"Had you shameful secret quests" [he asks] "and did you hurry to your home
Some nereid coiled in amber foam with curious rock crystal breasted?"
Not Baudelaire himself could have invented anything more precious than the description of this sea-nymph, but the gruesome must be introduced. "Did you," he inquires,
"Steal to the border of the bar and swim across the silent lake?
And slink into the vault and make the Pyramid your lupanar,
Till from each black sarcophagus rose up the painted swathèd dead?"
Wilde catalogues through the whole Egyptian mythology; he is inclined to give first place to "Ammon."
"You kissed his mouth with mouths of flame: you made the hornèd god your own:
You stood behind him on his throne: you called him by his secret name.
You whispered monstrous oracles into the caverns of his ears:
With blood of goats and blood of steers you taught him monstrous miracles."
Decadent the idea may be, but how cleverly, how subtly the effects are produced and how well sustained is the atmosphere of chimerical, nightmare horrors. Wilde makes use of the impression derived from the contemplation of colossal figures—the Egyptian galleries of the Louvre were, one may be certain, a daily haunt of his at the time—and he describes—"Nine cubits span" and his limbs are "Widespread as a tent at noon," but he was of flesh and blood for all that.
"His thick soft throat was white as milk and threaded with thin veils of blue,"
and he was royally clad, for—
"Curious pearls like frozen dew were embroidered on his flaming silk."
His love of rare and beautiful things finds an outlet in the description of the jewels and retinue of the god.