OSCAR WILDE   (1854-1900)

The Dole of the King's Daughter
Santa Decca
La Bella Donna Della Mia Mente
Chanson
Endymion
In the Forest
The Sphinx

Oscar Wilde was born into a prominent and eccentric Irish family. His father, Sir William Wilde, was a physician specializing in the treatment of the eye and ear as well as an amateur Egyptologist. His mother, Lady Wilde, wrote popular poems and articles advocating Irish nationalism under the pseudonym "Speranza" ("Hope"). Wilde attended Trinity College, Dublin, and received a scholarship to Magdalen College, Oxford, where he distinguished himself academically and won the Newdigate Prize in poetry. At Oxford, he came under the influence of the art critic Walter Pater, whose writings led Wilde to formulate an aesthetic creed that emphasized the importance of art and the preeminence of the beautiful. After graduating from college, he moved to London and became the most visible exponent of aestheticism, walking through the streets of the city dressed in flowing garb that contrasted strangely with the staid dress of the standard Victorian gentleman. Before publishing a single work, he became notorious for his appearance and manner, which were mocked in the pages of Punch and by Gilbert and Sullivan in the opera Patience. In London he met many of the important writers of the day, such as Thomas Hardy and Algernon Charles Swinburne, and was befriended by the artists William Morris and James MacNeill Whistler.
           In 1881, Wilde published his first book of poems at his own expense. The following year, he arranged for a lecture tour of the United States. Although Wilde wrote two plays during these years, neither was produced, and he was forced to rely on lecturing for an income. During a lecture tour in Ireland, he met Constance Lloyd, the daughter of an Irish barrister, whom he married in 1884. They had two sons, Cyril in 1885 and Vyvyan in 1886, for whom Wilde wrote the fairy tales later published in The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888). In 1887 Wilde became the editor of Woman's World, and he continued in that capacity until he resigned in 1889. The publication of The Happy Prince and Other Tales marked the true beginning of Wilde's literary career. Two books of fantastic stories and fairy tales, Lord Arthur Saville's Crime and Other Stories and A House of Pomegranates, were published in 1891. That year Wilde also published his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, in which a young man maintains his youth and beauty while his portrait, hidden in an upstairs room, reveals the marks of age and debauchery. However, Wilde became a popular literary figure only after the success of his social comedy Lady Windermere's Fan in 1892. A series of social comedies followed: A Woman of No Importance (1893), and An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895). The play Salomé was also written around this time. However, Salomé was not a social comedy but the macabre and tragic story of the step-daughter of Herod, who calls for the head of John the Baptist on a platter. Although Sarah Bernhardt was interested in the play, it was refused a license in England and was finally performed in Paris in 1896. In addition to his poems, stories, and plays, Wilde also wrote important essays on art and literature that influenced the development of modernism.
           In 1895, the success that had followed Wilde's social comedies was suddenly destroyed by scandal. The Marquess of Queensbury accused Wilde of carrying on a homosexual relationship with his son, Lord Alfred Douglas. Wilde sued the Marquess for libel at the urging of Douglas, and lost. The evidence introduced during the libel suit formed the basis for criminal charges brought against Wilde for homosexual activities. Wilde was put on trial as much for his aesthetic creed as for any acts he had committed. During the trial, the prosecution read excerpts from The Picture of Dorian Gray to prove that Wilde was a corrupting influence on the public. He was found guilty and sentenced to the maximum penalty of two years' hard labor. During his imprisonment, Wilde wrote a letter reproaching Douglas for abandoning him, later published as De Profundis. After gaining his freedom in 1897, he moved to Paris and wrote his most famous poem, "The Ballad of Reading Gaol," based on his prison experience. The poem was published in 1898 under the pseudonym "C.3.3.," his number as a prisoner. However, prison had broken his health, and he died in Paris, bankrupt and attended by only a few close friends.
           Wilde's poems may surprise a reader accustomed to his social comedies. They seem excessively romantic for the author of The Importance of Being Earnest, their imagery rather conventional, their language an extravagant imitation of Swinburne. These faults can be blamed in part on Wilde's youth. Many of his poems were written before his more famous stories and plays, and are not as mature as his later works. However, in the poems Wilde experiments with techniques and themes that would become crucial to his development as a writer. In The Sphinx, which Wilde began at Oxford, we see his delight in experimenting with words; indeed, the poem seems to be written precisely so that Wilde can rhyme obelisks with basilisks and corybants with elephants, creating an almost impossibly complex latticework of sound. This delight in wordplay would eventually result in the brilliant dialog of the social comedies. The Sphinx also presents us with a theme that would become fundamental to Wilde's stories, particularly The Picture of Dorian Gray. The speaker of the poem is intrigued by the sensual beauty of the Sphinx and the mysterious grandeur of the ancient world she represents. However, by the end of the poem he has tired of her presence and has turned back to an emblem of suffering and redemption: his crucifix.
           Wilde's writing continually celebrates the sensual beauty of the material world; however, the reality of suffering and moral responsibility are also central to his work. His poems are permeated by a sense of sin and loss. In "The Dole of the King's Daughter," the knight and his page lie dead, the hand of the King's daughter is stained with blood, and the poem hints that vengeance is riding toward her from every direction of the compass. In "La Bella Donna Della Mia Mente," the beloved woman is described as a "desolate / Pale flower beaten by the rain," and in "Endymion" the lover has lost his beautiful shepherd. Even "In the Forest" is about the unattainable. Wilde's early stories are similarly concerned with guilt and pain. In "The Fisherman and his Soul," a fisherman commits great evil when he allows his soul to wander the earth while he enjoys the love of a mermaid, and in "The Birthday of the Infanta," a young dwarf dies of a broken heart after realizing his own monstrousness. However, this theme finds its most important expression in The Picture of Dorian Gray. Dorian attempts to live a life of sensual gratification without moral responsibility or the ordinary pains of human existence. He suffers a terrible consequence – not his death and physical decay, although those are terrible indeed, but an utter weariness of life, very like the weariness of the speaker in The Sphinx. Wilde's concern with suffering and morality seems to contradict his aesthetic philosophy – an appropriate stance for a writer who tells us, in The Picture of Dorian Gray, that "the way of paradoxes is the way of truth."
 
