PART V

THE POET

POEMS

If a keynote were wanted to Oscar Wilde's verse it might be found in a couple of stanzas by the poet whose work perhaps had the greatest share in moulding his ideas and fashioning his style. Charles Baudelaire, with all his love of the terrible and the morbid, was an incomparable stylist, and in these lines has almost formulated a creed of art.

"La Nature est un temple où de vivants piliers Laissent parfois sortir de confuses paroles; L'homme y passe à travers des forêts de symboles Qui l'observent avec des regards familiers.

Comme de longs échos qui de loin se confondent Dans une ténébreuse et profonde unité, Vaste comme la nuit et comme la clarté, Les parfums, les couleurs et les sons se répondent."

We can picture to ourselves the young Oxford student studying these lines over and over again till they had become part and parcel of himself.

Wilde himself has left it on record that he "cannot imagine anyone with the smallest pretensions to culture preferring a dexterously turned triolet to a fine imaginative ballad." In the majority of his poems, the beauties of nature, flowers, the song of birds and the music of running water are introduced either incidentally or as the _leit motif_. In fact, he was responsible for the dictum that what English poetry has to fear is not the fascination of dainty metre or delicate form, but the predominance of the intellectual spirit over the spirit of beauty.

That the expression of the beautiful need not necessarily be simple was one of his earliest contentions. "Are simplicity and directness of utterance," he asks, "absolute essentials for poetry?" and proceeds to answer his own question. "I think not. They may be admirable for the drama, admirable for all those imitative forms of literature that claim to mirror life in its externals and its accidents, admirable for quiet narrative, admirable in their place; but their place is not everywhere. Poetry has many modes of music; she does not blow through one pipe alone. Directness of utterance is good, but so is the subtle recasting of thought into a new and delightful form. Simplicity is good, but complexity, mystery, strangeness, symbolism, obscurity even, these have their value. Indeed, properly speaking, there is no such thing as Style; there are merely styles, that is all."

There we have a clear, concise and catholic statement of his literary creed, and none other was to be expected from one to whom Baudelaire, Poe, Keats, and Rossetti were so many masters whose influence was to be carefully cultivated and whose methods were worthy of imitation and study. His views on the subject of simplicity in verse should be read by all who desire to understand his method and do justice to his work.

"We are always apt to think," he wrote, "that the voices which sang at the dawn of poetry were simpler, fresher, and more natural than ours, and that the world which the early poets looked at, and through which they walked, had a kind of poetical quality of its own, and could pass, almost without changing, into song. The snow lies thick now upon Olympus, and its scarped sides are bleak and barren, but once, we fancy, the white feet of the Muses brushed the dew from the anemones in the morning, and at evening came Apollo to sing to the shepherds in the vale. But in this we are merely lending to other ages what we desire, or think we desire, for our own. Our historical sense is at fault. Every century that produces poetry is, so far, an artificial century, and the work that seems to us the most natural and simple product of its time is probably the result of the most deliberate and self-conscious effort. For nature is always behind the age. It takes a great artist to be thoroughly modern."

"Ravenna," the poem with which Oscar Wilde won the Newdigate Prize, we find to be far above the average of such effusions, though possessing most of the faults inherent in compositions of this kind. Grace and even force of expression are not wanting, with here and there a pure strain of sentiment and thought, and a keen appreciation of the beauties of nature. Ever and anon we come across some sentence, some _tournure de phrase_ which might belong to his later work, as for instance--

"The crocus bed (that seems a moon of fire Round-girdled with a purple marriage-ring)."

But for the most part the poem is rather reminiscent of "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage," and is chiefly interesting by reason of the promise it holds forth.

The poems published in 1881 are preceded by some dedicatory verses addressed to his wife which are characterised by great daintiness and simplicity, instinct with tender affection and chivalrous homage.

"Helas," which forms a sort of preface to the collection, is chiefly interesting on account of the prophetic pathos of the lines:

"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."

"Ave Imperatrix" will come as a surprise to those unacquainted with Wilde's works. Most people would have thought the author of "Dorian Gray" the last man in the world to write a stirring patriotic poem which would not be out of place in a collection of Mr Kipling's works. A copy of _The World_ containing this poem found its way to an officer in Lord Robert's force marching on Candahar, and evoked the enthusiasm and admiration of the whole mess. As a proof of the author's originality and care in the choice of similes he purposely discards the modern heraldic device of the British lion for the more correct and ancient leopards, as:

"The yellow leopards, strained and lean, The treacherous Russian knows so well With gaping blackened jaws are seen Leap through the hail of screaming shell."

There is a fine swing about the metre of this verse, and the description of the leopards as "strained and lean" is a piece of word painting, a felicity of expression that it would be difficult to improve on. The whole poem is tense with patriotic fervour, nor is it wanting in exquisitely pathetic touches, as for instance--

"Pale women who have lost their lord Will kiss the relics of the slain-- Some tarnished epaulette--some sword-- Poor toys to soothe such anguished pain."

or

"In vain the laughing girl will yearn To greet her love with love-lit eyes: Down in some treacherous ravine, Clutching the flag, the dead boy lies."

That he should have written such a poem is proof conclusive of the author's extraordinary versatility, and though a comparatively early production is worthy to rank with the finest war poems in the language.

Current events at that time attracted his pen for we find a set of verses on the death of the ill-fated Prince Imperial, a sonnet on the Bulgarian Christians, and others of a more or less patriotic character. Few of these productions, however, invite a very serious criticism. They were of the moment and for the moment, and have lost the appeal of freshness and actuality.

In "The Garden of Eros" we get a good insight into Wilde's passionate fondness for flowers, to whom they were human things with souls. Probably no other verses of the poet so well define and express this master passion of his life.

"... Mark how the yellow iris wearily Leans back its throat, as though it would be kissed By its false chamberer, the dragon-fly."

or

"And I will tell thee why the jacynth wears Such dread embroidery of dolorous moan."

or again

"Close to a shadowy nook where half afraid Of their own loneliness some violets lie That will not look the gold sun in the face."

I remember a lady telling me once that she was in a London shop one day when Wilde came in and asked as a favour that a lily be taken out of the window because it looked so tired. This looking on flowers as real live sentient things was no mere pose with him. He was thoroughly imbued with the conviction that they were possessed of feeling, and throughout his poetical work we shall find endless applications of this idea.

Of particular interest in this poem are the verses descriptive of the various poets, his contemporaries. Swinburne he alludes to most happily, as far as the neatness of phrase is concerned nothing could be better in this regard than

"And he hath kissed the lips of Proserpine And sung the Galilean's requiem."

William Morris, "our sweet and simple Chaucer's child," appeals to him strangely. Many a summer's day he informs us he has "lain poring on the dreamy tales his fancy weaves." His appreciation of Morris's verse is keen and enthusiastic.

"The little laugh of water falling down Is not so musical, the clammy gold Close hoarded in the tiny waxen town Has less of sweetness in it."

What a delicate metaphor that is, what an exquisite poet's fancy. Not Keats himself could have surpassed the "clammy gold close hoarded in the tiny waxen town"--it is worthy to rank with some of the daintiest flights in the "Queen Mab speech," that modern Mercutios murder so abominably.

Like every verse writer of his time Oscar Wilde had felt the wondrous influence of Rossetti, and no finer tribute to the painter could be written than the lines--

"All the World for him A gorgeous coloured vestiture must wear, And Sorrow take a purple diadem, Or else be no more Sorrow, and Despair Gild its own thorns, and Pain, like Adon, be Even in Anguish beautiful; such is the empery which Painters held."

There is a stately splendour about the flow of "a gorgeous coloured vestiture," and one pauses to admire the choice of the last word, and can picture the poet's delight when, like an artist in mosaic who has hit upon the stone to fill up the remaining interstice, he lighted on the word. It is essentially _le mot juste_, no other could have filled its place. So also is there a peculiar happiness in the use of "empery." There is a volume of sound and meaning in the word that could with difficulty be surpassed.

In fact, in his choice of words Wilde always and for ever deserves the glowing words of praise that Baudelaire addressed to Theodore de Bonville--

"Vous avez prélassé votre orgueil d'architecte Dans des constructions dont l'audace correcte Fait voir quelle sera votre maturité."

And when we come to a line like--

"Against the pallid shield Of the wan sky the almond blossoms gleam"

we realise how thoroughly the praise would be deserved, and linger lovingly on the lilting music of the words and the curious Japanese setting of the picture evolved. The poem ends on a note like the drawing in of a deep breath of country air after a prolonged sojourn in towns.

"Why soon The woodman will be here; how we have lived this night of June."

In "Requiescat" quite a different note is reached. The poem was written after the death of a beloved sister; the sentiment rings true and the very simplicity of the language conveys an atmosphere of real grief that would have been entirely marred by the intrusion of any decorative or highly-coloured phrase. The choice of Saxon words alone could produce the desired effect, and the author has realised this and made use almost exclusively of that material. Nor was he ill-advised to let himself be influenced so far as the metre is concerned by Hood's incomparable "Bridge of Sighs," and it was not in the metre alone that he availed himself of that priceless gem of English verse--

"All her bright golden hair Tarnished with rust, She that was young and fair Fallen to dust."

is obviously inspired by

"Take her up tenderly, Lift her with care; Fashioned so slenderly, Young, and so fair!"

But, on the other hand, Hood himself might well have envied the exquisite sentiment contained in--

"Speak gently, she can hear The daisies grow."

The lines were written at Avignon, surely the place of all others, with its memories and its mediæval atmosphere, to inspire a poem, the dignity and beauty of which are largely due to the simplicity of its wording.

During this period of travel we are struck by two things. Firstly, how deeply impressed the young poet was by the mysteries of the Catholic Faith and how his indignation flamed up at the new Italian _régime_; secondly, how apparent the influence of Rossetti is in the sonnets he then wrote.

His sympathies were all with the occupant of St Peter's chair.

"But when I knew that far away at Rome In evil bonds a second Peter lay, I wept to see the land so very fair."

and again

"Look southward where Rome's desecrated town Lies mourning for her God-anointed King! Look heavenward! Shall God allow this thing Not but some flame-girt Raphael shall come down, And smite the Spoiler with the sword of pain."

In "San Miniato" the influence of Rome upon the young man's mind finds expression in words which might have been written by a son of the Latin Church.

"O crowned by God with thorns and pain! Mother of Christ! O mystic wife! My heart is weary of this life And over sad to sing again,"

he writes, and ends with the invocation--

"O crowned by God with love and flame! O crowned by Christ the Holy One! O listen ere the scorching sun Show to the world my sin and shame."

Nor can it be wondered at that the devotion to the Madonna which forms so essential a feature of the Catholic Faith should impress his young and ardent spirit as it does nearly every artist to whom the poetic beauty of this side of It naturally appeals.

The Pope's captivity moved him again and again to express his indignation in verse, and from his poem, "Easter Day" we can gather how deeply he was impressed both by the stately ceremonial at St Peter's and by the sight of the despoiled Pontiff. At this time also he seems to have been more or less yearning after a more spiritual mode of life than he has been leading, at least so one gathers from poems like "E Tenebris" in which he tells us that--

"The wine of life is spilt upon the sand, My heart is as some famine-murdered land Whence all good things have perished utterly And well I know my soul in Hell must be, If I this night before God's throne should stand."

That he had visions of a possible time when a complete change should be worked in his spiritual condition seems clear from the concluding lines of "Rome Unvisited."

"Before yon field of trembling gold Is garnered into dusty sheaves Or ere the autumn's scarlet leaves Flutter as birds adown the wold, I may have run the glorious race, And caught the torch while yet aflame, And called upon the Holy name Of Him who now doth hide His face."

Apart from the light these poems throw upon his mental and spiritual attitude at that period, they are extremely interesting as revealing the literary influences governing him at the time. I have already referred to the resemblance between his sonnets and the more finished ones of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and this point cannot better be illustrated than by placing the work of the two men in juxtaposition.

If we take, for instance, Rossetti's "Lady of the Rocks."

"Mother, is this the darkness of the end, The Shadow of Death? and is that outer sea Infinite imminent Eternity? And does the death-pang by man's seed sustained In Time's each instant cause thy face to bend Its silent prayer upon the Son, while He Blesses the dead with His hand silently To His long day which hours no more offend? Mother of grace, the pass is difficult, Keen as these rocks, and the bewildered souls Throng it like echoes, blindly shuddering through. Thy name, O Lord, each spirit's voice extols, Whose peace abides in the dark avenue Amid the bitterness of things occult."

and compare it with "E Tenebris." We are at once struck with the same mode of expression, the same train of thought and the same deep note of pain in the two poems.

And again take Wilde's "Madonna Mia"--

"I stood by the unvintageable sea Till the wet waves drenched face and hair with spray, The long red fires of the dying day Burned in the west; the wind piped drearily; And to the land the clamorous gulls did flee: 'Alas!' I cried, 'my life is full of pain, And who can garner fruit or golden grain, From these waste fields which travail ceaselessly!' My nets gaped wide with many a break and flaw Nathless I threw them as my final cast Into the sea, and waited for the end. When lo! a sudden glory! and I saw From the black waters of my tortured past The argent splendour of white limbs ascend!"

and compare it with Rossetti's "Venetian Pastoral" and "Mary's Girlhood," and we can almost imagine that the painter was holding up pictures to inspire the young poet.

"Red underlip drawn in for fear of love And white throat, whiter than the silvered dove,"

might almost have been written by Rossetti himself.

More characteristically original are the lines--

"I saw From the black waters of my tortured past The argent splendour of white limbs ascend,"

from the "Vita Nuova," though one cannot fail to perceive a faint Baudelairian note.

