Wilde songs

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.

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!

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.

— This text is not currently
in the database but will be added
as soon as we obtain it. —

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.

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!

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!

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.

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."

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

— This text is not currently
in the database but will be added
as soon as we obtain it. —

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.