THE DOLE OF THE KING'S DAUGHTER
(Breton)

Seven stars in the still water,
     And seven in the sky;
Seven sins on the King's daughter,
     Deep in her soul to lie.

Red roses are at her feet,
     (Roses are red in her red-gold hair)
And O where her bosom and girdle meet
     Red roses are hidden there.

Fair is the knight who lieth slain
     Amid the rush and reed,
See the lean fishes that are fain
     Upon dead men to feed.

Sweet is the page that lieth there,
     (Cloth of gold is goodly prey,)
See the black ravens in the air,
     Black, O black as the night are they.

What do they there so stark and dead?
     (There is blood upon her hand)
Why are the lilies flecked with red?
     (There is blood on the river sand.)

There are two that ride from the south and east,
     And two from the north and west,
For the black raven a goodly feast,
     For the King's daughter rest.

There is one man who loves her true,
     (Red, O red, is the stain of gore!)
He hath duggen a grave by the darksome yew,
     (One grave will do for four.)

No moon in the still heaven,
     In the black water none,
The sins on her soul are seven,
     The sin upon his is one.
 
SANTA DECCA

The Gods are dead: no longer do we bring
     To grey-eyed Pallas crowns of olive-leaves!
     Demeter's child no more hath tithe of sheaves,
And in the noon the careless shepherds sing,
For Pan is dead, and all the wantoning
     By secret glade and devious haunt is o'er:
     Young Hylas seeks the water-springs no more;
Great Pan is dead, and Mary's son is King.

And yet – perchance in this sea-trancèd isle,
     Chewing the bitter fruit of memory,
     Some God lies hidden in the asphodel.
Ah Love! if such there be, then it were well
     For us to fly his anger: nay, but see,
     The leaves are stirring: let us watch awhile.
 
LA BELLA DONNA DELLA MIA MENTE¹

My limbs are wasted with a flame,
     My feet are sore with travelling,
For, calling on my Lady's name,
     My lips have now forgot to sing.

O Linnet in the wild-rose brake
     Strain for my Love thy melody,
O Lark sing louder for love's sake,
     My gentle Lady passeth by.

She is too fair for any man
     To see or hold his heart's delight,
Fairer than Queen or courtesan
     Or moonlit water in the night.

Her hair is bound with myrtle leaves,
     (Green leaves upon her golden hair!)
Green grasses through the yellow sheaves
     Of autumn corn are not more fair.

Her little lips, more made to kiss
     Than to cry bitterly for pain,
Are tremulous as brook-water is,
     Or roses after evening rain.

Her neck is like white melilote
     Flushing for pleasure of the sun,
The throbbing of the linnet's throat
     Is not so sweet to look upon.

As a pomegranate, cut in twain,
     White-seeded, is her crimson mouth,
Her cheeks are as the fading stain
     Where the peach reddens to the south.