"Where behind lattice window scarlet wrought and gilt Some brown-limbed girl did weave thee tapestry,"

at once reminds us of the Rossetti influence.

The poem itself shows considerable skill in construction and deftness in the moulding of the sentences, moreover, there is a freshness in the treatment of the theme that a less original writer would have found great difficulty in imparting. Here again we see the Catholic note as when he writes--

"Never mightest thou see The face of Her, before whose mouldering shrine To-day at Rome the silent nations kneel; Who got from Love no joyous gladdening, But only Love's intolerable pain, Only a sword to pierce her heart in twain, Only the bitterness of child-bearing."

There is one especially fine bit of imagery--

"The lotus-leaves which heal the wounds of death Lie in thy hand--"

which bears the very truest imprint of poetry.

With the poet's return to England, a reaction took place, and the sight of English woodlands and English lanes caused a strong revulsion of feeling.

"This English Thames is holier far than Rome Those harebells like a sudden flush of sea Breaking across the woodland, with the foam Of meadow-sweet and white anemone, To fleck their blue waves,--God is likelier there Than hidden in that crystal-hearted star the pale monks bear."

The green fields and the smell of the good brown earth come as a refreshing contrast to the incense laden atmosphere of foreign cathedrals. And yet his fancy delights in commingling the two. In the "violet-gleaming" butterflies he finds Roman Monsignore (he anglicises the word by the way and gives it a plural "s,"), a lazy pike is "some mitred old Bishop _in partibis_," and "The wind, the restless prisoner of the trees, does well for Palestrina."

He revels in the contrast that the refreshing simplicity of rural England presents to the pomp and splendour of Rome. The "lingering orange afterglow" is "more fair than all Rome's lordliest pageants." The "blue-green beanfields" "tremulous with the last shower" bring sweeter perfume at eventide than "the odorous flame-jewelled censers the young deacons swing." Bird life suggests the conceit that--

"Poor Fra Giovanni bawling at the Mass, Were out of tune now for a small brown bird Sings overhead."

His love of nature, his passion for flowers and the music of nature find continued and ecstatic expression.

"Sweet is the swallow twittering on the eaves."

Everything appeals to him, "the heavy lowing cattle stretching their huge and dripping mouths across the farmyard gate," the mower whetting his scythe, the milkmaid carolling blithely as she trips along.

"Sweet are the hips upon the Kentish leas, And sweet the wind that lifts the new-mown hay, And sweet the fretful swarms of grumbling bees That round and round the linden blossoms play; And sweet the heifer breathing on the stall And the green bursting figs that hang upon the red-brick wall."

No matter that he mixes up the seasons somewhat and that having sung of bursting figs he refers, in the next line, to the cuckoo mocking the spring--"when the last violet loiters by the well"--the poem is still a pastoral breathing its fresh flower-filled atmosphere of the English countryside. Wilde is, however, saturated with classical lore and (though on some minds the fantasy may jar) he introduces Daphnus and Linus, Syrinx and Cytheræa. But he is faithful to his English land, he talks of roses which "all day long in vales Æolian a lad might seek for" and which "overgrows our hedges like a wanton courtesan, unthrifty of its beauty," a real Shakespearean touch. "Many an unsung elegy," he tells us, "Sleeps in the reeds that fringe our winding Thames." He peoples the whole countryside with faun and nymph--

"Some Mænad girl with vine leaves on her breast Will filch their beech-nuts from the sleeping Pans, So softly that the little nested thrush Will never wake, and then will shrilly laugh and leap will rush Down the green valley where the fallen dew Lies thick beneath the elm and count her store, Till the brown Satyrs in a jolly crew Trample the loosetrife down along the shore, And where their horned master sits in state Bring strawberries and bloomy plums upon a wicker crate."

And yet the religious influence still makes itself felt.

"Why must I behold [he exclaims] The wan white face of that deserted Christ Whose bleeding hands my hands did once enfold?"

but it is only momentary, and once more he sports with the sylvan gods and goddesses till

"The heron passes homeward from the mere, The blue mist creeps among the shivering trees, Gold world by world the silent stars appear And like a blossom blows--before the breeze A white moon drifts across the shimmering sky."

and he hears "the curfew booming from the bell at Christ Church gate."

Wilde never wrote anything better in verse than this with the single exception of "The Ballad of Reading Gaol." The poem deserves to rank among the finest pastorals in the language. It is essentially musical, written with artistic restraint and with a discrimination of the use of words and their combination that marks the great artist. It is a true nature poem and it will appeal to all those who prefer musical verse to the artificial manufacture of rhymes, and simple sentences to the torturing of words into unheard-of combinations.

As a contrast to it comes the "Magdalen Walks" which, in construction and rhythm, is somewhat lacking in ease and freedom. It is a curious thing that Wilde's affections seemed to alternate between the unordered simplicity of English woods and meadows and the trim artificial parterres and bouquets of Versailles or Sans Souci. There is a constraint about the metre of this poem which does rather suggest a man walking along a trim avenue from which he can perceive flowers, meadows and riotous hedges--in the distance. There is also a suggestion of Tennyson's "Maud" about--

"And the plane to the pine tree is whispering some tale of love Till it rustles with laughter and tosses its mantle of green And the gloom of the wych elm's hollow is lit with the iris sheen Of the burnished rainbow throat and the silver breast of a dove."

"Impression du Matin" might be said to be a successful attempt to render a Whistler pastel into verse, but there is a human note about the last verse that elevates the poem far above such a mere _tour de force_, and there is a fine sense of effect in the picture of the "pale woman all alone" standing in the glimmering light of the gas lamp as the rays of the sun just touch her hair.

"A Serenade" and "Endymion" possess all the qualities that a musical setting demands, but do not call for especial comment. It is, however, in "La Bella Donna della mia Mante" that the expression of the poet's genius finds vent.

"As a pomegranate, cut in twain, White-seeded, is her crimson mouth"

is as perfect a metaphor as one could well wish to find.

"Charmides" is a more ambitious effort than anything he had yet attempted. The word-painting is obviously inspired by Keats, for whose work he had an intense admiration. Such lines as "Came a great owl with yellow sulphurous eyes," and "Vermilion-finned with eyes of bossy gold" might have been taken straight out of "Lamia," so truly has he caught the spirit of his master. But if enamoured of Keats's gorgeous colouring Wilde revelled in the construction of jewelled phrase and crimson line, there is another source of inspiration noticeable in the poem. Had Shakespeare never written "Venus and Adonis," Wilde might have written "Charmides" but it would not have been the same poem. The difference between the true poet who has studied the great verse of bygone ages and the mere imitator is that one will produce a work of art enhanced by the suggestions derived from the contemplation of the highest conception of genius, whereas the other will outrun the constable and merely accentuate and burlesque the distinguishing characteristics of the work of others. In the case in point, whilst we note with pleasure and interest the points of resemblance between the poem and the models that its author has followed, we are conscious that what we are reading is a work of art in itself and that its intrinsic merits are enhanced by the points of resemblance and do not depend on them for their existence.

