Read Delphi Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (Illustrated) Online
Authors: OSCAR WILDE
Delphi Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (Illustrated) (81 page)
From the wan mouths that call on bleeding Thammuz all night long.
But when the doves had reached their wonted goal
Where the wide stair of orbed marble dips
Its snows into the sea, her fluttering soul
Just shook the trembling petals of her lips
And passed into the void, and Venus knew
That one fair maid the less would walk amid her retinue,
And bade her servants carve a cedar chest
With all the wonder of this history,
Within whose scented womb their limbs should rest
Where olive-trees make tender the blue sky
On the low hills of Paphos, and the fawn
Pipes in the noonday, and the nightingale sings on till dawn.
Nor failed they to obey her hest, and ere
The morning bee had stung the daffodil
With tiny fretful spear, or from its lair
The waking stag had leapt across the rill
And roused the ousel, or the lizard crept
Athwart the sunny rock, beneath the grass their bodies slept.
And when day brake, within that silver shrine
Fed by the flames of cressets tremulous,
Queen Venus knelt and prayed to Proserpine
That she whose beauty made Death amorous
Should beg a guerdon from her pallid Lord,
And let desire pass across dread Charon’s icy ford.
III
In melancholy moonless Acheron,
Far from the goodly earth and joyous day,
Where no spring ever buds, nor ripening sun
Weighs down the apple trees, nor flowery May
Checkers with chestnut blooms the grassy floor,
Where thrushes never sing, and piping linnets mate no more,
There by a dim and dark Lethaean well,
Young Charmides was lying wearily
He plucked the blossoms from the asphodel,
And with its little rifled treasury
Strewed the dull waters of the dusky stream,
And watched the white stars founder, and the land was like a dream.
When as he gazed into the watery glass
And through his brown hair’s curly tangles scanned
His own wan face, a shadow seemed to pass
Across the mirror, and a little hand
Stole into his, and warm lips timidly
Brushed his pale cheeks, and breathed their secret forth into a sigh.
Then turned he around his weary eyes and saw,
And ever nigher still their faces came,
And nigher ever did their young mouths draw
Until they seemed one perfect rose of flame,
And longing arms around her neck he cast,
And felt her throbbing bosom, and his breath came hot and fast,
And all his hoarded sweets were hers to kiss,
And all her maidenhood was his to slay,
And limb to limb in long and rapturous bliss
Their passion waxed and waned, — O why essay
To pipe again of love too venturous reed!
Enough, enough that Eros laughed upon that flowerless mead,
Too venturous poesy O why essay
To pipe again of passion! fold thy wings
O’er daring Icarus and bid thy lay
Sleep hidden in the lyre’s silent strings,
Till thou hast found the old Castilian rill,
Or from the Lesbian waters plucked drowned Sappho’s golden quill!
Enough, enough that he whose life had been
A fiery pulse of sin, a splendid shame,
Could in the loveless land of Hades glean
One scorching harvest from those fields of flame
Where passion walks with naked unshod feet
And is not wounded, — ah! enough that once their lips could meet
In that wild throb when all existences
Seem narrowed to one single ecstasy
Which dies through its own sweetness and the stress
Of too much pleasure, ere Persephone
Had made them serve her by the ebon throne
Of the pale God who in the fields of Enna loosed her zone.
Sonnet to Liberty
Not that I love thy children, whose dull eyes
See nothing save their own unlovely woe,
Whose minds know nothing, nothing care to know, —
But that the roar of thy Democracies,
Thy reigns of Terror, thy great Anarchies,
Mirror my wildest passions like the sea,
And give my rage a brother-! Liberty!
For his sake only do thy dissonant cries
Delight my discreet soul, else might all kings
By bloody knout or treacherous cannonades
Rob nations of their rights inviolate
And I remain unmoved — and yet, and yet,
These Christs that die upon the barricades,
God knows it I am with them, in some things.
Surely to me the world is all too drear,
To shape my sorrow to a tuneful strain,
It is enough for wearied ears to hear
The Passion-Music of a fevered brain,
Or low complainings of a heart’s pain.
My saddened soul is out of tune with time,
Nor have I care to set the crooked straight,
Or win green laurels for some pleasant rhyme,
Only with tired eyes I sit and wait,
Until the opening of the Future’s Mystic Gate.
I am so tired of all the busy throng
That chirp and chatter in the noisy street,
That I would sit alone and sing no song
But listen for the coming of Love’s feet.
Love is a pleasant messenger to greet.
O Love come close before the hateful day,
And tarry not until the night is dead,
O Love come quickly, for although one pray,
What has God ever given in thy stead
But dust and ashes for the head?
Strain, strain O longing eyes till Love is near;
O Heart be ready for his entering thee,
O Breaking Heart be free from doubt and fear,
For when Love comes he cometh gloriously,
And entering love is very fair to see.
Peace, Peace O breaking heart, Love comes apace,
And surely great delight and gladness brings,
Now look at last upon his shining face,
And listen to the flying of his wings
And the sweet voice of Love that sings.
