All trials are trials for one's life, just as all
sentences
are sentences
of death; and three times have I been tried.
of death; and three times have I been tried.
Oscar Wilde - Poetry
The vineyard-dresser wreathed his hair
with ivy that he might keep off the rays of the sun as he stooped over
the young shoots, and for the artist and the athlete, the two types that
Greece gave us, they plaited with garlands the leaves of the bitter
laurel and of the wild parsley, which else had been of no service to men.
We call ours a utilitarian age, and we do not know the uses of any single
thing. We have forgotten that water can cleanse, and fire purify, and
that the Earth is mother to us all. As a consequence our art is of the
moon and plays with shadows, while Greek art is of the sun and deals
directly with things. I feel sure that in elemental forces there is
purification, and I want to go back to them and live in their presence.
Of course to one so modern as I am, 'Enfant de mon siecle,' merely to
look at the world will be always lovely. I tremble with pleasure when I
think that on the very day of my leaving prison both the laburnum and the
lilac will be blooming in the gardens, and that I shall see the wind stir
into restless beauty the swaying gold of the one, and make the other toss
the pale purple of its plumes, so that all the air shall be Arabia for
me. Linnaeus fell on his knees and wept for joy when he saw for the
first time the long heath of some English upland made yellow with the
tawny aromatic brooms of the common furze; and I know that for me, to
whom flowers are part of desire, there are tears waiting in the petals of
some rose. It has always been so with me from my boyhood. There is not
a single colour hidden away in the chalice of a flower, or the curve of a
shell, to which, by some subtle sympathy with the very soul of things, my
nature does not answer. Like Gautier, I have always been one of those
'pour qui le monde visible existe. '
Still, I am conscious now that behind all this beauty, satisfying though
it may be, there is some spirit hidden of which the painted forms and
shapes are but modes of manifestation, and it is with this spirit that I
desire to become in harmony. I have grown tired of the articulate
utterances of men and things. The Mystical in Art, the Mystical in Life,
the Mystical in Nature this is what I am looking for. It is absolutely
necessary for me to find it somewhere.
All trials are trials for one's life, just as all sentences are sentences
of death; and three times have I been tried. The first time I left the
box to be arrested, the second time to be led back to the house of
detention, the third time to pass into a prison for two years. Society,
as we have constituted it, will have no place for me, has none to offer;
but Nature, whose sweet rains fall on unjust and just alike, will have
clefts in the rocks where I may hide, and secret valleys in whose silence
I may weep undisturbed. She will hang the night with stars so that I may
walk abroad in the darkness without stumbling, and send the wind over my
footprints so that none may track me to my hurt: she will cleanse me in
great waters, and with bitter herbs make me whole.
POEMS
BY
OSCAR WILDE
WITH THE BALLAD OF
READING GAOL
* * * * *
METHUEN & CO. LTD.
36 ESSEX STREET W. C.
LONDON
_Twelfth Edition_
_First Published_--
_Ravenna_ _1878_
_Poems_ _1881_
,, _Fifth Edition_ _1882_
_The Sphinx_ _1894_
_The Ballad of Reading Gaol_ _1898_
_First Issued by Methuen and Co. _ (_Limited _March 1908_
Editions on Handmade Paper and Japanese Vellum_)
_Seventh Edition_ (_F'cap. 8vo_). _September 1909_
_Eighth Edition_ ( ,, ,, ) _November 1909_
_Ninth Edition_ ( ,, ,, ) _December 1909_
_Tenth Edition_ ( ,, ,, ) _November 1910_
_Eleventh Edition_ ( ,, ,, ) _December 1911_
_Twelfth Edition_ ( ,, ,, ) _April 1913_
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_, '_Desespoir_' _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_.
with ivy that he might keep off the rays of the sun as he stooped over
the young shoots, and for the artist and the athlete, the two types that
Greece gave us, they plaited with garlands the leaves of the bitter
laurel and of the wild parsley, which else had been of no service to men.
We call ours a utilitarian age, and we do not know the uses of any single
thing. We have forgotten that water can cleanse, and fire purify, and
that the Earth is mother to us all. As a consequence our art is of the
moon and plays with shadows, while Greek art is of the sun and deals
directly with things. I feel sure that in elemental forces there is
purification, and I want to go back to them and live in their presence.
Of course to one so modern as I am, 'Enfant de mon siecle,' merely to
look at the world will be always lovely. I tremble with pleasure when I
think that on the very day of my leaving prison both the laburnum and the
lilac will be blooming in the gardens, and that I shall see the wind stir
into restless beauty the swaying gold of the one, and make the other toss
the pale purple of its plumes, so that all the air shall be Arabia for
me. Linnaeus fell on his knees and wept for joy when he saw for the
first time the long heath of some English upland made yellow with the
tawny aromatic brooms of the common furze; and I know that for me, to
whom flowers are part of desire, there are tears waiting in the petals of
some rose. It has always been so with me from my boyhood. There is not
a single colour hidden away in the chalice of a flower, or the curve of a
shell, to which, by some subtle sympathy with the very soul of things, my
nature does not answer. Like Gautier, I have always been one of those
'pour qui le monde visible existe. '
Still, I am conscious now that behind all this beauty, satisfying though
it may be, there is some spirit hidden of which the painted forms and
shapes are but modes of manifestation, and it is with this spirit that I
desire to become in harmony. I have grown tired of the articulate
utterances of men and things. The Mystical in Art, the Mystical in Life,
the Mystical in Nature this is what I am looking for. It is absolutely
necessary for me to find it somewhere.
All trials are trials for one's life, just as all sentences are sentences
of death; and three times have I been tried. The first time I left the
box to be arrested, the second time to be led back to the house of
detention, the third time to pass into a prison for two years. Society,
as we have constituted it, will have no place for me, has none to offer;
but Nature, whose sweet rains fall on unjust and just alike, will have
clefts in the rocks where I may hide, and secret valleys in whose silence
I may weep undisturbed. She will hang the night with stars so that I may
walk abroad in the darkness without stumbling, and send the wind over my
footprints so that none may track me to my hurt: she will cleanse me in
great waters, and with bitter herbs make me whole.
POEMS
BY
OSCAR WILDE
WITH THE BALLAD OF
READING GAOL
* * * * *
METHUEN & CO. LTD.
36 ESSEX STREET W. C.
LONDON
_Twelfth Edition_
_First Published_--
_Ravenna_ _1878_
_Poems_ _1881_
,, _Fifth Edition_ _1882_
_The Sphinx_ _1894_
_The Ballad of Reading Gaol_ _1898_
_First Issued by Methuen and Co. _ (_Limited _March 1908_
Editions on Handmade Paper and Japanese Vellum_)
_Seventh Edition_ (_F'cap. 8vo_). _September 1909_
_Eighth Edition_ ( ,, ,, ) _November 1909_
_Ninth Edition_ ( ,, ,, ) _December 1909_
_Tenth Edition_ ( ,, ,, ) _November 1910_
_Eleventh Edition_ ( ,, ,, ) _December 1911_
_Twelfth Edition_ ( ,, ,, ) _April 1913_
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_, '_Desespoir_' _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_.
