
For he has a pall, this wretched man, 
 Such as few men can claim : 
 
 Deep down beloWa prison-yard, 
 Naked for greater shame, 
 
 He lies with fetters on each foot, 
 Wrapped in a sheet of flame. 
 
 And all the while the burning lime 
 Eats flesh and bone away ; 
 
 It ea; ts the brittle bone by night, 
 And the soft flesh by day, 
 
 It eats the flesh and bone by turns, 
 But it eats the heart alway. 
 
 For three long years they will not sow 
 
 Or root or seedling there : 
 For three long years the unblessed spot 
 
 Will sterile be and bare, 
 And look upon the wondering sky 
 
 With unreproachful stare. 
 
 They think a murderers heart would taint 
 
 Each simple seed they sow. 
 It is not true ! God's kindly earth 
 
 Is kindlier than men know, 
 And the red rose would but blow more Ted, 
 
 And the white rose whiter blow. 
 
 Out of his mouth a red, red rose ! 
 Out of his heart a white ! 
 
For who can say by what strange way, 
 ' Christ brings his will to light, 
 Since 'the barren staff the pilgrim bore 
 Bloomed in the great Pope's sight ? 
 
 But neither milk-white rose nor red \ 
 May bloom in prison air; \ 
 
 The shard, the pebble, and the flint, 
 Are what they give us there : 
 
 For flowers have been known to heal 
 A common man's despair. 
 
 So never will wine-red rose or white, 
 
 Petal by petal, fall 
 On that stretch of mud and sand that lies 
 
 By the hideous prison wall, 
 To tell the men who tramp the yard 
 
 That God's Son died for all. 
 
 The Chaplain would not kneel to pray 
 
 By his dishonored grave ; 
 Nor mark it with that blessed Cross 
 
 That Christ for sinners gave, 
 Because the man was one of those 
 
 Whom Christ came down to save. 
 
 Yet all is well : he has but passed 
 
 To life's appointed bourne, 
 And alien tears will fill for him 
 
Pity's long-broken urn, 
 For his mourners will be outcast men, 
 And outcasts always mourn. 
 
 I know not whether Laws be right, 
 Or whether Laws be wrong; 
 
 All that we know who lie in gaol 
 Is that the wall is strong; 
 
 And that each day is like a year, 
 A year whose days are long. 
 
 With midnight always in one's heart, 
 And twilight in one's cell, 
 
 W e tur n _the_crank, or tear the rope, 
 Each in his separate Hell, 
 
 And the silence is more awful far 
 Than the sound of a brazen bell. 
 
 And thus we rust Life's iron chain 
 
 Degraded and alone: 
 And some men curse, and some men weep, 
 
 And some men make no moan : 
 But God's eternal Laws are kind 
 
 And break the heart of stone. 
 
Ah ! happy they whose heart can break 
 
 And peace of pardon win ! 
 How else may man make straight his plan 
 
 And cleanse his soul from Sin ? 
 How else but through a broken heart 
 
 May Lord Christ enter in? 
 
 And he of the swollen purple throat, 
 And the stark and staring eyes ; 
 
 Waits for the holy hands that took 
 The Thief to Paradise ; 
 
 And a broken and a contrite heart 
 The Lord will not despise. 
 
 VI. 
 
 In Reading gaol by Reading town 
 
 There is a pit of shame, 
 And in it lies a wretched man 
 
 Eaten by teeth of flame, 
 In a burning winding-sheet he lies, 
 
 And his grave has got no name, 
 
 And there, till Christ call forth the dead, 
 
 In silence let him lie : 
 No need to waste the foolish tear, 
 
 Or heave the windy sigh : 
 The man has killed the thing he loved, 
 
 And so he had to die. 
 
And all men kill the' thing they love, 
 
 By all let this be heard, 
 Some do it with a bitter look, 
 
 Some with a flattering word. 
 The coward does it with a kiss, 
 
 The brave man with a sword ! 
 
SHORT POEMS. 
 
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 through 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. 
 
O lonely Himalayan height, 
 Gray pillar of the Indian sky, 
 
 Where saw'st thou last in clanging fight, 
 Our winged dogs of Victory ? 
 
 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 : 
 
 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 epaulet — 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 months 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. 
 
LIBERTATIS SACRA FAMES. 
 
 Albeit nurtured in democracy 
 
 And liking best that state republican 
 
 Where every man is King-like and no man 
 
 Is crowned above his fellows, yet I see, 
 
 Spite of this modern fret for Liberty, 
 
 Better the rule of One whom all obey, 
 
 Than to let clamorous demagogues betray 
 
 Our freedom with the kiss of anarchy. 
 