O pale moon shining fair and clear
Between the apple-blossoms white,
That cluster round my window here,
Why does Love tarry in his flight
And not come near for my heart’s delight –
I only hear the sighing of the breeze
That makes complaint in a sweet undertune,
I only see the blossom-laden trees
Splintering the arrows of the golden moon,
That turns black night into the burnished noon.
Magdalen College, Oxford
Have your forgotten the ship love
I made as a childish toy,
When you were a little girl love,
And I was a little boy?
Ah! never in all the fleet love
Such a beautiful ship was seen,
For the sides were painted blue love
And the deck was yellow and green.
I carved a wonderful mast love
From my Father’s Sunday stick,
You cut up your one good dress love
That the sail should be of silk.
And I launched it on the pond love
And I called it after you,
And for the want of the bottle of wine love
We christened it with the dew.
And we put your doll on board love
With a cargo of chocolate cream,
But the little ship struck on a cork love
And the doll went down with a scream!
It is forty years since then love
And your hair is silver grey,
And we sit in our old armchairs love
And we watch our children play.
And I have a wooden leg love
And the title of K. C. B.
For bringing Her Majesty’s Fleet love
Over the stormy sea.
But I’ve never forgotten the ship love
I made as a childish toy
When you were a little girl love
And I was a sailor boy.
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.
The brazen-throated clarion blows
Across the Pathan’s reedy fen,
And the high steeps of Indian snows
Shake to the tread of armed men.
And many an Afghan chief, who lies
Beneath his cool pomegranate-trees,
Clutches his sword in fierce surmise
When on the mountain-side he sees
The fleet-foot Marri scout, who comes
To tell how he hath heard afar
The measured roll of English drums
Beat at the gates of Kandahar.
For southern wind and east wind meet
Where, girt and crowned by sword and fire,
England with bare and bloody feet
Climbs the steep road of wide empire.
O lonely Himalayan height,
Gray pillar of the Indian sky,
Where saw’st thou last in clanging fight,
Our winged dogs of Victory?
The almond groves of Samarcand,
Bokhara, where red lilies blow,
And Oxus, by whose yellow sand
The grave white-turbaned merchants go:
And on from thence to Ispahan,
The gilded garden of the sun,
Whence the long dusty caravan
Brings cedar and vermilion;
And that dread city of Cabool
Set at the mountain’s scarped feet,
Whose marble tanks are ever full
With water for the noon-day heat:
Where through the narrow straight Bazaar
A little maid Circassian
Is led, a present from the Czar
Unto some old and bearded khan, —
Here have our wild war-eagles flown,
And flapped wide wings in fiery fight;
But the sad dove, that sits alone
In England — she hath no delight.
In vain the laughing girl will lean
To greet her love with love-lit eyes:
Down in some treacherous black ravine,
Clutching his flag, the dead boy lies.
And many a moon and sun will see
The lingering wistful children wait
To climb upon their father’s knee;
And in each house made desolate
Pale women who have lost their lord
Will kiss the relics of the slain —
Some tarnished epaulet — some sword —
Poor toys to soothe such anguished pain.
For not in quiet English fields
Are these, our brothers, laid to rest.
Where we might deck their broken shields
With all the flowers the dead love best.
For some are by the Delhi walls,
And many in the Afghan land,
And many where the Ganges falls
Through seven mouths of shifting sand.
And some in Russian waters lie,
And others in the seas which are
The portals to the East, or by
The wind-swept heights of Trafalgar.
O wandering graves! O restless sleep!
O silence of the sunless day!
O still ravine! O stormy deep!
Give up your prey! Give up your prey!
And thou whose wounds are never healed,
Whose weary race is never won,
O Cromwell’s England! must thou yield
For every inch of ground a son?
Go! crown with thorns thy gold-crowned head,
Change thy glad song to song of pain;
Wind and wild wave have got thy dead,
And will not yield them back again.
Wave and wild wind and foreign shore
Possess the flower of English land —
Lips that thy lips shall kiss no more,
Hands that shall never clasp thy hand.
What profit now that we have bound
The whole round world with net 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 decry from far
The young Republic like a sun
Rise from these crimson seas of war.
Milton! I think thy spirit hath passed away
From these white cliffs, and high embattled-towers;
This gorgeous fiery-colored world of ours
Seems fallen into ashes dull and gray,
And the age changed unto a mimic play,
Wherein we waste our else too-crowded hours:
For all our pomp and pageantry and powers
We are but fit to delve the common clay,
Seeing this little isle on which we stand,
This England, this sea-lion of the sea,
By ignorant demagogues is held in fee,
Who love her not: Dear God! is this the land
Which bare a triple empire in her hand
When Cromwell spake the word Democracy!
Eagle of Austerlitz! where were thy wings
When far away upon a barbarous strand,
In fight unequal, by an obscure hand,
Fell the last scion of thy brood of Kings!
Poor boy! thou wilt not flaunt thy cloak of red,
Nor ride in state through Paris in the van
Of thy returning legions, but instead
Thy mother France, free and republican,
Shall on thy dead and crownless forehead place
The better laurels of a soldier’s crown,
That not dishonored should thy soul go down
To tell the mighty Sire of thy race
That France hath kissed the mouth of Liberty,
And found it sweeter than his honeyed bees,
And that the giant wave Democracy
Breaks on the shores where Kings lay couched at ease.