212 lines
8.2 KiB
Plaintext
212 lines
8.2 KiB
Plaintext
1890
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THE FOURTH MOVEMENT
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by Oscar Wilde
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IMPRESSION
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Le Reveillon
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The sky is laced with fitful red,
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The circling mists and shadows flee,
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The dawn is rising from the sea,
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Like a white lady from her bed.
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And jagged brazen arrows fall
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Athwart the feathers of the night,
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And a long wave of yellow light
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Breaks silently on tower and hall,
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And spreading wide across the wold
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Wakes into flight some fluttering bird,
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And all the chestnut tops are stirred,
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And all the branches streaked with gold.
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AT VERONA
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How steep the stairs within Kings' houses are
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For exile-wearied feet as mine to tread,
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And O how salt and bitter is the bread
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Which falls from this Hound's table,- better far
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That I had died in the red ways of war,
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Or that the gate of Florence bare my head,
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Than to live thus, by all things comraded
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Which seek the essence of my soul to mar.
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"Curse God and die: what better hope than this?
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He hath forgotten thee in all the bliss
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Of his gold city, and eternal day"-
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Nay peace: behind my prison's blinded bars
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I do possess what none can take away,
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My love, and all the glory of the stars.
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APOLOGIA
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Is it thy will that I should wax and wane,
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Barter my cloth of gold for hodden gray,
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And at thy pleasure weave that web of pain
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Whose brightest threads are each a wasted day?
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Is it thy will- Love that I love so well-
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That my Soul's House should be a tortured spot
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Wherein, like evil paramours, must dwell
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The quenchless flame, the worm that dieth not?
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Nay, if it be thy will I shall endure,
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And sell ambition at the common mart,
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And let dull failure be my vestiture,
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And sorrow dig its grave within my heart.
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Perchance it may be better so- at least
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I have not made my heart a heart of stone,
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Nor starved my boyhood of its goodly feast,
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Nor walked where Beauty is a thing unknown.
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Many a man hath done so; sought to fence
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In straitened bonds the soul that should be free,
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Trodden the dusty road of common sense,
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While all the forest sang of liberty,
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Not marking how the spotted hawk in flight
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Passed on wide pinion through the lofty air,
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To where the steep untrodden mountain height
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Caught the last tresses of the Sun God's hair.
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Or how the little flower he trod upon,
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The daisy, that white-feathered shield of gold,
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Followed with wistful eyes the wandering sun
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Content if once its leaves were aureoled.
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But surely it is something to have been
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The best beloved for a little while,
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To have walked hand in hand with Love, and seen
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His purple wings flit once across thy smile.
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Ay! though the gorged asp of passion feed
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On my boy's heart, yet have I burst the bars,
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Stood face to face with Beauty, known indeed
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The Love which moves the Sun and all the stars!
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QUIA MULTUM AMAVI
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Dear heart I think the young impassioned priest
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When first he takes from out the hidden shrine
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His God imprisoned in the Eucharist,
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And eats the Bread, and drinks the Dreadful Wine,
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Feels not such awful wonder as I felt
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When first my smitten eyes beat full on thee,
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And all night long before thy feet I knelt
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Till thou wert wearied of Idolatry.
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Ah! had'st thou liked me less and loved me more,
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Through all those summer days of joy and rain,
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I had not now been sorrow's heritor,
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Or stood a lackey in the House of Pain.
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Yet, though remorse, youth's white-faced seneschal
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Tread on my heels with all his retinue,
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I am most glad I loved thee- think of all
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The sums that go to make one speedwell blue!
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SILENTIUM AMORIS
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As oftentimes the too resplendent sun
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Hurries the pallid and reluctant moon
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Back to her sombre cave, ere she hath won
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A single ballad from the nightingale,
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So doth thy Beauty make my lips to fail,
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And all my sweetest singing out of tune.
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And as at dawn across the level mead
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On wings impetuous some wind will come,
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And with its too harsh kisses break the reed
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Which was its only instrument of song,
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So my too stormy passions work me wrong,
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And for excess of Love my Love is dumb.
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But surely unto thee mine eyes did show
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Why I am silent, and my lute unstrung;
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Else it were better we should part, and go,
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Thou to some lips of sweeter melody,
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And I to nurse the barren memory
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Of unkissed kisses, and songs never sung.
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HER VOICE
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The wild bee reels from bough to bough
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With his furry coat and his gauzy wing.
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Now in a lily-cup, and now
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Setting a jacinth bell a-swing,
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In his wandering;
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Sit closer love: it was here I trow
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I made that vow,
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Swore that two lives should be like one
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As long as the sea-gull loved the sea,
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As long as the sunflower sought the sun-
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It shall be, I said, for eternity
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'Twixt you and me!
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Dear friend, those times are over and done,
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Love's web is spun.
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Look upward where the poplar trees
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Sway and sway in the summer air,
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Here in the valley never a breeze
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Scatters the thistledowns, but there
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Great winds blow fair
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From the mighty murmuring mystical seas,
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And the wave-lashed leas.
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Look upward where the white gull screams
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What does it see that we do not see?
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Is that a star? or the lamp that gleams
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On some outward voyaging argosy,-
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Ah! can it be
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We have lived our lives in land of dreams!
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How sad it seems.
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Sweet, there is nothing left to say
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But this, that love is never lost.
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Keen winter stabs the breasts of May
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Whose crimson roses burst his frost,
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Ships tempest-tossed
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Will find a harbour in some bay,
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And so we may.
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And there is nothing left to do
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But to kiss once again, and part,
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Nay, there is nothing we should rue,
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I have my beauty,- you your Art.
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Nay, do not start,
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One world was not enough for two
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Like me and you.
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MY VOICE
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Within this restless, hurried, modern world
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We took our heart's full pleasure- You and I,
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And now the white sails of our ship are furled,
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And spent the lading of our argosy.
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Wherefore my cheeks before their time are wan,
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For very weeping is my gladness fled
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Sorrow hath paled my lip's vermilion,
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And Ruin draws the curtains of my bed.
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But all this crowded life has been to thee
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No more than lyre, or lute, or subtle spell
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Of viols, or the music of the sea
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That sleeps, a mimic echo, in the shell.
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TAEDIUM VITAE
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To stab my youth with desperate knife, to wear
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This paltry age's gaudy livery,
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To let each base hand filch my treasury,
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To mesh my soul within a woman's hair,
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And be mere Fortune's lackeyed groom,- I swear,
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I love it not! these things are less to me
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Than the thin foam that frets upon the sea,
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Less than the thistle-down of summer air
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Which hath no seed: better to stand aloof
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Far from these slanderous fools who mock my life
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Knowing me not, better the lowliest roof
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Fit for the meanest hind to sojourn in,
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Than to go back to that hoarse cave of strife
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Where my white soul first kissed the mouth of sin.
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THE END
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