 Wherefore I love them not whose hands profane 
 
 Plant the red flag on the piled-up street 
 
 For no right cause, beneath whose ignorant reign 
 
 Arts, Culture, Reverence, Honor, all things fade, 
 
 Save treason and the dagger of her trade, 
 
 And Murder with his silent bloody feet. 
 
THE GARDEN OF EROS. 
 
 It is full summer now, the heart of June, 
 Not yet the sun-burnt reapers are astir 
 
 Upon the upland meadow where too soon 
 Rich autumn time, the season's usurer, 
 
 Will lend his hoarded gold to all the trees, 
 
 And see his treasure scattered by the wild and 
 spendthrift breeze. 
 
 Spirit of Beauty ! tarry still a-while, 
 
 They are not dead, thine ancient votaries, 
 
 Some few there are to whom thy radiant smile 
 Is better than a thousand victories, 
 
 Though all the nobly slain in Waterloo 
 
 Rise up in wrath against them ! tarry still, there 
 are a few, 
 
 Who for thy sake would give their manlihood 
 And consecrate their being, I at least 
 
 Have done so, made thy lips my daily food, 
 And in thy temples found a goodlier feast 
 
 Than this starved age can give me, spite of all 
 
 Its new-found creeds so skeptical and so 
 dogmatical. 
 
Yet tarry ! for the boy who loved thee best, 
 Whose very name should be a memory 
 
 To make thee linger, sleeps in silent rest 
 Beneath the Roman walls, and melody 
 
 Still mourns her sweetest lyre, none can play 
 
 The lute of Adonais, with his lips Song passed 
 away. 
 
 Nay, when Keats died the Muses still had left 
 One silver voice to sing his threnody, 
 
 But ah ! too soon of it we were bereft 
 When on that riven night and stormy sea 
 
 Panthea claimed her singer as her own, 
 
 And slew the mouth that praised her; since which 
 time we walk alone, 
 
 Save for that fiery heart, that morning star 
 Of re-arisen England, whose clear eye 
 
 Saw from our tottering throne and waste of war 
 The grand Greek limbs of young Democracy 
 
 Rise mightily like Hesperus and bring 
 
 The great Republic ! him at least thy love hath 
 taught to sing, 
 
 And he hath been with thee at Thessaly, 
 And seen white Atalanta fleet of foot 
 
 In passionless and fierce virginity 
 
 Hunting the tusked boar, his honeyed 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 Galilaean's requiem, 
 That wounded forehead dashed with blood and 
 wine 
 He hath discrowned, the Ancient Gods in him 
 Have found their last, most ardent worshiper, 
 And the new Sign grows gray 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 armory 
 
 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 meet 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 enamored 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 splendor 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 blind-worm 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-colored 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 analyzed 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 god-like 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 corn-crake 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 ! 
 
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. 
 
SONNET. 
 
 ON HEARING THE DIES IKM SUNG IN THE 
 SISTINE CHAPEL. 
 
 Nay, Lord, not thus ! white lilies in the spring, 
 Sad olive-groves, or silver-breasted dove, 
 Teach me more clearly of Thy life and love 
 
 Than terrors of red flame and thundering. 
 
 The empurpled vines dear memories of Thee 
 bring : 
 A bird at evening flying to its nest, 
 Tells me of One who had no place of rest: 
 
 I think it is of Thee the sparrows sing. 
 
 Come rather on some autumn afternoon, 
 When red and brown are burnished on the 
 
 leaves, 
 And the fields echo to the gleaner's song, 
 
 Come when the splendid fullness of the moon 
 Looks down upon the rows of golden 
 
 sheaves, 
 And reap Thy harvest: we have waited long. 
 
EASTER DAY. 
 
 The silver trumpets rang across the Dome : 
 The people knelt upon the ground with awe : 
 And borne upon the necks of men I saw, 
 
 Like some great God, the Holy Lord of Rome. 
 
 Priest-like he wore a robe more white than foam, 
 And, King-like swathed himself in royal red, 
 Three crowns of gold rose high upon his head: 
 
 In splendor and in light the Pope passed home. 
 
 My heart stole back across wide wastes of years 
 
 To one who wandered by a lonely sea, 
 And sought in vain for any place of rest : 
 
 " Foxes have holes, and every bird its nest, 
 
 I, only I, must wander wearily, 
 
 And bruise my feet, and drink wine salt with 
 tears. 
 
E TENEBRIS. 
 
 Come down, O Christ, and help me! reach 
 thy hand, 
 For I am drowning in a stormier sea 
 Than Simon on thy lake of Galilee. 
 
 The wine of life is spilt upon the sand, 
 
 My heart is in some famine-murdered land, 
 Whence all good things have perished utterly, 
 And well I know my soul in Hell must lie 
 
 If I this night before God's throne should stand. 
 
