81 lines
3.0 KiB
Plaintext
81 lines
3.0 KiB
Plaintext
|
1890
|
||
|
|
FLOWER OR LOVE
|
||
|
|
by Oscar Wilde
|
||
|
|
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 springtime, when the apple-blossoms
|
||
|
|
Brush the burnished bosom 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 canker-worm 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 a
|
||
|
|
Silent pilot comes at last.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
And within the grave there is no pleasure, for
|
||
|
|
The blind-worm 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.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
THE END
|
||
|
|
.
|