Poems, with The Ballad of Reading Gaol. Wilde Oscar

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      Poems, with The Ballad of Reading Gaol

NOTE

      This collection of Wilde’s Poems contains the volume of 1881 in its entirety, ‘The Sphinx’, ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol,’ and ‘Ravenna.’ Of the Uncollected Poems published in the Uniform Edition of 1908, a few, including the Translations from the Greek and the Polish, are omitted. Two new poems, ‘Désespoir’ and ‘Pan,’ which I have recently discovered in manuscript, are now printed for the first time. Particulars as to the original publication of each poem will be found in ‘A Bibliography of the Poems of Oscar Wilde,’ by Stuart Mason, London 1907.

Robert Ross.

      POEMS

      HÉLAS!

      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 and 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?

      ELEUTHERIA

      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 this 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.

      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 stars 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 armèd 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,

         Grey pillar of the Indian sky,

      Where saw’st thou last in clanging flight

         Our wingèd 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 wood and vermilion;

      And that dread city of Cabool

         Set at the mountain’s scarpèd feet,

      Whose marble tanks are ever full

         With water for the noonday 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 epaulette – some sword —

         Poor toys to soothe such anguished pain.

      For not in quiet