 " He sleeps perchance, or rideth to the chase, 
 
 Like Baal, when his prophets howled that name 
 From morn to noon on Carmel's smitten height." 
 Nay, peace, I shall behold before the night, 
 The feet of brass, the robe more white than 
 
 flame, 
 The wounded hands, the weary human face. 
 
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 wane marble creeps one purple 
 vein. 
 
 Yrt, 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. 
 
THE NEW HELEN. 
 
 Where hast thou been since round the walls of Troy 
 The sons of God fought in that great emprise ? 
 Why dost thou walk our common earth again? 
 
 Hast thou forgotten that impassioned boy, 
 His purple galley and his Tyrian men 
 And treacherous Aphrodite's mocking eyes? 
 
 For surely it was thou, who, like a star 
 Hung in the silver silence of the night, 
 Didst lure the Old World's chivalry and might 
 
 Into the clamorous crimson waves of war! 
 
 The lotos-leaves which heal the wounds of Death 
 Lie in thy hand; O, be thou kind to me, 
 While yet I know the summer of my days; 
 
 For hardly can my tremulous lips draw breath 
 To fill the silver trumpet with thy praise, 
 So bowed am I before thy mystery ; 
 
 So bowed and broken on Love's terrible wheel, 
 That I have lost all hope and heart to sing, 
 Yet care I not what ruin time may bring 
 
 If in thy temple thou wilt let me kneel. 
 
 O Helen ! Helen ! Helen ! yet awhile,- 
 Yet for a little while, O tarry here, 
 
 Till the dawn cometh and the shadows flee 
 
For in the gladsome sunlight of thy smile 
 Of heaven or hell I have no thought or fear, 
 Seeing I know no other god but thee : 
 
 No other god save him, before whose feet 
 In nets of gold the tired planets move, 
 The incarnate spirit of spiritual love 
 
 Who in thy body holds his joyous seat. 
 
 Thou wert not born as common women are! 
 
 But, girt with silver splendor of the foam, 
 Didst from the depths of sapphire seas arise 
 And at thy coming some immortal star, 
 
 Bearded with flame, blazed in the Eastern si 
 
 And waked the shepherds on thine island hom 
 Thou shalt not die : no asps of Egypt creep 
 
 Close at thy heels to taint the delicate air; 
 
 No sullen-blooming poppies stain thy hair, 
 Those scarlet heralds of eternal sleep. 
 
 Lily of love, pure and inviolate ! 
 
 Tower of ivory ! red rose of fire ! 
 
 Thou hast come down our darkness to illun 
 For we, close-caught in the wide nets of Fate, 
 
 Wearied with waiting for the World's Desire 
 Aimlessly wandered in the house of gloom 
 Aimlessly sought some slumberous anodyne 
 
 For wasted lives, for lingering wretchedness, 
 Till we beheld thy re-arisen shrine, 
 
 And the white glory of thy loveliness. 
 
THE BURDEN OF ITYS. 
 
 This English Thames is holier far than Rome, 
 Those harebells like a sudden flush of sea 
 
 Breaking across the woodland, with the foam 
 Of meadow-sweet and white anemone 
 
 To fleck their blue waves, — God is likelier there, 
 
 Than hidden in that crystal-hearted star the pale 
 monks bear ! 
 
 Those violet-gleaming butterflies that take 
 
 Yon creamy lily for their pavilion 
 Are monsignores, and where the rushes shake 
 
 A lazy pike lies basking in the sun 
 His eyes half-shut, — He is some mitered old 
 Bishop in partibus / look at those gaudy scales 
 all green and gold. 
 
 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-tranced day 
 Matching our reeds in sportive rivalry, 
 While far beneath us frets the troubled purple 
 of the sea. 
 
 But sweeter far if silver-sandaled 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. 
 
Cry out aloud on Itys ! memory 
 
 That foster-brother of remorse and pain 
 
 Drops poison in mine ear — O to be free, 
 
 1 o burn one's old ships ! and to launch again 
 
 Into the white-plumed battle of the waves 
 
 And fight old Proteus for the spoil of coral- 
 flowered caves ! 
 
 O for one midnight and as paramour 
 The Venus of the little Melian farm ! 
 
 that some antique statue for one hour 
 Might wake to passion, and that I could charm 
 
 The Dawn at Florence from its dumb despair 
 Mix with those mighty limbs and make that 
 giant breast my lair ! 
 
 Sing on ! sing on ! I would be drunk with life, 
 Drunk with the trampled vintage of my youth, 
 
 1 would forget the wearying wasted strife, 
 
 The riven vale, the Gorgon eyes of Truth, 
 The prayerless vigil and the cry for prayer, 
 The barren gifts, the lifted arms, the dull insen- 
 sate air ! 
 
