The Harlot's House

We caught the tread of dancing feet,
We loitered down the moonlit street,
And stopped beneath the harlot's house.

Inside, above the din and fray,
We heard the loud musicians play
The 'Treues Liebes Herz' of Strauss.

Like strange mechanical grotesques,
Making fantastic arabesques,
The shadows raced across the blind.

We watched the ghostly dancers spin
To sound of horn and violin,
Like black leaves wheeling in the wind.

Like wire-pulled automatons,
Slim silhouetted skeletons
Went sidling through the slow quadrille.

They took each other by the hand,
And danced a stately saraband;
Their laughter echoed thin and shrill.

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

Sometimes a horrible marionette
Came out, and smoked its cigarette
Upon the steps like a live thing.

Then, turning to my love, I said,
"The dead are dancing with the dead,
The dust is whirling with the dust."

But she—she heard the violin,
And left my side, and entered in:
Love passed into the house of lust.

Then suddenly the tune went false,
The dancers wearied of the waltz,
The shadows ceased to wheel and whirl.

And down the long and silent street,
The dawn, with silver-sandalled feet,
Crept like a frightened girl.
Oscar Wilde


Sonnet on Approaching Italy

I reached the Alps:
the soul within me burned
Italia, my Italia, at thy name:
And when from out the mountain's heart I came
And saw the land for which my life had yearned
I laughed as one who some great prize had earned:
And musing on the marvel of thy fame
I watched the day, til marked with wounds of flame
The turquoise sky to burnished gold was turned,
The pine-trees waved as waves a woman's hair,
And in the orchards every twining spray
Was breaking into flakes of blossoming foam:
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.
TURIN.


The Grave Of Keats

Rid of the world's injustice, and his pain,
He rests at last beneath God's veil of blue:
Taken from life when life and love were new
The youngest of the martyrs here is lain,
Fair as Sebastian, and as early slain.
No cypress shades his grave, no funeral yew,
But gentle violets weeping with the dew
Weave on his bones an ever-blossoming chain.
O proudest heart that broke for misery!
O sweetest lips since those of Mitylene!
O poet-painter of our English Land!
Thy name was writ in water, it shall stand:
And tears like mine will keep thy memory green,
As Isabella did her Basil-tree.


Ave Maria Gratia Plena

Was this His coming! I had hoped to see
A scene of wondrous glory, as was told
Of some great God who in a rain of gold
Broke open bars and fell on Danae:
Or a dread vision as when Semele
Sickening for love and unappeased desire
Prayed to see God's clear body, and the fire
Caught her brown limbs and slew her utterly:
With such glad dreams I sought this holy place,
And now with wondering eyes and heart I stand
Before this supreme mystery of Love:
Some kneeling girl with passionless pale face,
An angel with a lily in his hand,
And over both the white wings of a Dove.
Oscar Wilde


Sir, a man will not, once in a hundred
instances, leave his wife and go to a
harlot, if his wife has not been
negligent of pleasing.
Samuel Johnson

Other Poems by Oscar Wilde

Sonnet To Liberty, Louis Napoleon,
Sonnet On Approaching Italy,
Ave Maria Gratia Plena, Italia,
Serenade, The Grave Of Keats,
Queen Henrietta Maria,

Quotes by Oscar Wilde

The pure and simple truth is rarely pure
and never simple.
Oscar Wilde

Experience is one thing you can't
get for nothing.
Oscar Wilde
Most people are other people.
Their thoughts are someone else's
opinions, their lives a mimicry,
their passions a quotation.
Oscar Wilde

Anybody can sympathise with the
sufferings of a friend, but it requires
a very fine nature to sympathise with a
friend's success.
Oscar Wilde

When one is in love, one always begins
by deceiving oneself, and one always ends
by deceiving others. That is what the
world calls a romance.
Oscar Wilde

Nothing spoils a romance so much as a
sense of humour in the woman, or the
want of it in a man.
Oscar Wilde

Men always want to be a woman's first
love. That is their clumsy vanity.
We women have a more subtle instinct
about things. What we like is to be a
man's last romance.
Oscar Wilde

Poems by Famous Classical Poets
Love In The City
Wedding Customs Traditions and Superstions
Love Romance and Kisses
Romantic Love Quotes
Love and Romance Greeting Cards