O twining hands! O delicate
     White body made for love and pain!
O House of love! O desolate
     Pale flower beaten by the rain!

¹Lovely Lady of my Memory.
 
CHANSON

A ring of gold and a milk-white dove
     Are goodly gifts for thee,
And a hempen rope for your own love
     To hang upon a tree.

For you a House of Ivory,
     (Roses are white in the rose-bower)!
A narrow bed for me to lie,
     (White, O white, is the hemlock flower)!

Myrtle and jessamine for you
     (O the red rose is fair to see)!
For me the cypress and the rue,
     (Finest of all is rosemary)!

For you three lovers of your hand,
     (Green grass where a man lies dead)!
For me three paces on the sand,
     (Plant lilies at my head)!
 
ENDYMION
(For Music)

The apple trees are hung with gold,
     And birds are loud in Arcady,
The sheep lie bleating in the fold,
The wild goat runs across the wold,
But yesterday his love he told,
     I know he will come back to me.
O rising moon! O Lady moon!
     Be you my lover's sentinel,
     You cannot choose but know him well,
For he is shod with purple shoon,
You cannot choose but know my love,
     For he a shepherd's crook doth bear,
And he is soft as any dove,
     And brown and curly is his hair.

The turtle now has ceased to call
     Upon her crimson-footed groom,
The grey wolf prowls about the stall,
The lily's singing seneschal
Sleeps in the lily-bell, and all
     The violet hills are lost in gloom.
O risen moon! O holy moon!
     Stand on the top of Helice,
     And if my own true love you see,
Ah! if you see the purple shoon,
The hazel crook, the lad's brown hair,
     The goat-skin wrapped about his arm,
Tell him that I am waiting where
     The rushlight glimmers in the Farm.

The falling dew is cold and chill,
     And no bird sings in Arcady,
The little fauns have left the hill
Even the tired daffodil
Has closed its gilded doors, and still
     My lover comes not back to me.
False moon! False moon! O waning moon!
     Where is my own true lover gone,
     Where are the lips vermilion,
The shepherd's crook, the purple shoon?
Why spread that silver pavilion,
     Why wear that veil of drifting mist?
Ah! thou hast young Endymion,
     Thou hast the lips that should be kissed!
 
IN THE FOREST

Out of the mid-wood's twilight
     Into the meadow's dawn,
Ivory limbed and brown-eyed,
     Flashes my Faun!

He skips through the copses singing,
     And his shadow dances along,
And I know not which I should follow,
     Shadow or song!

O Hunter, snare me his shadow!
     O Nightingale, catch me his strain!
Else moonstruck with music and madness
     I track him in vain!
 
THE SPHINX

In a dim corner of my room for longer than my fancy thinks
A beautiful and silent Sphinx has watched me through the shifting gloom.

Inviolate and immobile she does not rise she does not stir
For silver moons are naught to her and naught to her the suns that reel.

Red follows grey across the air, the waves of moonlight ebb and flow
But with the Dawn she does not go and in the night-time she is there.

Dawn follows Dawn and Nights grow old and all the while this curious cat
Lies couching on the Chinese mat with eyes of satin rimmed with gold.

Upon the mat she lies and leers and on the tawny throat of her
Flutters the soft and silky fur or ripples to her pointed ears.

Come forth, my lovely seneschal! so somnolent, so statuesque!
Come forth you exquisite grotesque! half woman and half animal!

Come forth my lovely languorous Sphinx! and put your head upon my knee!
And let me stroke your throat and see your body spotted like the Lynx!

And let me touch those curving claws of yellow ivory and grasp
The tail that like a monstrous Asp coils round your heavy velvet paws!

A thousand weary centuries are thine while I have hardly seen
Some twenty summers cast their green for Autumn's gaudy liveries.

But you can read the Hieroglyphs on the great sandstone obelisks,
And you have talked with Basilisks, and you have looked on Hippogriffs.

O tell me, were you standing by when Isis to Osiris knelt?
And did you watch the Egyptian melt her union for Antony

And drink the jewel-drunken wine and bend her head in mimic awe
To see the huge proconsul draw the salted tunny from the brine?

And did you mark the Cyprian kiss white Adon on his catafalque?
And did you follow Amenalk, the God of Heliopolis?

And did you talk with Thoth, and did you hear the moon-horned Io weep?
And know the painted kings who sleep beneath the wedge-shaped Pyramid?

Lift up your large black satin eyes which are like cushions where one sinks!
Fawn at my feet, fantastic Sphinx! and sing me all your memories!