 Sing on ! sing on ! O feathered Niobe, 
 
 Thou canst make sorrow beautiful, and steal 
 
 From joy its sweetest music, not as we 
 
 Who by dead voiceless silence strive to heal 
 
 Our too untented wounds, and do but keep 
 
 Pain barricadoed in our hearts, and murder pil- 
 lowed sleep. 
 
Sing louder yet, why must I still behold 
 The wan white face of that deserted Christ, 
 
 Whose bleeding hands my hands did once intold, 
 Whose smitten lips my lips so oft have kissed, 
 
 And now in mute and marble misery 
 
 Sits in his lone dishonored House and weeps, 
 perchance for me. 
 
 O memory cast down thy wreathed shell ! 
 
 Break thy hoarse lute O sad Melpomene ! 
 O sorrow sorrow keep thy cloistered cell 
 
 Nor dim with tears this limpid Castaly ! 
 Cease, cease, sad bird, thou dost the forest wrong 
 To vex its sylvan quiet with such wild impassioned 
 song ! 
 
 Cease, cease, or if 'tis anguish to be dumb 
 
 Take from the pastoral thrush her simpler air, 
 
 Whose jocund carelessness doth more become 
 This English woodland than thy keen despair, 
 
 Ah ! cease and let the northwind bear thy lay 
 
 Back to the rocky hills of Thrace, the stormy 
 Daulian bay. 
 
 It was a dream, the glade is tenantless, 
 No soft Ionian laughter moves the air, 
 
 The Thames creeps on in sluggish leadenness, 
 And from the copse left desolate and bare 
 
 Fled is young Bacchus with his revelry, 
 
 Yet still from Nuneham wood there comes that 
 thrilling melody 
 
So sad, that one might think a human heart 
 Brake in each separate note, a quality 
 
 Which music sometimes has, being the Art 
 Which is most nigh to tears and memory, 
 
 Poor mourning Philomel, what dost thou fear ? 
 
 Thy sister dost not haunt these fields, Pandion is 
 not here, 
 
 Here is no cruel Lord with murderous blade, 
 No woven web of bloody heraldries, 
 
 But mossy dells for roving comrades made, 
 Warm valleys where the tired student lies 
 
 With half-shut book, and many a winding walk 
 
 Where rustic lovers stray at eve in happy simple talk. 
 
 The heron passes homeward to the mere, 
 
 The blue mist creeps among the shivering trees, 
 
 Gold world by world the silent stars appear, 
 And like a blossom blown before the breeze, 
 
 A white moon drifts across the shimmering sky, 
 
 Mute arbitress of all thy sad, thy rapturous threnody. 
 
 She does not heed thee, wherefore should she heed, 
 She knows Endymion is not far away, 
 
 'Tis I, 'tis I, whose soul is as the reed 
 
 Which has no message of its own to play, 
 
 So pipes another's bidding, it is I, 
 
 Drifting with every wind on the wide sea of misery. 
 
Ah ! the brown bird has ceased : one exquisite 
 About the somber woodland seems to cling 
 
 Dying in music, else the air is still, 
 
 So still that one might hear the bat's small w 
 
 Wander and wheel above the pines, or tell 
 
 Each tiny dewdrop dripping from the blue-bc 
 brimming cell. 
 
 And far away across the lengthening wold, 
 Across the willowy flats and thickets brown 
 
 Magdalen's tall tower tipped with tremulous g 
 Marks the long High Street of the little to^ 
 
 And warns me to return ; I must not wait, 
 
 Hark ! 'tis the curfew booming from the bell 
 Christ Church gate. 
 
SERENADE. 
 
 FOR MUSIC. 
 
 The western wind is blowing fair 
 
 Across the dark Mgean sea, 
 And at the secret marble stair 
 
 . My Tyrian galley waits for thee. 
 Come down ! the purple sail is spread, 
 
 The watchman sleeps within the town, 
 O leave thy lily-flowered bed, 
 
 O Lady mine come down, come down 
 
 She will not come, I know her well, 
 
 Of lover's vows she hath no care, 
 And little good a man can tell 
 
 Of one so cruel and so fair. 
 True love is but a woman's toy, 
 
 They never know the lover's pain, 
 And I who loved as loves a boy 
 
 Must love in vain, must love in vain. 
 
 O noble pilot tell me true 
 
 Is that the sheen of golden hair ? 
 Or is it but the tangled dew 
 
 That binds the passion-flowers there ? 
 Good sailor come and tell me now 
 
 Is that my lady's lily hand? 
 Or is it but the gleaming prow, 
 
 Or is it but the silver sand ? 
 
No! no! 'tis not the tangled dew, 
 
 'Tis not the silver-fretted sand, 
 It is my own dear Lady true 
 
 With golden hair and lily hand ! 
 noble pilot steer for Troy, 
 
 Good sailor ply the laboring oar, 
 This is the Queen of life and joy 
 
 Whom we must bear from Grecian shore ! 
 
