Selected Poems E-Book

Oscar Wilde

• Herausgeber: Sheba Blake Publishing
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Seitenzahl: 59

Beschreibung

Wilde, glamorous and notorious, more famous as a playwright or prisoner than as a poet, invites readers of his verse to meet an unknown and intimate figure. The poetry of his formative years includes the haunting elegy to his young sister and the grieving lyric at the death of his father. The religious drama of his romance with Rome is captured here, as well as its resolution in his renewed love of ancient Greece. He explores forbidden sexual desires, pays homage to the great theatre stars and poets of his day, observes cityscapes with impressionist intensity. His final masterpiece, The Ballad of Reading Gaol, tells the painful story of his own prison experience and calls for universal compassion. This edition of Wilde's verse presents the full range of his achievement as a poet.

Leseprobe

SELECTED POEMS

BY

OSCAR WILDE

Copyright © 2017 by Oscar Wilde.

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations em- bodied in critical articles or reviews.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organiza- tions, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Book and Cover design by Sheba Blake Publishing

First Edition: January 2017

TABLE OF CONTENTS

SELECTED POEMS

TABLE OF CONTENTS

NOTE

THE BALLAD OF READING GAOL

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

THE BALLAD OF READING GAOL

I

II

III

IV

AVE IMPERATRIX

TO MY WIFE - WITH A COPY OF MY POEMS

MAGDALEN WALKS

THEOCRITUS - A VILLANELLE

GREECE

PORTIA

FABIEN DEI FRANCHI

PHEDRE

SONNET ON HEARING THE DIES IRAE SUNG IN THE SISTINE CHAPEL

AVE MARIA GRATIA PLENA

LIBERTATIS SACRA FAMES

ROSES AND RUE

FROM 'THE GARDEN OF EROS'

THE HARLOT'S HOUSE

FROM 'THE BURDEN OF ITYS'

FLOWER OF LOVE

It is thought that a selection from Oscar Wilde's early verses may be of interest to a large public at present familiar only with the always popular BALLAD OF READING GAOL, also included in this volume. The poems were first collected by their author when he was twenty-sex years old, and though never, until recently, well received by the critics, have survived the test of NINE editions. Readers will be able to make for themselves the obvious and striking contrasts between these first and last phases of Oscar Wilde's literary activity. The intervening period was devoted almost entirely to dramas, prose, fiction, essays, and criticism.

Robert RossReform Club

April 5, 1911

NOTE

At the end of the complete text will be found a shorter version based on the original draft of the poem. This is included for the benefit of reciters and their audiences who have found the entire poem too long for declamation. I have tried to obviate adifficulty, without officiously exercising the ungratefulprerogatives of a literary executor, by falling back on a text which represents the author's first scheme for a poem - never intended of course for recitation.

Robert Ross

In memoriam of C. T. W.

Sometimes trooper of

The Royal Horse GuardsObiit

H.M. Prison

Reading, Berkshire

July 7th, 1896

THE BALLAD OF READING GAOL

I

He did not wear his scarlet coat,For blood and wine are red,And blood and wine were on his handsWhen they found him with the dead,The poor dead woman whom he loved,And murdered in her bed.

He walked amongst the Trial MenIn a suit of shabby grey;A cricket cap was on his head,And his step seemed light and gay;But I never saw a man who lookedSo wistfully at the day.

I never saw a man who lookedWith such a wistful eyeUpon that little tent of blueWhich prisoners call the sky,And at every drifting cloud that wentWith sails of silver by.

I walked, with other souls in pain,Within another ring,And was wondering if the man had doneA great or little thing,When a voice behind me whispered low,'THAT FELLOW'S GOT TO SWING.'

Dear Christ! the very prison wallsSuddenly seemed to reel,And the sky above my head becameLike a casque of scorching steel;And, though I was a soul in pain,My pain I could not feel.

I only knew what hunted thoughtQuickened his step, and whyHe looked upon the garish dayWith such a wistful eye;The man had killed the thing he loved,And so he had to die.

Yet each man kills the thing he loves,By each let this be heard,Some do it with a bitter look,Some with a flattering word,The coward does it with a kiss,The brave man with a sword!

Some kill their love when they are young,And some when they are old;Some strangle with the hands of Lust,Some with the hands of Gold:The kindest use a knife, becauseThe dead so soon grow cold.

Some love too little, some too long,Some sell, and others buy;Some do the deed with many tears,And some without a sigh:For each man kills the thing he loves,Yet each man does not die.

He does not die a death of shameOn a day of dark disgrace,Nor have a noose about his neck,Nor a cloth upon his face,Nor drop feet foremost through the floorInto an empty space.

He does not sit with silent menWho watch him night and day;Who watch him when he tries to weep,And when he tries to pray;Who watch him lest himself should robThe prison of its prey.

He does not wake at dawn to seeDread figures throng his room,The shivering Chaplain robed in white,The Sheriff stern with gloom,And the Governor all in shiny black,With the yellow face of Doom.

He does not rise in piteous hasteTo put on convict-clothes,While some coarse-mouthed Doctor gloats,and notesEach new and nerve-twitched pose,Fingering a watch whose little ticksAre like horrible hammer-blows.

He does not know that sickening thirstThat sands one's throat, beforeThe hangman with his gardener's glovesSlips through the padded door,And binds one with three leathern thongs,That the throat may thirst no more.

He does not bend his head to hearThe Burial Office read,Nor, while the terror of his soulTells him he is not dead,Cross his own coffin, as he movesInto the hideous shed.

He does not stare upon the airThrough a little roof of glass:He does not pray with lips of clayFor his agony to pass;Nor feel upon his shuddering cheekThe kiss of Caiaphas.

II

Six weeks our guardsman walked the yard,In the suit of shabby grey:His cricket cap was on his head,And his step seemed light and gay,But I never saw a man who lookedSo wistfully at the day.

I never saw a man who lookedWith such a wistful eyeUpon that little tent of blueWhich prisoners call the sky,And at every wandering cloud that trailedIts ravelled fleeces by.

He did not wring his hands, as doThose witless men who dareTo try to rear the changeling HopeIn the cave of black Despair:He only looked upon the sun,And drank the morning air.

He did not wring his hands nor weep,Nor did he peek or pine,But he drank the air as though it heldSome healthful anodyne;With open mouth he drank the sunAs though it had been wine!