There is another poem--"Ballade de Marguerite"--which recalls memories of Keats, closely resembling as it does "La Belle Dame Sans Merci." Rarely has the old ballad form been more successfully treated. We catch the very spirit of mediævalism in the lines--

"Perchance she is kneeling in St. Denys (On her soul may our Lady have grammercy!) Ah, if she is praying in lone chapelle I might swing the censer and ring the bell."

It is so easy to overdo the thing, to produce a bad counterfeit made up of Wardour Street English, that to retain the simplicity of language and the slight _soupçon_ of Chaucerian English requires all the skill of a master craftsman, and the intimate knowledge of the value and date of words that can only result from a close acquaintance with the works of the ballad writers.

In "The Dole of the King's Daughter" Wilde again essays the ballad form, but this time the treatment shows more traces of the Rossetti influence. The ballad spirit is maintained with unerring skill and the form perfectly adhered to throughout. To quote good old Izaak Walton--"old-fashioned poetry but choicely good."

As conveying the idea of impending tragedy nothing could be more effective than the simplicity of the lines

"There are two that ride from the south and east And two from the north and west, For the black raven a goodly feast For the king's daughter rest."

In this ballad as in the "Chanson" he uses the old device, so common in ancient ballads, of making the alternate lines parenthetical, as, for instance--

"There is one man who loves her true, (Red, O red, is the stain of gore!) He hath duggen a grave by the darksome yew, (One grave will do for four)."

A rather clever parody of this mode of construction is worth quoting here--

"SAGE GREEN"

(_By a Fading-out Æsthete_)

"My love is as fair as a lily flower. (_The Peacock blue has a sacred sheen!_) Oh, bright are the blooms in her maiden bower. (_Sing Hey! Sing Ho! for the sweet Sage Green!_)

Her face is as wan as the water white. (_The Peacock blue has a sacred sheen!_) Alack! she heedeth it never at all. (_Sing Hey! Sing Ho! for the sweet Sage Green!_)

The China plate it is pure on the wall. (_The Peacock blue has a sacred sheen!_) With languorous loving and purple pain. (_Sing Hey! Sing Ho! for the sweet Sage Green!_)

And woe is me that I never may win; (_The Peacock blue has a sacred sheen!_) For the Bard's hard up, and she's got no tin. (_Sing Hey! Sing Ho! for the sweet Sage Green!_)"

Among the sonnets written at this period the one on Keats's grave in which he does homage to him whom he reverenced as a master is especially felicitous in its ending--

"Thy name was writ in water--it shall stand And tears like mine will keep thy memory green As Isabella did her Basil-tree."

Than the graceful introducing of Keats's poem no more delicate epitaph could be well imagined. Shelley's last resting-place likewise inspired his pen and there is an "Impression de Voyage" written at Katakolo at the period of his visit to Greece in company with Professor Mahaffy, the concluding line of which, "I stood upon the soil of Greece at last," conveys more by its reticence than could be expressed in volumes.

Of his five theatrical sonnets headed "Impressions de Theatre," one is addressed to the late Sir Henry Irving and the three others to Miss Ellen Terry. It is curious that of the three Shakespearean characters he mentioned as worthier of the actor's great talents than Fabiendei Franchi--viz. Lear, Romeo, and Richard III.,--the only one that Irving ever played was Romeo, and in that part he was a decided failure, which, considering his peculiar mannerisms and method, as well as his age at the time, was not to be wondered at. The fifth was probably intended for Madame Sarah Bernhardt, whose wonderful rendering of Phèdre could not fail to deeply impress so cultured a critic as the author of these poems.

In "Panthea" Oscar Wilde gives rein to his amorous fancy, and, inspired by the poets of Greece and Rome, peoples the world with gods and goddesses who mourn the old glad pagan days--

"Back to their lotus-haunts they turn again Kissing each other's mouths, and mix more deep The poppy-seeded draught which brings soft purple-lidded sleep."

How rich is the language here employed, how exquisite the lilt of "soft purple-lidded sleep." Not even Tennyson in "The Lotus Eaters" has done anything better than this. And how delicately expressed is the idea embodied in the lines--

"There in the green heart of some garden close Queen Venus with the shepherd at her side, Her warm soft body like the briar rose Which should be white yet blushes at its pride--"

or, how tender the fancy that inspired

"So when men bury us beneath the yew Thy crimson-stained mouth a rose will be, And thy soft eyes lush bluebells dimmed with dew."

None but a poet could have written those lines; the stately wording of the second line is purposely chosen to enhance the perfect simplicity of the third.

The poems comprised within "The Fourth Movement" include the "Impression," "Le Reveillon," the first verse of which runs--

"The sky is laced with fitful red, The circling mists and shadows flee, The dawn is rising from the sea, Like a white lady from her bed--"

which inspired the parodist with--

"MORE IMPRESSIONS"

(_By Oscuro Wildgoose_)

DES SPONETTES

"My little fancy's clogged with gush, My little lyre is false in tone, And when I lyrically moan, I hear the impatient critic's 'Tush!'

But I've 'Impressions.' These are grand! Mere dabs of words, mere blobs of tint, Displayed on canvas or in print, Men laud, and think they understand.

A smudge of brown, a smear of yellow, No tale, no subject,--there you are! Impressions!--and the strangest far Is--that the bard's a clever fellow."

I quote the two parodies to show how little Oscar Wilde's verse was appreciated by his contemporaries. There is an unfairness and misrepresentation about them which is significant of how the poet's poses and extravagancies had prejudiced the public mind.

In the two love poems "Apologia" and "Quia multi Amori" a deeper key is struck, and a note of pain predominates. There is a restraint about the versification and the colour of the words that strikes the right chord and tunes the lyre to a subdued note.

The underlying passion and regret find their supreme expression in the lines--

"Ah! hadst thou liked me less and loved me more, Through all those summer days of joy and rain, I had not now been sorrow's heritor Or stood a lackey in the House of Pain."

The "hadst thou liked me less and loved me more" deserves to pass into the language with Richard Lovelace's

"I could not love thee, dear, so much, Loved I not honour more."

In "Humanitad" we get a view of the country in winter time, and

"The gaunt bittern stalks among the reeds And flaps his wings, and stretches back his neck, And hoots to see the moon; across the meads Limps the poor frightened hare, a little speck; And a stray seamew with its fretful cry Flits like a sudden drift of snow against the dull grey sky."

The picture is complete, we see the bare countryside, the sky grey with impending snow, and the animal life introduced uttering nature's cry of desolation. But hope is not dead in the poet's breast; he sees where, when springtime comes, "nodding cowslips" will bloom again and the hedge on which the wild rose--"That sweet repentance of the thorny briar"--will blossom out. He runs through the whole flower calendar, using the old English names "boy's-love," "sops in wine," and "daffodillies."

