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 tranced 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.
Wilde songs
Song Cycle by Michael Linton
1. Santa Decca  [sung text not yet checked]
Text Authorship:
- by Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900), "Santa Decca", appears in Wind Flowers, first published 1890
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Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]2. In the Forest  [sung text not yet checked]
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!
Text Authorship:
- by Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900), "In the forest"
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First published in Lady's Pictorial, Christmas Number 1889Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]
3. La Fuite de la Lune  [sung text not yet checked]
To outer senses there is peace, A dreamy peace on either hand, Deep silence in the shadowy land, Deep silence where the shadows cease. Save for a cry that echoes shrill From some lone bird disconsolate; A corncrake calling to its mate; The answer from the misty hill. And suddenly the moon withdraws Her sickle from the [lightening]1 skies, And to her sombre cavern flies, Wrapped in a veil of yellow gauze.
Text Authorship:
- by Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900), "La Fuite de la Lune"
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View original text (without footnotes)Confirmed with Oscar Wilde, Poems, Boston: Robert Brothers, 1881.
1 Griffes: "light'ning"Research team for this page: Emily Ezust [Administrator] , Barbara Miller
4. Beauty's Taste
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5. Taedium Vitae  [sung text not yet checked]
To stab my youth with desperate knives, to wear This paltry age's gaudy livery, To let each base hand filch my treasury, To mesh my soul within a woman's hair, And be mere Fortune's lackeyed groom, - I swear I love it not! these things are less to me Than the thin foam that frets upon the sea, Less than the thistledown of summer air Which hath no seed: better to stand aloof Far from these slanderous fools who mock my life Knowing me not, better the lowliest roof Fit for the meanest hind to sojourn in, Than to go back to that hoarse cave of strife Where my white soul first kissed the mouth of sin.
Text Authorship:
- by Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900), "Taedium Vitae"
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Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]6. Le Jardin Des Tuileries  [sung text not yet checked]
This winter air is keen and cold, And keen and cold this winter sun, But round my chair the children run Like little things of dancing gold. Sometimes about the painted kiosk The mimic soldiers strut and stride, Sometimes the blue-eyed brigands hide In the bleak tangles of the bosk. And sometimes, while the old nurse cons Her book, they steal across the square, And launch their paper navies where Huge Triton writhes in greenish bronze. And now in mimic flight they flee, And now they rush, a boisterous band - And, tiny hand on tiny hand, Climb up the black and leafless tree. Ah! cruel tree! if I were you, And children climbed me, for their sake Though it be winter I would break Into spring blossoms white and blue!
Text Authorship:
- by Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900), "Le Jardin Des Tuileries"
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Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]7. Quia Multum Amavi  [sung text not yet checked]
Dear Heart I think the young impassioned priest When first he takes from out the hidden shrine His God imprisoned in the Eucharist, And eats the bread, and drinks the dreadful wine, Feels not such awful wonder as I felt When first my smitten eyes beat full on thee, And all night long before thy feet I knelt Till thou wert wearied of Idolatry. Ah! had'st thou liked me less and loved me more, Through all those summer days of joy and rain, I had not now been sorrow's heritor, Or stood a lackey in the House of Pain. Yet, though remorse, youth's white-faced seneschal Tread on my heels with all his retinue, I am most glad I loved thee—think of all The suns that go to make one speedwell blue!
Text Authorship:
- by Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900), "Quia Multum Amavi"
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Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]8. Requiescat  [sung text not yet checked]
Tread lightly, she is near Under the snow, Speak gently, she can hear The daisies grow. All her bright golden hair Tarnished with rust, She that was young and fair Fallen to dust. Lily-like, white as snow, She hardly knew She was a woman so Sweetly she grew. Coffin-board, heavy stone, Lie on her breast. I vex my heart alone, She is at rest. Peace, Peace, she cannot hear Lyre or sonnet, All my life's buried here, Heap earth upon it.
Text Authorship:
- by Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900), "Requiescat", from Poems, first published 1881
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Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]9. Easter Day  [sung text not yet checked]
The silver trumpets rang across the Dome: The people knelt upon the ground with awe: And borne upon the necks of men I saw, Like some great God, the Holy Lord of Rome. Priest-like, he wore a robe more white than foam, And, king-like, swathed himself in royal red, Three crowns of gold rose high upon his head: In splendor and in light the Pope passed home. My heart stole back across wide wastes of years To One who wandered by a lonely sea, And sought in vain for any place of rest: "Foxes have holes, and every bird its nest, I, only I, must wander wearily, And bruise My feet, and drink wine salt with tears."
Text Authorship:
- by Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900), "Easter Day"
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Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]10. Tristitiæ  [sung text not yet checked]
O well for him who lives at ease With garnered gold in wide domain, Nor heeds the splashing of the rain, The crashing down of forest trees. O well for him who ne'er hath known The travail of the hungry years, A father grey with grief and tears, A mother weeping all alone. But well for him whose foot hath trod The weary road of toil and strife, Yet from the sorrows of his life. Builds ladders to be nearer God.
