Selected Poems

By Oscar Wilde

Wilde, glamorous and notorious, more famous as a playwright or prisoner than as a poet, invites readers of his verse to meet an unknown and intimate figure. The poetry of his formative years includes the haunting elegy to his young sister and the grieving lyric at the death of his father. The religious drama of his romance with Rome is captured here, as well as its resolution in his renewed love of ancient Greece. He explores forbidden sexual desires, pays homage to the great theatre stars and poets of his day, observes cityscapes with impressionist intensity. His final masterpiece, The Ballad of Reading Gaol, tells the painful story of his own prison experience and calls for universal compassion. This edition of Wilde's verse presents the full range of his achievement as a poet.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sheba Blake Publishing
• Release date: Apr 28, 2017
• ISBN: 9783961895564

Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) was a Dublin-born poet and playwright who studied at the Portora Royal School, before attending Trinity College and Magdalen College, Oxford. The son of two writers, Wilde grew up in an intellectual environment. As a young man, his poetry appeared in various periodicals including Dublin University Magazine. In 1881, he published his first book Poems, an expansive collection of his earlier works. His only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, was released in 1890 followed by the acclaimed plays Lady Windermere’s Fan (1893) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895).

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SELECTED POEMS

BY

OSCAR WILDE

Copyright © 2017 by Oscar Wilde.

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations em- bodied in critical articles or reviews.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organiza- tions, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Book and Cover design by Sheba Blake Publishing

First Edition: January 2017

TABLE OF CONTENTS

SELECTED POEMS

TABLE OF CONTENTS

NOTE

THE BALLAD OF READING GAOL

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

THE BALLAD OF READING GAOL

I

II

III

IV

AVE IMPERATRIX

TO MY WIFE - WITH A COPY OF MY POEMS

MAGDALEN WALKS

THEOCRITUS - A VILLANELLE

GREECE

PORTIA

FABIEN DEI FRANCHI

PHEDRE

SONNET ON HEARING THE DIES IRAE SUNG IN THE SISTINE CHAPEL

AVE MARIA GRATIA PLENA

LIBERTATIS SACRA FAMES

ROSES AND RUE

FROM 'THE GARDEN OF EROS'

THE HARLOT'S HOUSE

FROM 'THE BURDEN OF ITYS'

FLOWER OF LOVE

It is thought that a selection from Oscar Wilde's early verses may be of interest to a large public at present familiar only with the always popular BALLAD OF READING GAOL, also included in this volume. The poems were first collected by their author when he was twenty-sex years old, and though never, until recently, well received by the critics, have survived the test of NINE editions. Readers will be able to make for themselves the obvious and striking contrasts between these first and last phases of Oscar Wilde's literary activity. The intervening period was devoted almost entirely to dramas, prose, fiction, essays, and criticism.

Robert Ross
Reform Club

April 5, 1911

NOTE

At the end of the complete text will be found a shorter version based on the original draft of the poem. This is included for the benefit of reciters and their audiences who have found the entire poem too long for declamation. I have tried to obviate a
difficulty, without officiously exercising the ungrateful
prerogatives of a literary executor, by falling back on a text which represents the author's first scheme for a poem - never intended of course for recitation.

Robert Ross

In memoriam of C. T. W.


Sometimes trooper of


The Royal Horse Guards
Obiit

H.M. Prison


Reading, Berkshire


July 7th, 1896

THE BALLAD OF READING GAOL

I

He did not wear his scarlet coat,
For blood and wine are red,
And blood and wine were on his hands
When they found him with the dead,
The poor dead woman whom he loved,
And murdered in her bed.

He walked amongst the Trial Men
In a suit of shabby grey;
A cricket cap was on his head,
And his step seemed light and gay;
But I never saw a man who looked
So wistfully at the day.

I never saw a man who