"Soon will the glade be bright with bellamour The flower which wantons love and those sweet nuns Vale-lilies in their snowy vestiture, Will tell their beaded pearls, and carnations With mitred dusky leaves will scent the wind And straggling traveller's joy each hedge with yellow stars will bind."

Once more we note how the flowers are personalities for him, a view which could not long escape the humorists of _Punch_, and which was amply taken advantage of by the writer of some burlesque verses, two of which are sufficiently amusing to quote--

"My long lithe lily, my languid lily, My lank limp lily-love, how shall I win-- Woo thee to wink at me? Silver lily, How shall I sing to thee, softly, or shrilly? What shall I weave for thee--which shall I spin-- Rondel, or rondeau, or virelay? Shall I buzz like a bee, with my face thrust in Thy choice, chaste chalice, or choose me a tin Trumpet, or touchingly, tenderly play On the weird bird-whistle, _sweeter than sin_, That I bought for a halfpenny, yesterday?

My languid lily, my lank limp lily, My long, lithe lily-love, men may grin-- Say that I'm soft and supremely silly-- What care I, while you whisper stilly; What care I, while you smile? Not a pin! While you smile, while you whisper--'Tis sweet to decay! I have watered with chlorodine, tears of chagrin, The churchyard mould I have planted thee in, Upside down, in an intense way, In a rough red flower-pot, _sweeter than sin_, That I bought for a halfpenny, yesterday!"

Nature appeals to Oscar Wilde in all her moods, and though he might at times assume the pose of preferring art to nature, he gives expression to his real feelings when he exclaims:

"Ah! somehow life is bigger after all Than any painted Angel could we see The God that is within us!"

The lines speak for themselves and are strongly indicative of his attitude towards nature and art at that period. The true spirit of Catholicism had gripped him; the influence of Rome was at work, though enfeebled, and remained latent within him till in his hour of passing he found peace in the bosom of the great Mother, who throughout the ages has always held out her arms to the sinner and the outcast.

There has always been a certain amount of mystery attached to another poem of Wilde's called "The Harlot's House," written at the same period as "The Duchess of Padua" and "The Sphinx"--that is, when he was living in the Hotel Voltaire. It was originally published in a magazine not later than June 1885. It is a curious thing that all researches up to the present as to the name of the publication have proved fruitless, and that the approximate date of the appearance of the verses has been arrived at by reference to a parody entitled "The Public House," which appeared in _The Sporting Times_, of all papers in the world, on 13th June 1885. First, an edition of the poem was brought out privately by the Methuen Press in 1904 with five illustrations by Althea Gyles, in which the bizarre note is markedly, though artistically, dominant. Another edition was privately printed in London in 1905 in paper wrappers.

The idea of this short lyrical poem is that the poet stands outside a house and watches the shadows of the puppet dancers "race across the blind."

"The dancers swing in a waltz of Strauss"--the "Treues Liebes Herz"--"like strange mechanical grotesques" or "black leaves wheeling in the wind." The marionettes whirl in the ghostly dance, and----

"Sometimes a clockwork puppet pressed A phantom lover to her breast, Sometimes they seemed to try and sing."

The man turns to his companion and remarks that "the dead are dancing with the dead," but drawn by the music she enters the house. As Love enters the house of Lust the gay seductive music changes to a discord, and the horrible shadows disappear. Then the dawn breaks, creeping down the silent street "like a frightened girl."

That is all, but as a high specimen of imagina-verse it stands alone. That the author was inspired by memories of Baudelaire and Poe is beyond dispute. Nevertheless, the poem, in conception as well as execution, is essentially original. The puppet dancers' _motif_ was afterwards introduced by him with telling effect as we shall see later in "The Ballad of Reading Gaol." Hardly ever have the bizarre and the _macabre_ been used with such artistic effect as in this short poem, nor have the imaginative gifts of its author ever found a finer scope. If he had written nothing else than these lines they would confer immortality on him. Like all truly great work they are imperishable and will form part of English literature when far more widely read effusions are set aside and forgotten.

I have remarked on the original character of the poem in spite of its obvious sources of inspiration, and there can be no better way of verifying this than by giving an example of Baudelaire's own incursion into puppet land--

"DANSE MACABRE"

"_Fière, autant qu'un vivant, de sa noble stature, Avec son gros bouquet son mouchoir et ses gants, Elle a la nonchalance et la désinvolture D'un coquette maigre aux airs extravagants._

_Vit-on jamais au bal une taille plus mince? Sa robe exagérée, en sa royale ampleur, S'ecroule abondamment sur un pied sec que pince Un soulier pomponné, joli comme une fleur._

_La ruche qui se joue au bord des clavicules, Comme un ruisseau lascif qui se frotte au rocher, Défend pudiquement des lazzi ridicules Les funèbres appas qu'elle tient à cacher._

_Ses yeux profonds sont faits de vide et de ténèbres, Et son crâne, de fleurs artistement coiffé, Oscille mollement sur ses frêles vertèbres, --O charme d'un néant follement attifé!_

_Aucuns t'appelleront une caricature, Qui ne comprennent pas, amants ivres de chair, L'élégance sans nom de l'humaine armature, Tu réponds, grand squelette, à mon gout le plus cher!_

_Viens-tu troubler, avec ta puissante grimace, La fête de la Vie? ou quelque vieux désir, Eperonnant encor ta vivant carcasse, Te pousse-t-il, crédule, au sabbat du Plaisir?_

_Au chant des violons, aux flammes des bougies, Espères-tu chasser ton cauchemar moqueur, Et viens-tu demander au torrent des orgies De rafraîchir l'enfer allumé dans ton coeur?_

_Inépuisable quits de sottise et de fautes! De l'antique douleur éternel alambic! A travers le treillis recourbé de tes côtes Je vois, errant encor, l'insatiable aspic._

_Pour dire vrai, je crains que ta coquetterie Ne trouve pas un prix digne de ses efforts; Qui, de ces soeurs mortels, entend la raillerie? Les charmes de l'horreur n'enivrent que les forts!_

_Le gouffre de tes yeux, plein d'horrible pensées, Exhale le vertige, et les danseurs prudents Ne contempleront pas sans d'amères nausées Le sourire éternel de tes trente-deux dents._

_Pourtant, qui n'a serré dans ses bras un squelette, Et qui ne s'est nourri des choses du tombeau? Qu'importe le parfum, l'habit ou la toilette? Qui fait le dégoûté montre qu'il se croit beau._

_Bayadère sans nez, irrésistible gouge, Dis donc à ces danseurs qui font les offusqués: 'Fiers mignons, malgré l'art des poudres et du rouge, Vous sentez tous la mort!' O squelettes musques._

_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--

"this curious cat Lies crouching on the Chinese mat with eyes of satin rimmed with gold."

