"Dawn follows Dawn and Nights grow old, and all the while this curious cat
Lies crouching on the Chinese mat with eyes of satin rimmed with gold."
To paint the visions she inspires, Wilde ransacks the world for magnificent colouring. He does not always secure magnificence in the noblest way, but is satisfied with an opulence, rather of things than of emotion, brought bodily into the verse and not suggested by the proud stepping of the mind. Cleopatra's wine, ivory-bodied Antinous, the crocodile with jewelled ears, metal-flanked gryphons, gilt-scaled dragons,
"Some Nereid coiled in amber foam with curious rock-crystal breasts,"
the Ethiopian, "whose body was of polished jet," Pasht "who had green beryls for her eyes," Horus,
"Whose wings, like strange transparent talc, rose high above his hawk-faced head,
Painted with silver and with red and ribbed with rods of Oreichalch,"
the marble limbs of Ammon, "on pearl and porphyry pedestalled," an ocean emerald on his ivory breast—
"The merchants brought him steatite from Sidon in their painted ships: