Complete Works of Oscar Wilde

by Oscar Wilde

  Cuts the warm throats of children stealthily,

  And no word said: – O we are wretched men

  Unworthy of our great inheritance! where is the pen

  Of austere Milton? where the mighty sword

  Which slew its master righteously? the years

  Have lost their ancient leader, and no word

  Breaks from the voiceless tripod on our ears:

  While as a ruined mother in some spasm

  Bears a base child and loathes it, so our best enthusiasm

  Genders unlawful children, Anarchy

  Freedom’s own Judas, the vile prodigal

  Licence who steals the gold of Liberty

  And yet has nothing, Ignorance the real

  One Fratricide since Cain, Envy the asp

  That stings itself to anguish, Avarice whose palsied grasp

  Is in its extent stiffened, moneyed Greed

  For whose dull appetite men waste away

  Amid the whirr of wheels and are the seed

  Of things which slay their sower, these each day

  Sees rife in England, and the gentle feet

  Of Beauty tread no more the stones of each unlovely street.

  What even Cromwell spared is desecrated

  By the weed and worm, left to the stormy play

  Of wind and beating snow, or renovated

  By more destructful hands: Time’s worst decay

  Will wreathe its ruins with some loveliness,

  But these new Vandals can but make a rainproof barrenness.

  Where is that Art which bade the Angels sing

  Through Lincoln’s lofty choir, till the air

  Seems from such marble harmonies to ring

  With sweeter song than common lips can dare

  To draw from actual reed? Ah! where is now

  The cunning hand which made the flowering hawthorn branches bow

  For Southwell’s arch, and carved the House of One

  Who loved the lilies of the field with all

  Our dearest English flowers? the same sun

  Rises for us: the seasons natural

  Weave the same tapestry of green and grey:

  The unchanged hills are with us: but that Spirit hath passed away.

  And yet perchance it may be better so,

  For Tyranny is an incestuous Queen,

  Murder her brother is her bedfellow,

  And the Plague chambers with her: in obscene

  And bloody paths her treacherous feet are set;

  Better the empty desert and a soul inviolate!

  For gentle brotherhood, the harmony

  Of living in the healthful air, the swift

  Clean beauty of strong limbs when men are free

  And women chaste, these are the things which lift

  Our souls up more than even Agnolo’s

  Gaunt blinded Sibyl poring o’er the scroll of human woes,

  Or Titian’s little maiden on the stair

  White as her own sweet lily and as tall,

  Or Mona Lisa smiling through her hair, –

  Ah! Somehow life is bigger after all

  Than any painted Angel, could we see

  The God that is within us! the old Greek serenity

  Which curbs the passion of that level line

  Of marble youths, who with untroubled eyes

  And chastened limbs ride round Athena’s shrine

  And mirror her divine economies,

  And balanced symmetry of what in man

  Would else wage ceaseless warfare, – this at least within the span

  Between our mother’s kisses and the grave

  Might so inform our lives, that we could win

  Such mighty empires that from her cave

  Temptation would grow hoarse, and pallid Sin

  Would walk ashamed of his adulteries,

  And Passion creep from out the House of Lust with startled eyes.

  To make the Body and the Spirit one

  With all right things, till no thing live in vain

  From morn to noon, but in sweet unison

  With every pulse of flesh and throb of brain

  The soul in flawless essence high enthroned,

  Against all outer vain attack invincibly bastioned,

  Mark with serene impartiality

  The strife of things, and yet be comforted,

  Knowing that by the chain causality

  All separate existences are wed

  Into one supreme whole, whose utterance

  Is joy, or holier praise! Ah! surely this were governance

  Of Life in most august omnipresence,

  Through which the rational intellect would find

  In passion its expression, and mere sense,

  Ignoble else, lend fire to the mind,

  And being joined with it in harmony

  More mystical than that which binds the stars planetary,

  Strike form their several tones one octave chord

  Whose cadence being measureless would fly

  Through all the circling spheres, then to its Lord

  Return refreshed with its new empery

  And more exultant power, – this indeed

  Could we but reach it were to find the last, the perfect creed

  Ah! it was easy when the world was young

  To keep one’s life free and inviolate,

  From our sad lips another song is rung,

  By our hands our heads are desecrate,

  Wanderers in drear exile, and dispossessed

  Of what should be our own, we can but feed on wild unrest.

  Somehow the grace, the bloom of things has flown,

  And of all men we are most wretched who

  Must live each other’s lives and not our own

  For very pity’s sake and then undo

  All that we lived for – it was otherwise

  When soul and body seemed to blend in mystic symphonies.

  But we have left those gentle haunts to pass

  With weary feet to the new Calvary,

  Where we behold, as one who in a glass

  Sees his own face, self-slain Humanity,

  And in the dumb reproach of that sad gaze

  Learn what an awful phantom the red hand of man can raise.

  O smitten mouth! O forehead crowned with thorn!

  O chalice of all common miseries!

  Thou for our sakes that loved thee not hast borne

  An agony of endless centuries,

  And we were vain and ignorant nor knew

  That when we stabbed thy heart it was our own real hearts we slew.

  Being ourselves the sowers and the seeds,

  The night that covers and the lights that fade,

  The spear that pierces and the side that bleeds,

  The lips betraying and the life betrayed;

  The deep hath calm: the moon hath rest: but we

  Lords of the natural world are yet our own dread enemy.

  Is this the end of all that primal force

  Which, in its changes being still the same,

  From eyeless Chaos cleft its upward course,

  Through ravenous seas and whirling rocks and flame,

  Till the suns met in heaven and began

  Their cycles, and the morning stars sang, and the Word was Man!