Sing to me of the Jewish maid who wandered with the Holy Child,
And how you led them through the wild, and how they slept beneath your shade.

Sing to me of that odorous green eve when crouching by the marge
You heard from Adrian's gilded barge the laughter of Antinous

And lapped the stream and fed your drouth and watched with hot and hungry stare
The ivory body of that rare young slave with his pomegranate mouth!

Sing to me of the Labyrinth in which the twi-formed bull was stalled!
Sing to me of the night you crawled across the temple's granite plinth

When through the purple corridors the screaming scarlet Ibis flew
In terror, and a horrid dew dripped from the moaning Mandragores,

And the great torpid crocodile within the tank shed slimy tears,
And tare the jewels from his ears and staggered back into the Nile,

And the priests cursed you with shrill psalms as in your claws you seized their snake
And crept away with it to slake your passion by the shuddering palms.

Who were your lovers? who were they who wrestled for you in the dust?
Which was the vessel of your Lust? What Leman had you, every day?

Did giant Lizards come and crouch before you on the reedy banks?
Did Gryphons with great metal flanks leap on you in your trampled couch?

Did monstrous hippopotami come sidling toward you in the mist?
Did gilt-scaled dragons writhe and twist with passion as you passed them by?

And from the brick-built Lycian tomb what horrible Chimera came
With fearful heads and fearful flame to breed new wonders from your womb?

Or had you shameful secret quests and did you harry to your home
Some Nereid coiled in amber foam with curious rock crystal breasts?

Or did you treading through the froth call to the brown Sidonian
For tidings of Leviathan, Leviathan or Behemoth?

Or did you when the sun was set climb up the cactus-covered slope
To meet your swarthy Ethiop whose body was of polished jet?

Or did you while the earthen skiffs dropped down the grey Nilotic flats
At twilight and the flickering bats flew round the temple's triple glyphs

Steal to the border of the bar and swim across the silent lake
And slink into the vault and make the Pyramid your lúpanar

Till from each black sarcophagus rose up the painted swathèd dead?
Or did you lure unto your bed the ivory-horned Tragelaphos?

Or did you love the god of flies who plagued the Hebrews and was splashed
With wine unto the waist? or Pasht, who had green beryls for her eyes?

Or that young god, the Tyrian, who was more amorous than the dove
Of Ashtaroth? or did you love the god of the Assyrian

Whose wings, like strange transparent talc, rose high above his hawk-faced head,
Painted with silver and with red and ribbed with rods of Oreichalch?

Or did huge Apis from his car leap down and lay before your feet
Big blossoms of the honey-sweet and honey-coloured nenuphar?

How subtle-secret is your smile! Did you love none then? Nay, I know
Great Ammon was your bedfellow! He lay with you beside the Nile!

The river-horses in the slime trumpeted when they saw him come
Odorous with Syrian galbanum and smeared with spikenard and with thyme.

He came along the river bank like some tall galley argent-sailed,
He strode across the waters, mailed in beauty, and the waters sank.

He strode across the desert sand: he reached the valley where you lay:
He waited till the dawn of day: then touched your black breasts with his hand.

You kissed his mouth with mouths of flame: you made the hornèd god your own:
You stood behind him on his throne: you called him by his secret name.

You whispered monstrous oracles into the caverns of his ears:
With blood of goats and blood of steers you taught him monstrous miracles.

White Ammon was your bedfellow! Your chamber was the steaming Nile!
And with your curved archaic smile you watched his passion come and go.

With Syrian oils his brows were bright: and widespread as a tent at noon
His marble limbs made pale the moon and lent the day a larger light.

His long hair was nine cubits' span and coloured like that yellow gem
Which hidden in their garments' hem the merchants bring from Kurdistan.

His face was as the must that lies upon a vat of new-made wine:
The seas could not insapphirine the perfect azure of his eyes.

His thick soft throat was white as milk and threaded with thin veins of blue:
And curious pearls like frozen dew were broidered on his flowing silk.

On pearl and porphyry pedestalled he was too bright to look upon:
For on his ivory breast there shone the wondrous ocean-emerald,

That mystic moonlit jewel which some diver of the Colchian caves
Had found beneath the blackening waves and carried to the Colchian witch.

Before his gilded galiot ran naked vine-wreathed corybants,
And lines of swaying elephants knelt down to draw his chariot,

And lines of swarthy Nubians bare up his litter as he rode
Down the great granite-paven road between the nodding peacock fans.

