Antinous flétris, dandys à face glabre,
Cadavres vernisses, lovelaces chenus,
Le branle universel de la danse macabre
Vous entraine en des lieux qui ne sont pas connus!
Des quais froids de la Seine aux bords brûlants du Gange,
Le troupeau mortel saute et se pâme, sans voir,
Dans un trou du plafond la trompette de l'Ange
Sinistrement béante ainsi qu'un tromblon noir.
En tout climat, sous ton soleil, la Mort t'admire
En tes contorsions, risible Humanité,
Et souvent, comme toi, se parfumant de myrrhe,
Mêle son ironie à ton insanité!"
The French poem lacks the simplicity and the directness of its English fellow. It appears overloaded and artificial in comparison, and above all it lacks the music which results from the juxtaposition of the Anglo-Saxon a, e, i, and u sounds, and the Latin ahs and ohs.
But, on the other hand, as an example of the precious and artificial in literature, a further poem of Wilde's written at this period, "The Sphinx," reveals another phase of his extraordinarily versatile genius.
The metre of the poem is the same as that of "In Memoriam," though, owing to the stanzas being arranged in two long lines instead of the fairly short ones in Tennyson's poem, this might at first escape attention. The poet at the time of writing we learn had
"hardly seen
Some twenty summers cast their green for Autumn's gaudy liveries."
(which would seem to indicate that this part, at any rate, was written at an earlier period than the rest of the poem), and in the very first lines he tells us that—
"In a dim corner of my rooms far longer than my fancy thinks
A beautiful and silent sphinx has watched me through the silent gloom."
Day and night—