Poems, with The Ballad of Reading Gaol

by Oscar Wilde

POEMS (1881):			PAGE
		Hélas!	[3]
	Eleutheria:
		Sonnet To Liberty	[7]
		Ave Imperatrix	[8]
		To Milton	[14]
		Louis Napoleon	[15]
		Sonnet on the Massacre of the Christians in Bulgaria	[16]
		Quantum Mutata	[17]
		Libertatis Sacra Fames	[18]
		Theoretikos	[19]
	The Garden ofEros		[21]
	Rosa Mystica:
		Requiescat	[39]
		Sonnet on approaching Italy	[40]
		San Miniato	[41]
		Ave Maria Gratia Plena	[42]
		Italia	[43]
		Sonnet written in Holy Week at Genoa	[44]
		Rome Unvisited	[45]
		Urbs Sacra Æterna	[49]
		Sonnet on hearing the Dies Iræ sung in the SistineChapel	[50]
		Easter Day	[51]
		E Tenebris	[52]
		Vita Nuova	[53]
		Madonna Mia	[54]
		The New Helen	[55]
	The Burden OfItys		[61]
	Wind Flowers:
		Impression du Matin	[83]
		Magdalen Walks	[84]
		Athanasia	[86]
		Serenade	[89]
		Endymion	[91]
		La Bella Donna della mia Mente	[93]
		Chanson	[95]
	Charmides		[97]
	Flowers ofGold:
		Impressions: I. LesSilhouettes	[135]
		II. La Fuite de laLune	[136]
		The Grave of Keats	[137]
		Theocritus: A Villanelle	[138]
		In the Gold Room: A Harmony	[139]
		Ballade de Marguerite	[140]
		The Dole of the King’s Daughter	[143]
		Amor Intellectualis	[145]
		Santa Decca	[146]
		A Vision	[147]
		Impression de Voyage	[148]
		The Grave of Shelley	[149]
		By the Arno	[150]
	Impressions deThéàtre:
		Fabien dei Franchi	[155]
		Phèdre	[156]
		Sonnets written at the Lyceum Theatre
		I. Portia	[157]
		II. Queen HenriettaMaria	[158]
		III. Camma	[159]
	Panthea		[161]
	The FourthMovement:
		Impression: Le Réveillon	[175]
		At Verona	[176]
		Apologia	[177]
		Quia Multum Amavi	[179]
		Silentium Amoris	[180]
		Her Voice	[181]
		My Voice	[183]
		Tædium Vitæ	[184]
	Humanitad		[185]
	Flower of Love:
		ΓΛΥΚΥΠΙΚΡΟΣΕΡΩΣ	[211]
UNCOLLECTED POEMS (1876–1893):
		From Spring Days to Winter	[217]
		Tristitiæ	[219]
		The True Knowledge	[220]
		Impressions: I. LeJardin	[221]
		II. La Mer	[222]
		Under the Balcony	[223]
		The Harlot’s House	[225]
		Le Jardin des Tuileries	[227]
		On the Sale by Auction of Keats’ Love Letters	[228]
		The New Remorse	[229]
		Fantasisies Décoratives: I. Le Panneau	[230]
		II. Les Ballons	[232]
		Canzonet	[233]
		Symphony in Yellow	[235]
		In the Forest	[236]
		To my Wife: With a Copy of my Poems	[237]
		With a Copy of ‘A House of Pomegranates’	[238]
		Roses and Rue	[239]
		Désespoir	[242]
		Pan: Double Villanelle	[243]
THE SPHINX (1894)			[245]
THE BALLAD OF READING GAOL (1898)			[269]
RAVENNA (1878)			[305]

POEMS

HÉLAS!

To drift with every passion till my soul
Is a stringed lute on which all winds can play,
Is it for this that I have given away
Mine ancient wisdom, and austere control?
Methinks my life is a twice-written scroll
Scrawled over on some boyish holiday
With idle songs for pipe and virelay,
Which do but mar the secret of the whole.
Surely there was a time I might have trod
The sunlit heights, and from life’s dissonance
Struck one clear chord to reach the ears of God:
Is that time dead? lo! with a little rod
I did but touch the honey of romance—
And must I lose a soul’s inheritance?

ELEUTHERIA

SONNET TO LIBERTY

Not that I love thy children, whose dull eyes
See nothing save their own unlovely woe,
Whose minds know nothing, nothing care to know,—
But that the roar of thy Democracies,
Thy reigns of Terror, thy great Anarchies,
Mirror my wildest passions like the sea
And give my rage a brother—! Liberty!
For this sake only do thy dissonant cries
Delight my discreet soul, else might all kings
By bloody knout or treacherous cannonades
Rob nations of their rights inviolate
And I remain unmoved—and yet, and yet,
These Christs that die upon the barricades,
God knows it I am with them, in some things.

AVE IMPERATRIX

Set in this stormy Northern sea,
Queen of these restless fields of tide,
England! what shall men say of thee,
Before whose feet the worlds divide?

The earth, a brittle globe of glass,
Lies in the hollow of thy hand,
And through its heart of crystal pass,
Like shadows through a twilight land,