The merchants brought him steatite from Sidon in their painted ships:
The meanest cup that touched his lips was fashioned from a chrysolite.

The merchants brought him cedar chests of rich apparel bound with cords;
His train was borne by Memphian lords: young kings were glad to be his guests.

Ten hundred shaven priests did bow to Ammon's altar day and night,
Ten hundred lamps did wave their light through Ammon's carven house – and now

Foul snake and speckled adder with their young ones crawl from stone to stone
For ruined is the house and prone the great rose-marble monolith!

Wild ass or trotting jackal comes and couches in the mouldering gates:
Wild satyrs call unto their mates across the fallen fluted drums.

And on the summit of the pile the blue-faced ape of Horus sits
And gibbers while the fig-tree splits the pillars of the peristyle.

The god is scattered here and there: deep hidden in the windy sand
I saw his giant granite hand still clenched in impotent despair.

And many a wandering caravan of stately negroes silken-shawled,
Crossing the desert, halts appalled before the neck that none can span.

And many a bearded Bedouin draws back his yellow-striped burnous
To gaze upon the Titan thews of him who was thy paladin.

Go, seek his fragments on the moor and wash them in the evening dew,
And from their pieces make anew thy mutilated paramour!

Go, seek them where they lie alone and from their broken pieces make
Thy bruisèd bedfellow! And wake mad passions in the senseless stone!

Charm his dull car with Syrian hymns! he loved your body! oh, be kind,
Pour spikenard on his hair, and wind soft rolls of linen round his limbs!

Wind round his head the figured coins! stain with red fruits those pallid lips!
Weave purple for his shrunken hips! and purple for his barren loins!

Away to Egypt! Have no fear. Only one God has ever died.
Only one God has let His side be wounded by a soldier's spear.

But these, thy lovers, are not dead. Still by the hundred-cubit gate
Dog-faced Anubis sits in state with lotus-lilies for thy head.

Still from his chair of porphyry gaunt Memnon strains his lidless eyes
Across the empty land, and cries each yellow morning unto thee.

And Nilus with his broken horn lies in his black and oozy bed
And till thy coming will not spread his waters on the withering corn.

Your lovers are not dead, I know. They will rise up and hear your voice
And clash their cymbals and rejoice and run to kiss your mouth! And so,

Set wings upon your argosies! Set horses to your ebon car!
Back to your Nile! Or if you are grown sick of dead divinities

Follow some roving lion's spoor across the copper-coloured plain,
Reach out and hale him by the mane and bid him be your paramour!

Couch by his side upon the grass and set your white teeth in his throat
And when you hear his dying note lash your long flanks of polished brass

And take a tiger for your mate, whose amber sides are flecked with black,
And ride upon his gilded back in triumph through the Theban gate,

And toy with him in amorous jests, and when he turns, and snarls, and gnaws,
O smite him with your jasper claws! and bruise him with your agate breasts!

Why are you tarrying? Get hence! I weary of your sullen ways,
I weary of your steadfast gaze, your somnolent magnificence.

Your horrible and heavy breath makes the light flicker in the lamp,
And on my brow I feel the damp and dreadful dews of night and death.

Your eyes are like fantastic moons that shiver in some stagnant lake,
Your tongue is like a scarlet snake that dances to fantastic tunes,

Your pulse makes poisonous melodies, and your black throat is like the hole
Left by some torch or burning coal on Saracenic tapestries.

Away! The sulphur-coloured stars are hurrying through the Western gate!
Away! Or it may be too late to climb their silent silver cars!

See, the dawn shivers round the grey gilt-dialled towers, and the rain
Streams down each diamonded pane and blurs with tears the wannish day.

What snake-tressed fury fresh from Hell, with uncouth gestures and unclean,
Stole from the poppy-drowsy queen and led you to a student's cell?

What songless tongueless ghost of sin crept through the curtains of the night,
And saw my taper turning bright, and knocked, and bade you enter in?

Are there not others more accursed, whiter with leprosies than I?
Are Abana and Pharphar dry that you come here to slake your thirst?

Get hence, you loathsome mystery! Hideous animal, get hence!
You wake in me each bestial sense, you make me what I would not be.

You make my creed a barren sham, you wake foul dreams of sensual life,
And Atys with his blood-stained knife were better than the thing I am.

False Sphinx! False Sphinx! By reedy Styx old Charon, leaning on his oar,
Waits for my coin. Go thou before, and leave me to my crucifix,

Whose pallid burden, sick with pain, watches the world with wearied eyes,
And weeps for every soul that dies, and weeps for every soul in vain.