 The waning sky grows faint and blue, 
 
 It wants an hour still of day, 
 Aboard! aboard! my gallant crew, 
 
 O Lady mine away ! away ! 
 noble pilot steer for Troy, 
 
 Good sailor ply the laboring oar, 
 O loved as only loves a boy ! 
 
 O loved for ever evermore ! 
 
LA BELLA DONNA DELLA 
 MIA MENTE. 
 
 My limbs are wasted with a flame, 
 My feet are sore with traveling, 
 
 For calling on my Lady's name 
 My lips have now forgot to sing. 
 
 O Linnet in the wild-rose brake 
 Strain for my Love thy melody, 
 
 O Lark sing louder for love's sake, 
 My gentle Lady passeth by. 
 
 She is too fair for any man 
 
 To see or hold his heart's delight, 
 
 Fairer than Queen or courtezan 
 Or moon-lit water in the night. 
 
 Her hair is bound with myrtle leaves, 
 (Green leaves upon her golden hair!) 
 
 Green grasses through the yellow sheaves 
 Of autumn corn are not more fair. 
 
 Her little lips, more made to kiss 
 
 Than to cry bitterly for pain, 
 Are tremulous as brook-water is, 
 roses after evening rain. 
 
Her neck is like white melilote 
 Flushing for pleasure of the sun, 
 
 The throbbing of the linnet's throat 
 Is not so sweet to look upon. 
 
 As a pomegranate, cut in twain, 
 
 White-seeded, is her crimson mouth, 
 
 Her cheeks are as the fading stain 
 
 Where the peach reddens to the south. 
 
 O twining hands ! O delicate 
 
 White body made for love and pain ! 
 
 O House of love ! O desolate 
 Pale flower beaten by the rain ! 
 
THE GRAVE OF KEATS. 
 
 Rid of the world's injustice, and his pain, 
 He rests at last beneath God's veil of blue : 
 Taken from life when life and love were new 
 
 The youngest of the martyrs here is lain, 
 
 Fair as Sebastian, and as early slain. 
 
 No cypress shade his grave, no funeral yew, 
 But gentle violets weeping with the dew 
 
 Weave on his bones an ever blossoming chain. 
 
 O proudest heart that broke for misery ! 
 O sweetest lips since those of Mitylene ! 
 O poet-painter of our English Land ! 
 
 Thy name was writ in water it shall stand : 
 
 And tears like mine will keep thy memory green, 
 As Isabella did her Basil-tree. 
 
IN THE GOLD ROOM. 
 
 A HARMONY. 
 
 Her ivory hands on the ivory keys 
 
 Strayed in a fitful fantasy, 
 Like the silver gleam with the poplar trees 
 
 Rustle their pale leaves listlessly, 
 Or the drifting foam of a restless sea 
 When the waves show their teeth in the flyin 
 breeze. 
 
 Her gold hair fell on the wall of gold 
 Like the delicate gossamer tangles spun 
 
 On the burnished disk of the marigold, 
 Or the sun-flower turning to meet the sun 
 When the gloom of the jealous night is dor 
 
 And the spear of the lily is aureoled. 
 
 And her sweet red lips on these lips of mine 
 Burned like the ruby fire set 
 
 In the swinging lamp of a crimson shrine, 
 Or the bleeding wounds of the pomegrana 
 Or the heart of the lotus drenched and w« 
 
 With the spilt-out blood of the rose-red win 
 
THE GRAVE OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Like burnt-out torches by a sick man's bed 
 Gaunt cypress trees stand round the sun- 
 bleached stone ; 
 Here doth the little night-owl make her throne, 
 
 And the slight lizard show his jeweled head. 
 
 And, where the chaliced poppies flame to red, 
 In the still chamber of yon pyramid 
 Surely some Old- World Sphinx lurks darkly hid 
 
 Grim warder of this plesaunce of the dead. 
 
 Ah ! sweet indeed to rest within the womb 
 Of Earth, great mother of eternal sleep, 
 
 But sweeter far for thee a restless tomb 
 In the blue cavern of an echoing deep, 
 
 Or where the tall ships founder in the gloom 
 Against the rocks of some wave-shattered steep. 
 
 Rome. 
 
IMPRESSION DU VOYAGE. 
 
 The sea was sapphire colored, and the sky 
 Burned like a heated opal through the air, 
 We hoisted sail ; the wind was blowing fair 
 
 For the blue lands that to the eastward lie. 
 
 From the steep prow I marked with quickening eye 
 Zakynthos, every olive grove and creek, 
 Ithaca's cliff, Lycaon's snowy peak, 
 
 And all the flower-strewn hills of Arcady. 
 
