Selected Poems of Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde

Selected Poems of Oscar Wilde

PREFACE

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 ROSS

Reform 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 a difficulty, without officiously exercising the ungrateful prerogatives 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

C. T. W

Sometimes trooper of

The Royal Horse Guards

Obiit 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 hands

   When they found him with the dead,

The poor dead woman whom he loved,

   And murdered in her bed.

He walked amongst the Trial Men

   In 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 looked

   So wistfully at the day.

I never saw a man who looked

   With such a wistful eye

Upon that little tent of blue

   Which prisoners call the sky,

And at every drifting cloud that went

   With sails of silver by.

I walked, with other souls in pain,

   Within another ring,

And was wondering if the man had done

   A great or little thing,

When a voice behind me whispered low,

   ‘

That fellow’s got to swing

.’

Dear Christ! the very prison walls

   Suddenly seemed to reel,

And the sky above my head became

   Like a casque of scorching steel;

And, though I was a soul in pain,

   My pain I could not feel.

I only knew what hunted thought

   Quickened his step, and why

He looked upon the garish day

   With 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, because

   The 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 shame

   On a day of dark disgrace,

Nor have a noose about his neck,

   Nor a cloth upon his face,

Nor drop feet foremost through the floor

   Into an empty space.

He does not sit with silent men

   Who 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 rob

   The prison of its prey.

He does not wake at dawn to see

   Dread 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 haste

   To put on convict-clothes,

While some coarse-mouthed Doctor gloats, and notes

   Each new and nerve-twitched pose,

Fingering a watch whose little ticks

   Are like horrible hammer-blows.

He does not know that sickening thirst

   That sands one’s throat, before

The hangman with his gardener’s gloves

   Slips 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 hear

   The Burial Office read,

Nor, while the terror of his soul

   Tells him he is not dead,

Cross his own coffin, as he moves

   Into the hideous shed.

He does not stare upon the air

   Through a little roof of glass:

He does not pray with lips of clay

   For his agony to pass;

Nor feel upon his shuddering cheek

   The 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 looked

   So wistfully at the day.

I never saw a man who looked

   With such a wistful eye

Upon that little tent of blue

   Which prisoners call the sky,

And at every wandering cloud that trailed

   Its ravelled fleeces by.

He did not wring his hands, as do

   Those witless men who dare

To try to rear the changeling Hope

   In 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 held

   Some healthful anodyne;

With open mouth he drank the sun

   As though it had been wine!

And I and all the souls in pain,

   Who tramped the other ring,

Forgot if we ourselves had done

   A great or little thing,

And watched with gaze of dull amaze

   The man who had to swing.

And strange it was to see him pass

   With a step so light and gay,

And strange it was to see him look

   So wistfully at the day,

And strange it was to think that he

   Had such a debt to pay.

For oak and elm have pleasant leaves

   That in the springtime shoot:

But grim to see is the gallows-tree,

   With its adder-bitten root,

And, green or dry, a man must die

   Before it bears its fruit!

The loftiest place is that seat of grace

   For which all worldlings try:

But who would stand in hempen band

   Upon a scaffold high,

And through a murderer’s collar take

   His last look at the sky?

It is sweet to dance to violins

   When Love and Life are fair:

To dance to flutes, to dance to lutes

   Is delicate and rare:

But it is not sweet with nimble feet

   To dance upon the air!

So with curious eyes and sick surmise

   We watched him day by day,

And wondered if each one of us

   Would end the self-same way,

For none can tell to what red Hell

   His sightless soul may stray.

At last the dead man walked no more

   Amongst the Trial Men,

And I knew that he was standing up

   In the black dock’s dreadful pen,

And that never would I see his face

   In God’s sweet world again.

Like two doomed ships that pass in storm

   We had crossed each other’s way:

But we made no sign, we said no word,

   We had no word to say;

For we did not meet in the holy night,

   But in the shameful day.

A prison wall was round us both,

   Two outcast men we were:

The world had thrust us from its heart,

   And God from out His care:

And the iron gin that waits for Sin

   Had caught us in its snare.

III

In Debtors’ Yard the stones are hard,

   And the dripping wall is high,

So it was there he took the air

   Beneath the leaden sky,

And by each side a Warder walked,

   For fear the man might die.

Or else he sat with those who watched

   His anguish night and day;

Who watched him when he rose to weep,

   And when he crouched to pray;

Who watched him lest himself should rob

   Their scaffold of its prey.

The Governor was strong upon

   The Regulations Act:

The Doctor said that Death was but

   A scientific fact:

And twice a day the Chaplain called,

   And left a little tract.

And twice a day he smoked his pipe,

   And drank his quart of beer:

His soul was resolute, and held

   No hiding-place for fear;

He often said that he was glad

   The hangman’s hands were near.

But why he said so strange a thing

   No Warder dared to ask:

For he to whom a watcher’s doom

   Is given as his task,

Must set a lock upon his lips,

   And make his face a mask.

Or else he might be moved, and try

   To comfort or console:

And what should Human Pity do

   Pent up in Murderers’ Hole?

What word of grace in such a place

   Could help a brother’s soul?

With slouch and swing around the ring

   We trod the Fools’ Parade!

We did not care: we knew we were

   The Devil’s Own Brigade:

And shaven head and feet of lead

   Make a merry masquerade.

We tore the tarry rope to shreds

   With blunt and bleeding nails;

We rubbed the doors, and scrubbed the floors,

   And cleaned the shining rails:

And, rank by rank, we soaped the plank,

   And clattered with the pails.

We sewed the sacks, we broke the stones,

   We turned the dusty drill:

We banged the tins, and bawled the hymns,

   And sweated on the mill:

But in the heart of every man

   Terror was lying still.

So still it lay that every day

   Crawled like a weed-clogged wave:

And we forgot the bitter lot

   That waits for fool and knave,

Till once, as we tramped in from work,

   We passed an open grave.

With yawning mouth the yellow hole

   Gaped for a living thing;

The very mud cried out f