Text Authorship:
- by Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900), "Tristitiæ"
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Note: the poem is preceded by the following epigraph, a line from Agamemnon by Aeschylus:
αἴλινον αἴλινον εἰπέ, τὸ δ᾽ εὖ νικάτω
Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]
11. Phedre  [sung text not yet checked]
How vain and dull this common world must seem To such a One as thou, who should'st have talked At Florence with Mirandola, or walked Through the cool olives of the Academe: Thou should'st have gathered reeds from a green stream For Goat-foot Pan's shrill piping, and have played With the white girls in that Phæacian glade Where grave Odysseus wakened from his dream. Ah! surely once some urn of Attic clay Held thy wan dust, and thou hast come again Back to this common world so dull and vain, For thou wert weary of the sunless day, The heavy fields of scentless asphodel, The loveless lips with which men kiss in Hell.
Text Authorship:
- by Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900), "Phedre"
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Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]12. Theocritus  [sung text not yet checked]
O Singer of Persephone! In the dim meadows desolate Dost thou remember Sicily? Still through the ivy flits the bee Where Amaryllis lies in state; O singer of Persephone! Simaetha calls on Hecate And hears the wild dogs at the gate; Dost thou remember Sicily? Still by the light and laughing sea Poor Polypheme bemoans his fate: O Singer of Persephone! And still in boyish rivalry Young Daphnis challenges his mate: Dost thou remember Sicily? Slim Lacon keeps a goat for thee, For thee the jocund shepherds wait, O Singer of Persephone! Dost thou remember Sicily?
Text Authorship:
- by Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900), "Theocritus", subtitle: "A villanelle"
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Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]13. Ave Maria Gratia Plena  [sung text not yet checked]
Was this His coming! I had hoped to see A scene of wondrous glory, as was told Of some great God who in a rain of gold Broke open bars and fell on Danae: Or a dread vision as when Semele Sickening for love and unappeased desire Prayed to see God's clear body, and the fire Caught her brown limbs and slew her utterly: With such glad dreams I sought this holy place, And now with wondering eyes and heart I stand Before this supreme mystery of Love: Some kneeling girl with passionless pale face, An angel with a lily in his hand, And over both the white wings of a Dove.
Text Authorship:
- by Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900), "Ave Maria Gratia Plena"
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Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]14. Silentium Amoris  [sung text not yet checked]
As oftentimes the too resplendent sun Hurries the pallid and reluctant moon Back to her sombre cave, ere she hath won A single ballad from the nightingale, So doth thy Beauty make my lips to fail, And all my sweetest singing out of tune. And as at dawn across the level mead On wings impetuous some wind will come, And with its too harsh kisses break the reed Which was its only instrument of song, So my too stormy passions work me wrong, And for excess of Love my Love is dumb. But surely unto Thee mine eyes did show Why I am silent, and my lute unstrung; Else it were better we should part, and go, Thou to some lips of sweeter melody, And I to nurse the barren memory Of unkissed kisses, and songs never sung.
Text Authorship:
- by Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900), "Silentium Amoris"
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Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]15. The Silent Spring
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16. Epitaph
Sweet, I blame you not, for mine the fault was, had I not been made of common clay I had climbed the higher heights unclimbed yet, seen the fuller air, the larger day. From the wildness of my wasted passion I had struck a better, clearer song, Lit some lighter light of freer freedom, battled with some Hydra-headed wrong. Had my lips been smitten into music by the kisses that but made them bleed, You had walked with Bice and the angels on that verdant and enamelled mead. I had trod the road which Dante treading saw the suns of seven circles shine, Ay! perchance had seen the heavens opening, as they opened to the Florentine. And the mighty nations would have crowned me, who am crownless now and without name, And some orient dawn had found me kneeling on the threshold of the House of Fame. I had sat within that marble circle where the oldest bard is as the young, And the pipe is ever dropping honey, and the lyre’s strings are ever strung. Keats had lifted up his hymeneal curls from out the poppy-seeded wine, With ambrosial mouth had kissed my forehead, clasped the hand of noble love in mine. And at springtide, when the apple-blossoms brush the burnished ***** of the dove, Two young lovers lying in an orchard would have read the story of our love. Would have read the legend of my passion, known the bitter secret of my heart, Kissed as we have kissed, but never parted as we two are fated now to part. For the crimson flower of our life is eaten by the cankerworm of truth, And no hand can gather up the fallen withered petals of the rose of youth. Yet I am not sorry that I loved you—ah! what else had I a boy to do,— For the hungry teeth of time devour, and the silent-footed years pursue. Rudderless, we drift athwart a tempest, and when once the storm of youth is past, Without lyre, without lute or chorus, Death the silent pilot comes at last. And within the grave there is no pleasure, for the blindworm battens on the root, And Desire shudders into ashes, and the tree of Passion bears no fruit. Ah! what else had I to do but love you, God’s own mother was less dear to me, And less dear the Cytheraean rising like an argent lily from the sea. I have made my choice, have lived my poems, and, though youth is gone in wasted days, I have found the lover’s crown of myrtle better than the poet’s crown of bays.
Text Authorship:
- by Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900), "Glukupikros Eros"
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Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]