 The flapping of the sail against the mast, 
 The ripple of the water on the side, 
 The ripple of girl's laughter at the stern, 
 
 The only sounds : — when 'gan the West to burn, 
 And a red sun upon the seas to ride, 
 I stood upon the soil of Greece at last ! 
 
PANTHEA. 
 
 Nay, let us walk from fire unto fire, 
 
 From passionate pain to deadlier delight, — 
 
 I am too young to live without desire, 
 
 Too young art thou to waste this summer night 
 
 Asking those idle questions which of old 
 
 Man sought of seer and oracle, and reply was told. 
 
 For, sweet, to feel is better than to know, 
 And wisdom is a childless heritage, 
 
 One pulse of passion — youth's first fiery glow, — 
 Are worth the hoarded proverbs of the sage: 
 
 Vex not thy soul with dead philosophy, 
 
 Have we not lips to kiss with, hearts to love, and 
 eyes to see ! 
 
 Dost thou not hear the murmuring nightingale 
 Like water bubbling from a silver jar, 
 
 So soft she sings the envious moon is pale, 
 That high in heaven she is hung so far 
 
 She cannot hear that love-enraptured tune, — 
 
 Mark how she wreathes each horn with mist, yon 
 late and laboring moon. 
 
 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 naught else from thei 
 eternal store. 
 
 For our high Gods have sick and wearied grown 
 Of all our endless sins, our vain endeavor 
 
 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 \ 
 
 Alas ! they know the far Lethsean 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 so 
 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 infi 
 crime. 
 
O we are weaned 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-colored moment: one great love; and lo ! 
 we die. 
 
 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-lillies; 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 hyacinths 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 from 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. 
 
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 the 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 splendor 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 
 Shoots 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 ! 
 
QUIA MULTUM AMAVI. 
 
 Dear Heart I think the young impassioned priest 
 When first he takes from out the hidden shrine 
 
 His God imprisoned in the Eucharist, 
 
 And eats the bread, and drinks the dreadful wine, 
 
 Feels not such awful wonder as I felt 
 
 When first my smitten eyes beat full on thee, 
 
 And all night long before thy feet I knelt 
 Till thou wert wearied of Idolatry. 
 
 Ah ! had'st thou liked me less and loved me more, 
 Through all those summer days of joy and rain, 
 
 I had not now been sorrow's heritor, 
 
 Or stood a lackey in the House of Pain. 
 
 Yet, though remorse, youth's white-faced seneschal 
 Tread on my heels with all his retinue, 
 
 I am most glad I loved thee — think of all 
 
 The suns that go to make one speedwell blue ! 
 
SILENTIUM AMORIS. 
 
 As oftentimes the too resplendent sun 
 Hurries the pallid and reluctant moon 
 
 Back to her somber cave, ere she hath won 
 A single ballad from the nightingale, 
 So doth thy Beauty make my lips to fail, 
 
 And all my sweetest singing out of tune. 
 
 And as at dawn across the level mead 
 
 On wings impetuous some wind will come, 
 
 And with its too harsh kisses break the reed 
 Which was its only instrument of song, 
 So my too stormy passions work me wrong, 
 
 And for excess of Love my Love is dumb. 
 
 But surely unto Thee mine eyes did show 
 Why I am silent, and my lute unstrung ; 
 
 Else it were better we should part, and go, 
 Thou to some lips of sweeter melody, 
 And I to nurse the barren memory 
 
 Of unkissed kisses, and songs never sung. 
 
HER VOICE. 
 
 The wild bee reels from bough to bough 
 
 With his furry coat and his gauzy wing. 
 Now in a lily-cup, and now 
 Setting a jacinth bell a-swing, 
 In his wandering; 
 Sit closer love : it was here I trow 
 I made that vow, 
 
 Swore that two lives should be like one 
 As long as the sea-gull loved the sea, 
 As long as the sunflower sought the sun — 
 It shall be, I said, for eternity 
 'Twixt you and me ! 
 Dear friend, those times are over and done, 
 Love's web is spun. 
 
 Look upward where the poplar trees 
 Sway and sway in the summer air, 
 Here in the valley never a breeze 
 Scatters the thistledown, but there 
 Great winds blow fair 
 From the mighty murmuring mystical seas, 
 And the wave-lashed leas. 
 
 Look upward where the white gull screams, 
 
 What does it see that we do not see ? 
 Is that a star ? or the lamp that gleams 
 
On some outward voyaging argosy, — 
 Ah ! can it be 
 We have lived our lives in land of dreams ! 
 How sad it seems. 
 
 Sweet, there is nothing left to say 
 But this, that love is never lost, 
 Keen winter stabs the breasts of May 
 Whose crimson roses burst his frost, 
 Ships tempest-tossed 
 We find a harbor in some bay, 
 And so we may. 
 