Here we have in a very few words an exact picture of this "exquisite grotesque half-woman and half-animal," whom, after the manner of Edgar Allan Poe with his raven, he proceeds to apostrophise--

"Oh tell me" [he begins] "were you standing by when Isis to Osiris knelt? And did you watch the Egyptian melt her union for Antony?"

and plies her with many questions of similar nature. Presently he adjures her--

"Lift up your large black satin eyes which are like cushions where one sinks! Fawn at my feet, Sphinx! and sing me all your memories."

This idea of comparing the velvet depths of the eyes to "cushions where one sinks" is quaint and original, though distinctly decadent, nor is the note of the _macabre_ wanting, as--

"When through the purple corridors the screaming scarlet Ibis flew In terror, and a horrid dew dripped from the moaning mandragores."

There is a wonderful use of contrast in the introduction of sweating mandragores in connection with the purple of the corridors and the scarlet plumage of the Ibis. How daring, likewise, the grotesque note introduced as he recites the catalogue of her possible lovers and asks--

"Did giant Lizards come and couch before you on the reedy banks? Did Gryphons with great metal flanks leap on you in your trampled couch? Did monstrous hippopotami come sidling towards you in the mist? Did gilt-scaled dragons writhe and twist with passion as you passed them by?"

The speaker will find out the secret of her amours. There is nothing too bizarre, too monstrous to include in the list.

"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.

"Before his gilded galliot ran naked vine-wreathed corybantes, And lines of swaying elephants knelt down to draw his chariot."

Barbaric splendour and Eastern gorgeousness we have here and in one line the sense of immense wealth is conveyed--

"The meanest cup that touched his lips was fashioned from a chrysolite."

But now--

"The god is scattered here and there: deep hidden in the windy sand I saw his giant granite hand still clenchèd in impotent despair."

And he bids her--

"Go seek the fragments on the moor and wash them in the evening dew, And from their pieces make anew thy mutilated paramour."

With mocking irony he tells her to "wake mad passions in the senseless stone."

He counsels her to return to Egypt, her lovers are not dead--

"They will rise up and hear your voice And clash their cymbals and rejoice and run to kiss your mouth!..."

He advises to--

"Follow some raving lion's spoor across the copper-coloured plain,"

and take him as a lover or to mate with a tiger--

"And toy with him in amorous jests, and when he turns and snarls and gnaws O smite him with your jasper claws! and bruise him with your agate breasts!"

But "her sullen ways" pall on him, her presence fills him with horror, "poisonous and heavy breath makes the light flicker in the lamp."

The poet wonders what "songless tongueless ghost of sin crept through the curtains of the night." He drives the cat away with every opprobrious epithet for she wakes in him "each bestial sense" and makes him what he "would not be." She makes his "creed a barren shame," and wakes "foul dreams of sensual life," and with a return to sanity he chases her away. "Go thou before," he cries,

"And leave me to my crucifix Whose pallid burden sick with pain watches the world with wearied eyes And weeps for every soul that dies, and weeps for every soul in pain."

On this note of pessimism and refusal the poem ends. In the realm of the fantastic it has no equal and though the objection may be raised that the whole thing is unhealthy, the truth is that it is merely an experimental excursion in the abnormal. It has all the fantastic unreality of Chinese dragons, and, therefore, can in no way be harmful. The nightmare effect has no lasting influence. We read it as we would any other imaginative grotesque. But whilst we are alternately fascinated and repulsed by the subject, we are lost in admiration of the decorative treatment of the theme. The whole performance is artificial, but so is all Oriental art.

It is true that Baudelaire's poems, with their morbid, highly polished neurotic qualities, had fascinated the young artist and exercised a powerful influence over him, but "The Sphinx" was an achievement apart and totally different from any other of his poems. It is more in the nature of an extravaganza, an opium dream described in finely chiselled, richly tinted phrases. Every young poet goes through various phases and this was only a phase in the author's literary career. Nothing could be better than the workmanship, and that the poem should so rivet the attention and attract where it most repels is the greatest tribute to the genius of its creator. It is essentially a weird conception expressed in haunting cadences, an esoteric gem for all those who have brains to think and the necessary artistic sense to appreciate really good work. That persons of inferior mental calibre and narrow views should be shocked by it is only to be expected, and the author himself excused the delay in publishing it by explaining that "it would destroy domesticity in England!" The original edition, it may be mentioned, was published in September 1894 by Messrs Elkin Mathews and John Lane, and was limited to two hundred copies issued at 42s. with twenty-five on larger paper at 105s. It was magnificently illustrated by Mr C. R. Ricketts, the delicacy and distinction of whose work is too well known to need comment.

In striking contrast to the artificiality and decadent character of "The Sphinx" stands the author's imperishable "Ballad of Reading Gaol." What the circumstances were that led to the writing of this great masterpiece have been already sufficiently dealt with in the earlier portion of this work. It has been aptly said that all great art has an underlying note of pain and sorrow, beautiful work may be produced without it, but not the work that is worthy to rank among the great creative masterpieces of the world. "Quand un homme et une poésie," writes Barbey d'Aubrevilly, "ont dévalé si bas dans la conscience de l'incurable malheur qui est fond de toutes les voluptés de l'existence poésie et homme ne peuvent plus que remonter." There can be no doubt that this poem could never have been written but for the terrible ordeal the poet had been through. It is incomparably Wilde's finest poetic work--great, not only by reason of its beauty, but great on account of the feeling for suffering humanity, his power to enter into the sorrows of others and to forget his own trials in the sympathetic contemplation of the agony of his fellow-sufferers which it reveals. The words of another distinguished French critic might almost have been written about him:

"Désormais divorcée d'avec l'enseignement historique, philosophique et scientifique, la poésie se trouve ramenée à so fonction naturelle et directe, qui est de réaliser pour nous la vie, complémentaire du rêve, du souvenir, de l'espérance, du désir; de donner un corps à ce qu'il y a d'insaisissable dans nos pensées et de secret dans le mouvement de nos âmes; de nous consoler ou de nous châtier par l'expression de l'ideal ou par le spectacle de nos vices. Elle devient non pas _individuelle_, suivant la prédiction un peu hasardeuse de l'auteur de _Jocelyn_, mais _personnelle_, si nous sous-entendons que l'ame du poëte est nécessairement une âme collective, une corde sensible et toujours tendue que font vibrer les passions et les douleurs de ses semblables."

With Coleridge's "Ancient Mariner," "Reading Gaol," holds first place amongst the ballads of the world, and by many critics it is held, by reason of its deep feeling and anguished intensity, to be a finer piece of work than the older poet's _chef d'oeuvre_.

Although the author's identity was concealed under the cypher "C33," there was never a moment's doubt as to who the writer was. It came as a shock to the British public that the man who, but a couple of years before, had stood in the public pillory, the man whose work the great majority, who had never even read it, believed to be artificial, meretricious, and superficial, should be the author of a deeply moving poem that could be read by the most prudish and strait-laced.

