Poems by Oscar Wilde

Author:Oscar Wilde
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ManyBooks.net

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! hadst 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!

Poem: Silentium Amoris

As often-times the too resplendent sun

Hurries the pallid and reluctant moon

Back to her sombre 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.

Poem: 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 a 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

Will find a harbour 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.

Poem: 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.

Wherefore my cheeks before their time are wan,

For very weeping is my gladness fled,

Sorrow has paled my young mouth's vermilion,

And Ruin draws the curtains 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.

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