The Ballad of Reading Gaol E-Book

Oscar Wilde

• Herausgeber: Oscar Wilde
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

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.

Leseprobe

Oscar Wilde

The Ballad of Reading Gaol

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Table of contents

POEMS

ELEUTHERIA

SONNET

ROSA MYSTICA

SONNET

SONNET

WIND FLOWERS

IMPRESSIONS DE THÉÂTRE

WRITTEN AT THE LYCEUM THEATRE

THE FOURTH MOVEMENT

UNCOLLECTED POEMS

IMPRESSIONS

FANTAISIES DÉCORATIVES

TO MY WIFE

THE SPHINX

THE BALLAD OF READING GAOL

RAVENNA

POEMS

HÉLAS!To drift with every passion till my soulIs a stringed lute on which all winds can play,Is it for this that I have given awayMine ancient wisdom, and austere control?Methinks my life is a twice-written scrollScrawled over on some boyish holidayWith idle songs for pipe and virelay,Which do but mar the secret of the whole.Surely there was a time I might have trodThe sunlit heights, and from life’s dissonanceStruck one clear chord to reach the ears of God:Is that time dead? lo! with a little rodI did but touch the honey of romance—And must I lose a soul’s inheritance?

ELEUTHERIA

SONNET TO LIBERTYNot that I love thy children, whose dull eyesSee 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 seaAnd give my rage a brother—!  Liberty!For this sake only do thy dissonant criesDelight my discreet soul, else might all kingsBy bloody knout or treacherous cannonadesRob nations of their rights inviolateAnd 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 IMPERATRIXSet 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 seesThe fleet-foot Marri scout, who comes   To tell how he hath heard afarThe 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 CircassianIs 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 waitTo climb upon their father’s knee;   And in each house made desolatePale 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 English fields   Are these, our brothers, lain to rest,Where we might deck their broken shields   With all the flowers the dead love best.For some are by the Delhi walls,   And many in the Afghan land,And many where the Ganges falls   Through seven mouths of shifting sand.And some in Russian waters lie,   And others in the seas which areThe portals to the East, or by   The wind-swept heights of Trafalgar.O wandering graves!  O restless sleep!   O silence of the sunless day!O still ravine!  O stormy deep!   Give up your prey!  Give up your prey!And thou whose wounds are never healed,   Whose weary race is never won,O Cromwell’s England! must thou yield   For every inch of ground a son?Go! crown with thorns thy gold-crowned head,   Change thy glad song to song of pain;Wind and wild wave have got thy dead,   And will not yield them back again.Wave and wild wind and foreign shore   Possess the flower of English land—Lips that thy lips shall kiss no more,   Hands that shall never clasp thy hand.What profit now that we have bound   The whole round world with nets of gold,If hidden in our heart is found   The care that groweth never old?What profit that our galleys ride,   Pine-forest-like, on every main?Ruin and wreck are at our side,   Grim warders of the House of Pain.Where are the brave, the strong, the fleet?   Where is our English chivalry?Wild grasses are their burial-sheet,   And sobbing waves their threnody.O loved ones lying far away,   What word of love can dead lips send!O wasted dust!  O senseless clay!   Is this the end! is this the end!Peace, peace! we wrong the noble dead   To vex their solemn slumber so;Though childless, and with thorn-crowned head,   Up the steep road must England go,Yet when this fiery web is spun,   Her watchmen shall descry from farThe young Republic like a sun   Rise from these crimson seas of war.TO MILTONMilton!  I think thy spirit hath passed awayFrom these white cliffs and high-embattled towers;   This gorgeous fiery-coloured world of oursSeems fallen into ashes dull and grey,And the age changed unto a mimic play   Wherein we waste our else too-crowded hours:   For all our pomp and pageantry and powersWe are but fit to delve the common clay,Seeing this little isle on which we stand,   This England, this sea-lion of the sea,   By ignorant demagogues is held in fee,Who love her not: Dear God! is this the land   Which bare a triple empire in her hand   When Cromwell spake the word Democracy!LOUIS NAPOLEONEagle of Austerlitz! where were thy wings   When far away upon a barbarous strand,   In fight unequal, by an obscure hand,Fell the last scion of thy brood of Kings!Poor boy! thou shalt not flaunt thy cloak of red,   Or ride in state through Paris in the van   Of thy returning legions, but insteadThy mother France, free and republican,Shall on thy dead and crownless forehead place   The better laurels of a soldier’s crown,   That not dishonoured should thy soul go downTo tell the mighty Sire of thy raceThat France hath kissed the mouth of Liberty,   And found it sweeter than his honied bees,   And that the giant wave DemocracyBreaks on the shores where Kings lay couched at ease.

SONNET