  Nay, nay, we are but crucified, and though

  The bloody sweat falls from our brows like rain,

  Loosen the nails – we shall come down I know,

  Staunch the red wounds – we shall be whole again,

  No need have we of hyssop-laden rod,

  That which is purely human, that is Godlike, that is God.

  ATHANASIA

  To that gaunt House of Art which lacks for naught

  Of all the great things men have saved from Time,

  The withered body of a girl was brought

  Dead ere the world’s glad youth had touched its prime,

  And seen by lonely Arabs lying hid />
  In the dim womb of some black pyramid.

  But when they had unloosed the lined band

  Which swathed the Egyptian’s body, – lo! was found

  Closed in the wasted hollow of her hand

  A little seed, which sown in English ground

  Did wondrous snow of starry blossoms bear

  And spread rich odours through our spring-tide air.

  With such strange arts this flower did allure

  That all forgotten was the asphodel,

  And the brown bee, the lily’s paramour,

  Forsook the cup where he was wont to dwell,

  For not a thing of earth it seemed to be,

  But stolen from some heavenly Arcady.

  In vain the sad narcissus, wan and white

  At its own beauty, hung across the stream,

  The purple dragon-fly had no delight

  With its gold dust to make his wings a-gleam,

  Ah! no delight the jasmine-bloom to kiss,

  Or brush the rain-pearls from the eucharis.

  For love of it the passionate nightingale

  Forgot the hills of Thrace, the cruel king,

  And the pale dove no longer cared to sail

  Through the wet woods at time of blossoming,

  But round this flower of Egypt sought to float,

  With silvered wing and amethystine throat.

  While the hot sun blazed in his tower of blue

  A cooling wind crept from the land of snows,

  And the warm south with tender tears of dew

  Drenched its white leaves when Hesperos up-rose

  Amid those sea-green meadows of the sky

  On which the scarlet bars of sunset lie.

  But when o’er wastes of lily-haunted field

  The tired birds had stayed their amorous tune,

  And broad and glittering like an argent shield

  High in the sapphire heavens hung the moon,

  Did no strange dream or evil memory make

  Each tremulous petal of its blossoms shake?

  Ah no! to this bright flower a thousand years

  Seemed but the lingering of a summer’s day,

  It never knew the tide of cankering fears

  Which turn a boy’s gold hair to withered grey,

  The dread desire of death it never knew,

  Or how all folk that they were born must rue.

  For we to death with pipe and dancing go,

  Now would we pass the ivory gate again,

  As some sad river wearied of its flow

  Through the dull plains, the haunts of common men,

  Leaps lover-like into the terrible sea!

  And counts it gain to die so gloriously.

  We mar our lordly strength in barren strife

  With the world’s legions led by clamorous care,

  It never feels decay but gathers life

  From the pure sunlight and the supreme air,

  We live beneath Time’s wasting sovereignty,

  It is the child of all eternity.

  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!

  Or didst thou rule the fire-laden moon?

  In amorous Sidon was thy temple built

  Over the light and laughter of the sea

  Where, behind lattice scarlet-wrought and gilt,

  Some brown-limbed girl did weave thee tapestry

  All through the waste and wearied hours of noon;

  Till her wan cheek with flame of passion burned,

  And she rose up the sea-washed lips to kiss

  Of some glad Cyprian sailor, safe returned

  From Calpé and the cliffs of Herakles!

  No! Thou art Helen, and none other one!

  It was for thee that young Sarpedôn died,

  And Memnôn’s manhood was untimely spent;

  It was for thee gold-crested Hector tried

  With Thetis’ child that evil race to run,

  In the last year of thy beleaguerment;

  Ay! Even now the glory of thy fame

  Burns in those fields of trampled asphodel,

  Where the high lords whom Ilion knew so well

  Clash ghostly shields, and call upon thy name.

  Where hast thou been? In that enchanted land

  Whose slumbering vales forlorn Calypso knew,

  Where never mower rose at break of day

  But all unswathed the trammelling grasses grew,

  And the sad shepherd saw the tall corn stand

  Till summer’s red had changed to withered grey?

  Didst thou lie there by some Lethaean stream

  Deep brooding on thine ancient memory,

  The crash of broken spears, the fiery gleam

  From shivered helm, the Grecian battle-cry?

  Nay, thou wert hidden in that hollow hill

  With one who is forgotten utterly,

  That discrowned Queen men call the Erycine;

  Hidden away that never mightst thou see

  The face of Her, before whose mouldering shrine

  To-day at Rome the silent nations kneel;

  Who gat from Love no joyous gladdening,

  But only Love’s intolerable pain,

  Only a sword to pierce her heart in twain,

  Only the bitterness of child-bearing.

  The lotus-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.

  Alas, alas, thou wilt not tarry here,

  But, like that bird, the servant of the sun,

  Who flies before the north wind and the night,

  So wilt thou fly our evil land and drear,

  Back to the tower of thine old delight,

  And the red lips of young Euphorion;

  Nor shall I ever see thy face again,

  But in this poisonous garden – close must stay,

  Crowning my brows with the thorn-crown of pain,

  Till all my loveless life shall pass away.

  O Helen! Helen! Helen! yet a while,

  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 splendour 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 skies,

  And waked the shepherds on thine island-home.

  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 eterna
l sleep.

  Lily of love, pure and inviolate!

  Tower of ivory! Red rose of fire!

  Thou hast come down our darkness to illume:

  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.

  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 no 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 labouring moon.