_The Times_, that great organ of English respectability, devoted a leading article to it of a highly eulogistic character. The edition was sold out at once, and the book was on all men's tongues. Wherever one went one heard it discussed, priest and philistine were as loud in their praises of it as the most decadent of minor poets. No poem had for a generation met with such a friendly reception or caused such a sensation.

A critical notice of the poem from the pen of Lady Currie appeared in _The Fortnightly Review_ for July 1904. In it the author writes of the "terrible 'Ballad of Reading Gaol' with its splendours and inequalities, its mixture of poetic farce, crude realism, and undeniable pathos." As to the crudeness of the realism, that is a mere matter of opinion: it is easy to supply an adjective--it is more difficult to justify the use of it, and give satisfactory reasons for its application. Realistic the poem doubtless is--crude, never, but the writer shows a far keener appreciation when she says--"all is grim, concentrated tragedy from cover to cover. A friend of mine," Lady Currie says, "who looked upon himself as a judge in such matters, told me that he would have placed certain passages in this poem, by reason of their terrible, tragic intensity, upon a level with some of the descriptions in Dante's 'Inferno,' were it not that 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol' was so much more infinitely human."

Among the many laudatory notices that appeared at the time, there is an extract from a review of the work taken from a great London paper and quoted by a French writer which is worth reprinting as showing the attitude of the press towards the poem.

"The whole is awful as the pages of Sophocles. That he has rendered with his fine art so much of the essence of his life and the life of others in that inferno to the sensitive is a memorable thing for the social scientist, but a much more memorable thing for literature. This is a simple, a poignant, a great ballad, one of the greatest in the English language."

Never, perhaps, since Gray's "Elegy" had a poem been so revised, pruned and polished over and over again as this cry from a prison cell. The publisher was driven to the verge of distraction by the constant alterations and emendations, the placing of a comma had become a matter of moment to the fastidious author, but the work was published in its entirety save for two or three stanzas concerning one of the prison officials that it was deemed wise to suppress.

The poem bears the dedication--

IN MEMORIAM C. T. W. Sometime Trooper of the Royal Horse Guards Obiit, H.M. Prison, Reading, Berkshire July 7th, 1896.

The case of the trooper to whose memory the work is dedicated excited a good deal of interest at the time. He had a fit of jealousy, murdered his sweetheart, and though public opinion was inclined to take a merciful view of the crime, and a petition was presented to the Home Secretary for the withdrawal of the capital sentence, it was without effect, and the extreme penalty of the law was carried out in the Gaol at Reading.

The first line--

"He did not wear his scarlet coat"--

rivets the attention at once, and as surely as do the opening lines of "The Ancient Mariner." The reason for this is given at once--

"For wine and blood are red And blood and wine were on his hands When they found him with the dead."

That the whole incident that led to the man's being there should be communicated in the very first stanza, to make that stanza complete, is an artistic necessity, and in the next two lines we are told who the victim is--

"The poor dead woman whom he loved, And murdered in her bed."

The tragedy is complete. We have the picture of the soldier deprived of his uniform and the whole story is revealed to us. A more concise or supremely reticent description of the pathetic drama there could not be. But the picture must be filled in even to the most trivial detail, and we see the poor wretch taking his daily exercise among the prisoners awaiting their trial, attired in "a suit of shabby grey," trying to demean himself like a man and, trivial, but, from the artist's point of view, important detail, with a cricket cap on his head. There is a world of pathos and lines of unspoken tragedy in that cricket cap worn by a man whose days are numbered, who never will play a game again and whose mind must be occupied with thoughts far removed from sport and amusement save perhaps when they may revert to happy days spent with bat and ball, and which will never recur again. But though his step be jaunty, the oppression of his impending doom is on him,

"I never saw a man who looked So wistfully at the day."

We can see that prison yard, the circle of convicts pacing the melancholy round at ordered intervals and with measured tread, and the strong man, full of life and vigour looking up at God's blue sky and drinking in the air with greedy lungs. We can see the author of the poem, the erstwhile social favourite, in his convict garb walking

"With other souls in pain Within another ring."

and his horror as he receives the information muttered by some fellow-prisoner through closed lips that

"That fellow's got to swing."

In words, the simplicity and intensity of which are sublime, he tells us of how the news affected him--

"Dear Christ! the very prison walls Suddenly seemed to reel."

That apostrophe to the Redeemer is a revelation in itself coming from a man who is enduring his own mortal agony, but his particular sorrows fade into insignificance and are forgotten in the presence of a fellow-creature's crucifixion--

"And, though I was a soul in pain, My pain I could not feel."

Already he is purified by his months of trial and tribulation, and he can enter sympathetically into the sorrows of others and share their burden.

He now understands the reason of the jaunty step and the defiant manner, he himself has tried to flee from his thoughts.

"I only knew what hunted thought Quickened his step."

He realises the meaning of that "wistful look" towards the vaulted canopy of heaven.

The man had killed the thing he loved.

"Yet each man kills the thing he loves By each let this be heard, Some do it with a bitter look, Some with a flattering word; The coward does it with a kiss The brave man with a sword."

It has been objected that making sword rhyme with word is a makeshift, but surely it is patent to anyone with any artistic sense whatever that this forced rhyme avoids the danger of making the verse too facile, and, far from being a piece of slovenly writing, is the well-thought-out scheme of a perfect master of his craft. It is one of those stupid objections that superficial critics are so apt to raise when utterly devoid themselves of any sense of proportion or fitness.

The idea that all men, young or old, kill the thing they love is not only original but it is a very fine flight of metaphor--there is a whole sermon in the conception, and Wilde elaborates the theme--

"The kindest use a knife because The dead so soon grow old."

It is as we read these lines that our thoughts are immediately directed to "The Dream of Eugene Aram," that incomparable masterpiece of another poet, who likewise was looked upon as a mere jester whose work should not be treated seriously, but who has left us three of the finest and most deeply moving poems in the English language. There is a striking resemblance in the wording between the two poems, but without disparaging Hood's work there can be no possible doubt as to which is the greater and more noble achievement.

Another stanza elaborates the theme still further and the fact is recorded that though every man kills the thing he loves, yet death is not always meted out to him.

"He does not die a death of shame On a day of dark disgrace, Nor have a noose about his neck, Nor a cloth upon his face Nor drop feet foremost through the floor Into an empty space."

Within these grim prison walls all the horrible details of execution obtrude themselves upon the wretched captive. He has tasted the horrors of solitary confinement, of being spied on night and day by grim, taciturn warders who, at frequent intervals, slide back the panel in the door to observe through the grated opening that the prisoner is all right. So he can feel all the torture that a man under sentence of death must go through at having to

"Sit with silent men Who watch him night and day, Who watch him when he tries to weep And when he tries to pray."