 And there is nothing left to do 
 
 But to kiss once again and part, 
 
 Nay, there is nothing we should rue, 
 
 I have my beauty, — you your Art, 
 
 Nay, do not start, 
 
 One world was not enough for two 
 
 Like me and you. 
 
MY VOICE. 
 
 Within this restless, hurried modern world 
 We took our hearts full pleasure — You and I, 
 
 And now the white sails of our ship are furled, 
 And spent the lading of our argosy. 
 
 Wherefor my cheeks before their time are wan, 
 For very weeping is my gladness fled, 
 
 Sorrow hath paled my lip's vermilion, 
 And Ruin draws the curtain of my bed. 
 
 But all this crowded life has been to thee 
 No more than lyre, or lute, or subtle spell 
 
 Of viols, or the music of the sea 
 
 That sleeps, a mimic echo, in the shell. 
 
HUMAN TIDE. 
 
 There was a time when any common bird 
 Could make me sing in unison, a time 
 
 When all the strings of boyish life were stirred 
 To quick response or more melodious rhyme 
 
 By every forest idyll; — do I change ? 
 
 Or rather doth some evil thing through thy fair 
 pleasaunce range ? 
 
 Thou art the same: 'tis I whose wretched soul 
 Takes discontent to be its paramour, 
 
 And gives its kingdom to the rude control 
 Of what should be its servitor, — for sure 
 
 Wisdom is somewhere, though the stormy sea 
 
 Contain it not, and the huge deep answer " 'Tis 
 not in me." 
 
 The minor chord which ends the harmony, 
 And for its answering brother waits in vain, 
 
 Sobbing for incompleted melody 
 
 Dies a Swan's death; but I the heir of pain 
 
 A silent Memnon with blank lidless eyes 
 
 Wait for the light and music of those suns 
 which never rise. 
 
More barren — ay, those arms will never lean 
 Down through the trellised vines and draw my 
 soul 
 In sweet reluctance through the tangled green; 
 
 Some other head must wear that aureole, 
 For I am Hers who loves not any man 
 Whose white and stainless bosom bears the 
 sign Gorgonian. 
 
 O for one grand unselfish simple life 
 
 To teach us what is Wisdom ! speak ye hills 
 Of lone Helvellyn, for this note of strife 
 Shunned your untroubled crags and crystal 
 rills, 
 Where is that spirit which living blamelessly 
 Yet dared to kiss the smitten mouth of his own 
 century ! 
 
rATKTniKPOS • EP02 
 
 Sweet I blame you not for mine the fault was, had 
 
 I not been made of common clay 
 I had climbed the higher heights unclimbed yet, 
 
 seen the fuller air, the larger day. 
 
 From the wildness of my wasted passion I had 
 
 struck a better, clearer song, 
 Lit some lighter light of freer freedom, battled with 
 
 some Hydra-headed wrong. 
 
 Had my lips been smitten into music by the kisses 
 
 that but made them bleed, 
 You had walked with Bice and the angels on that 
 
 verdant and enameled mead. 
 
 I had trod the road which Dante treading saw the 
 
 suns of seven circles shine, 
 Ay! perchance had seen the heavens opening, as 
 
 they opened to the Florentine. 
 
 And the mighty nations would have crowned me, 
 who am crownless now and without name, 
 
 And some orient dawn had found me kneeling on 
 the threshold of the House of Fame. 
 
 I had sat within that marble circle where the oldest 
 
 bard is as the young, 
 And the pipe is ever dropping honey, and the lyre's 
 
 strings are ever strung. 
 
Keats had lifted up his hymenasal curls from out 
 
 the poppy-seeded wine, 
 With ambrosial mouth had kissed my forehead, 
 
 clasped the hand of noble love in mine. 
 
 And at springtide, when the apple-blossoms brush 
 
 the burnished bosom of the dove, 
 Two young lovers lying in an orchard would have 
 
 read the story of our love. 
 
 Would have have read the legend of my passion, 
 know the bitter secret of my heart, 
 
 Kissed as we have kissed, but never parted as we 
 two are fated now to part. 
 
 For the crimson flower of our life is eaten by the 
 
 cankerworm of truth, 
 And no hand can gather up the fallen withered 
 
 petals of the rose of youth. 
 
 Yet I am not sorry that I loved you — ah ! what else 
 had I a boy to do, — 
 
 For the hungry teeth of time devour, and the silent- 
 footed years pursue. 
 
 Rudderless, we drift athwart a tempest, and when 
 
 once the storm of youth is past, 
 Without lyre, without lute or chorus, Death a silent 
 
 pilot comes at last. 
 
