Poems by Oscar Wilde Part 12

TO SARAH BERNHARDT

HOW vain and dull this common world must seem To such a One as thou, who should'st have talked At Florence with Mirandola, or walked Through the cool olives of the Academe: Thou should'st have gathered reeds from a green stream For Goat-foot Pan's shrill piping, and have played With the white girls in that Phaeacian glade Where grave Odysseus wakened from his dream.

Ah! surely once some urn of Attic clay Held thy wan dust, and thou hast come again Back to this common world so dull and vain, For thou wert weary of the sunless day, The heavy fields of scentless asphodel, The loveless lips with which men kiss in h.e.l.l.

WRITTEN AT THE LYCEUM THEATRE

I PORTIA

TO ELLEN TERRY

I MARVEL not Ba.s.sanio was so bold To peril all he had upon the lead, Or that proud Aragon bent low his head Or that Morocco's fiery heart grew cold: For in that gorgeous dress of beaten gold Which is more golden than the golden sun No woman Veronese looked upon Was half so fair as thou whom I behold.

Yet fairer when with wisdom as your s.h.i.+eld The sober-suited lawyer's gown you donned, And would not let the laws of Venice yield Antonio's heart to that accursed Jew- O Portia! take my heart: it is thy due: I think I will not quarrel with the Bond.

II QUEEN HENRIETTA MARIA

TO ELLEN TERRY

IN the lone tent, waiting for victory, She stands with eyes marred by the mists of pain, Like some wan lily overdrenched with rain: The clamorous clang of arms, the ensanguined sky, War's ruin, and the wreck of chivalry To her proud soul no common fear can bring: Bravely she tarrieth for her Lord the King, Her soul a-flame with pa.s.sionate ecstasy.

O Hair of Gold! O Crimson Lips! O Face Made for the luring and the love of man!

With thee I do forget the toil and stress, The loveless road that knows no resting place, Time's straitened pulse, the soul's dread weariness, My freedom, and my life republican!

III CAMMA

TO ELLEN TERRY

AS one who poring on a Grecian urn Scans the fair shapes some Attic hand hath made, G.o.d with slim G.o.ddess, goodly man with maid, And for their beauty's sake is loth to turn And face the obvious day, must I not yearn For many a secret moon of indolent bliss, When in midmost shrine of Artemis I see thee standing, antique-limbed, and stern?

And yet-methinks I'd rather see thee play That serpent of old Nile, whose witchery Made Emperors drunken,-come, great Egypt, shake Our stage with all thy mimic pageants! Nay, I am grown sick of unreal pa.s.sions, make The world thine Actium, me thine Anthony!

PANTHEA

NAY, let us walk from fire unto fire, From pa.s.sionate 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 no reply was told.

For, sweet, to feel is better than to know, And wisdom is a childless heritage, One pulse of pa.s.sion-youth's first fiery glow,- Are worth the h.o.a.rded 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 labouring 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 G.o.ds will give nought else from their eternal store.

For our high G.o.ds have sick and wearied grown Of all our endless sins, our vain endeavour 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 will.

They sit at ease, our G.o.ds they sit at ease, Strewing with leaves of rose their scented wine, They sleep, they sleep, beneath the rocking trees Where asphodel and yellow lotus twine, Mourning the old glad days before they knew What evil things the heart of man could dream, and dreaming do.

And far beneath the brazen floor they see Like swarming flies the crowd of little men, The bustle of small lives, then wearily Back to their lotus-haunts they turn again Kissing each others' mouths, and mix more deep The poppy-seeded draught which brings soft purple-lidded sleep.

There all day long the golden-vestured sun, Their torch-bearer, stands with his torch ablaze, And, when the gaudy web of noon is spun By its twelve maidens, through the crimson haze Fresh from Endymion's arms comes forth the moon, And the immortal G.o.ds in toils of mortal pa.s.sions swoon.

There walks Queen Juno through some dewy mead, Her grand white feet flecked with the saffron dust Of wind-stirred lilies, while young Ganymede Leaps in the hot and amber-foaming must, His curls all tossed, as when the eagle bare The frightened boy from Ida through the blue Ionian air.

There in the green heart of some garden close Queen Venus with the shepherd at her side, Her warm soft body like the briar rose Which would be white yet blushes at its pride, Laughs low for love, till jealous Salmacis Peers through the myrtle-leaves and sighs for pain of lonely bliss.

There never does that dreary north-wind blow Which leaves our English forests bleak and bare, Nor ever falls the swift white-feathered snow, Nor ever doth the red-toothed lightning dare To wake them in the silver-fretted night When we lie weeping for some sweet sad sin, some dead delight.

Alas! they know the far Lethaean 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 souls, and anodyne.

But we oppress our natures, G.o.d 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 infinite crime.

O we are wearied 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; G.o.d sleeps: and heaven is high: One fiery-coloured moment: one great love; and lo! we die.

Ah! but no ferry-man with labouring pole Nears his black shallop to the flowerless strand, No little coin of bronze can bring the soul Over Death's river to the sunless land, Victim and wine and vow are all in vain, The tomb is sealed; the soldiers watch; the dead rise not again.

We are resolved into the supreme air, We are made one with what we touch and see, With our heart's blood each crimson sun is fair, With our young lives each spring-impa.s.sioned tree Flames into green, the wildest beasts that range The moor our kinsmen are, all life is one, and all is change.

With beat of systole and of diastole One grand great life throbs through earth's giant heart, And mighty waves of single Being roll From nerveless germ to man, for we are part Of every rock and bird and beast and hill, One with the things that prey on us, and one with what we kill.

From lower cells of waking life we pa.s.s To full perfection; thus the world grows old: We who are G.o.dlike now were once a ma.s.s Of quivering purple flecked with bars of gold, Unsentient or of joy or misery, And tossed in terrible tangles of some wild and wind-swept sea.

This hot hard flame with which our bodies burn Will make some meadow blaze with daffodil, Ay! and those argent b.r.e.a.s.t.s of thine will turn To water-lilies; 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 hyacinth's first bell, The man's last pa.s.sion, 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 pa.s.sions hymeneal, The yellow b.u.t.tercups that shake for 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.

So when men bury us beneath the yew Thy crimson-stained mouth a rose will be, And thy soft eyes lush bluebells dimmed with dew, And when the white narcissus wantonly Kisses the wind its playmate some faint joy Will thrill our dust, and we will be again fond maid and boy.

And thus without life's conscious torturing pain In some sweet flower we will feel the sun, And from the linnet's throat will sing again, And as two gorgeous-mailed snakes will run Over our graves, or as two tigers creep Through the hot jungle where the yellow-eyed huge lions sleep

And give them battle! How my heart leaps up To think of that grand living after death In beast and bird and flower, when this cup, Being filled too full of spirit, bursts for breath, And with the pale leaves of some autumn day The soul earth's earliest conqueror becomes earth's last great prey.

O think of it! We shall inform ourselves Into all sensuous life, the goat-foot Faun, The Centaur, or the merry bright-eyed Elves That leave their dancing rings to spite the dawn Upon the meadows, shall not be more near Than you and I to nature's mysteries, for we shall hear

The thrush's heart beat, and the daisies grow, And the wan snowdrop sighing for the sun On sunless days in winter, we shall know By whom the silver gossamer is spun, Who paints the diapered fritillaries, On what wide wings from s.h.i.+vering pine to pine the eagle flies.

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-fas.h.i.+oned earth less fair, That we are nature's heritors, and one With every pulse of life that beats the air?