The ceaseless watch that is kept on the poor wretch lest he should be tempted, given the opportunity, to "rob the prison of its prey" by doing violence on himself, the whole grim ceremonial of the carrying out of the law's decree are conjured up by him. He pictures the doomed man awakened from sleep by the entrance of the Sheriff, and the Governor of the Gaol accompanied by the "shivering Chaplain robed in white." He dwells on the hurried toilet, the putting on of the convict dress for the last time whilst the doctor takes professional stock of every nervous symptom. It is to be hoped that the lines descriptive of the doctor are purely imaginative--one must hope, for the credit of the medical profession, that it has no foundation in personal experience. Then there is the awful thirst that tortures the victim and another introduction of an apparently trivial detail, "the gardener's gloves" worn by the hangman. But the detail is not trivial, its introduction adds to the ghastliness of the scene. The reading of the Burial Service over a man yet living is another realistic touch that serves its purpose. With him we can enter into the agony of the condemned wretch as he prays

"with lips of clay For his agony to pass."

Wilde proceeds with the strict narrative. He tells us how for six weeks that Guardsman walked the prison yard still wearing the same suit and his head covered with the same incongruous headgear.

Still does he cast yearning glances at the sky,

"And at every wandering cloud that trailed Its ravelled fleeces by."

But the man is no coward, he does not wring his hands and bemoan his fate, he merely kept his eyes on the sun "and drank the morning air."

The other convicts, forgetful of themselves and their crimes, watch with silent amazement "The man who had to swing." He still carries himself bravely and they can hardly realise that he will so soon be swept into eternity; and then a perfectly mediæval note is struck--

"For oak and elm have pleasant leaves That in the springtime shoot: But grim to see is the gallows-tree With its adder-bitten root And green or dry a man must die Before it bears its fruit."

There we have the true spirit of the old ballads. The comparison between the oak and elm in the spring putting forth their leaves, and the gaunt, bare timber of the gibbet with its burden of dead human fruit is a highly imaginative and artistic piece of fantasy, though possibly a poem of Villon's was in Wilde's mind at the time of writing.

He gives us in the next stanza a picture of the murderer with noose adjusted to his neck, taking his last look upon the world, and the drop suggests another finely imaged comparison to him--

"'Tis sweet to dance to violins When Love and Life are fair,"

and goes on so for another two lines before he brings in the antithesis--

"But it is not sweet with nimble feet To dance upon the air."

The almost morbid fascination the sight of this man with his foot in the grave exercises over him is undiminished, till one day he misses him and knows that he is standing "In black dock's dreadful pen." He himself had been through that dread ordeal and his spirit goes out to him whom he had seen daily for a brief space without ever holding commune with him.

"Like two doomed ships that pass in storm We had crossed each other's way,"

he writes, and proceeds to explain that it was impossible for them to exchange word or sign, as they never saw each other in the "holy" night but in the "shameful" day. In a passage of rare beauty, one of the finest in the poem, he explains--

"A prison wall was round us both Two outcast men we were The world had thrust us from his heart, And God from out His care: And the iron gin that waits for Sin Had caught us in its snare."

The lines in their supreme reticence indicate precisely the agony and despair that filled the heart of C33, and once again a comparison with "Eugene Aram" is forced upon us.

The third period starts with a picture of the doomed man and a scathing bit of satire directed against the prison officials. The wretch is shown to us watched day and night by keen, sleepless eyes, debarred even for a brief second of the privilege of being alone with his thoughts and his misery.

Then a small detail is introduced to heighten the effect of the grim picture--

"And thrice a day he smoked his pipe And drank his quart of beer."

There is quite a Shakespearean note in this introduction of these commonplace details, which proves how thoroughly Oscar Wilde had studied the methods of the great dramatist.

But he leaves the condemned cell to paint the effect the whole ghastly tragedy being enacted within those grey walls had upon the other prisoners. To a highly strung and supersensitive nature like the writer's the strain must have been terrible. The captives went through the allotted tasks of picking oakum till the fingers bled, scrubbing the floors, polishing the rails, sewing sacks, and all the other daily routine of prison life.

"But in the heart of every man Terror was lying still--"

until one day, returning from their labours, they "passed an open grave," and they knew that the execution would take place on the morrow. They saw the hangman with his black bag shuffling through the gloom, and like cowed hounds they crept silently back to their cells. Then night comes and Fear stalks through the prison, but the man himself is wrapt in peaceful slumbers. The watching warders cannot make out

"How one could sleep so sweet a sleep With a hangman close at hand."

Not so with the other prisoners--"the fool, the fraud, the knave"--sleep is banished from their cells, they are feeling another's guilt, and the hardened hearts melt at the thought of another's agony. The warders, making their noiseless round, are surprised as they look through the wickets to see "gray figures on the floor." They are puzzled and wonder--

"Why men knelt to pray Who never prayed before."

All through the long night they keep their sacred vigil.

"The grey cock crew, the red cock crew But never came the day,"

and their imaginations people the corners and shadows with shapes of terror. The marionette dance of death of these ghostly visitants is as fine a bit of word-painting as can be found any where. The idea is an amplification of the _motif_ of "The Harlot's House," but how immeasurably superior, how much more artistically effective the most cursory comparison of the two poems will make apparent.

At last the first faint streaks of day steal through the prison bars and the daily task of cleaning the cells is performed as usual, but the Angel of Death passes through the prison, and with parched throats the prisoners, who were kept in their cells while the grim tragedy was being enacted, wait for the stroke of eight, the hour fixed for the carrying out of the sentence. As the first chimes of the prison clock are heard a moan arises from those imprisoned wretches. At noon they are marched out into the yard, and each man's eye is turned wistfully to the sky, just as the condemned man's had been. They notice that the warders are wearing their best uniforms, but the task they have just been engaged upon is revealed "by the quicklime on their boots." The murderer has expiated his crime,

"And the crimson stain that was of Cain Became Christ's snow-white seal."

In his dishonoured grave he lies in a winding-sheet of quicklime; no rose or flower shall bloom above it, no tear shall water it, no prayer or benison be uttered over it.

"In Reading Gaol by Reading Town," with a repetition of the stanza embodying the theme that "all men kill the thing they love," the poem ends.

Truly a wonderful poem this. We close the covers of the book slowly, almost reverently, our minds all saddened and attuned to a low note by this gloomy picture of agony, torture and horror. We feel as if we had been assisting at a funeral, and with hushed voices slowly make our way back to the world of life and bustle.

Wilde's place in poetry has yet to be settled, we have not yet had time to focus his work into perspective. That he will rank amongst the very greatest creative geniuses of the world, the men whose songs sway nations, is doubtful, though time alone can tell us.

The least that can be said is that there is a distinction about Wilde's poetry that will always stamp it as the work of a great artist, and as such it commands a high place amongst the best literary work that this country has produced.