And within the grave there is no pleasure, for the 
 
 blind-worm battens on the root, 
 And Desire shudders into ashes, and the tree of 
 
 Passion bears no fruit. 
 
 Ah ! what else had I to do but love you, God's own 
 
 mother was less dear to me, 
 And less dear the Cytheraean rising like an argent 
 
 lily from the sea. 
 
 I have made my choice, have lived my poems, and, 
 though youth is gone in wasted days, 
 
 I have found the lover's crown of myrtle better than 
 the poet's crown of bays. 
 
TEDIUM VITJE. 
 
 To stab my youth with desperate knives, to wear 
 
 This paltry age's gaudy livery, 
 
 To let each base hand filch my treasury, 
 To mesh my soul within a woman's hair, 
 To be mere Fortune's lackeyed groom, — I swear 
 
 I love it not ! these things are less to me 
 
 Than the thin foam that frets upon the sea, 
 Less than the thistle-down of summer air 
 Which hath no seed: better to stand aloof 
 
 Far from these slanderous fools who mock my 
 life 
 Knowing me not, better the lowliest roof 
 
 Fit for the meanest hind to sojourn in, 
 Than to go back to that hoarse cave of strife 
 
 Where my white soul first kissed the mouth of 
 sin. 
 
APOLOGIA. 
 
 Is it thy will that I should wax and wane, 
 Barter my cloth of gold for hodden gray, 
 
 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, 
 
 And sorrow dig its grave within my heart. 
 
 Perchance it may be better so — at least 
 
 I have not made my heart a heart of stone, 
 
 Nor starved my boyhood of its goodly feast, 
 Nor walked where Beauty is a thing unknown. 
 
 Many a man hath done so; sought to fence 
 In straitened bonds the soul that should be free, 
 
 Trodden the dusty road of common sense, 
 While all the forest sang of liberty, 
 
 Not marking how the spotted hawk in flight 
 Passed on wide pinion through the lofty air, 
 
 To where the steep untrodden mountain height 
 Caught the last tresses of the Sun God's hair. 
 
Or how the little flower he trod upon, 
 
 The daisy, that white-feathered shield of gold, 
 
 Followed with wistful eyes the wandering sun 
 Content if once its leaves were aureoled. 
 
 But surely it is something to have been 
 
 The best beloved for a little while, 
 To have walked hand in hand with Love, and seen 
 
 His purple wings flit once across thy smile. 
 
 Ah ! though the gorged asp of passion feed 
 On my boy's heart, yet have I burst the bars, 
 
 Stood face to face with Beauty, known indeed 
 The Love which moves the Sun and all the stars ! 
 
; coll. by Oscar Hermann; 
 ed. by W. W. Massee. 'os(Di6) il. 8°, 
 ed. limited, *$s net. Brentano's. 
 
 Oscar Wade's autograph manuscripts of twelve 
 of his works brought a total of $3,460 at Sotheby's in 
 i„ London a few days ago. Nona 
 
 1 Oscar Wilde's of them was complete. The 
 1 Tardy Epigrams M ! «t Piece was sixty pages of 
 '%• * "The Soul of Man Under So- 
 
 cialism," which was published in The Fortnightly 
 Review. February, 1891. This was the copy used by 
 the printers and shows Wilde's method of composi- 
 tion. Many of the epigrams were evidently Uicorpor- 
 ated after the first draft of the article. The follow- 
 ing sentences, for example, were inserted: 
 
 There U only one class In the community that 
 tMnkTmore about money than the rich^ and that 
 isthV poor. The poor can think of nothing else, 
 That is the misery of being poor. 
 The following sentence was deleted: 
 
 With regard to the Bible • • * there m h ^ 
 always , senfed to me to be a conspiracy among 
 curates to conceal its beauty and a «°ff>d de- 
 termination amongst congregations not to notice 
 
 in thre* chapters of " Dorian Gray" the following 
 
 lBSe SSnMic people lose ^s*™°i* am& ? ity ' , 
 It is their totinguishing charac^enstic . 
 
 The way of paradoxes is the way "'"!"*• 
 
 telt realty oniW see it on the ^-«»* „ 
 
 An early draft of Wilde's poem, "The Sphinx 
 
 waf perhaps the most Interesting of all these manu 
 
 r,rip^T Many of the stanzas are incomplete; others 
 
 ™T supped -o.the J^^J^? * 
 
 I JS£ S ITU'S Z Phrase "^ *■*»" 
 .written ao ', occur the lines: 
 meZ zotinte • Th^e belted bees 
 
 ga^fheir ^ow *»»•**£; , 
 
 The stan ? a. which later on «J as^ows. 
 
 ^luVryou^a^Vreedy Nile, 
 l-^^^etr^eddeers 
 
 S?S«««^ ear 
 
 ZZZZ Pa's by Sarah Bernhardt.