Oscar Wilde Part 21

"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 pa.s.sion 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 pa.s.s 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 th.o.r.n.y 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 vest.i.ture, 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 a.s.sume 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 G.o.d that is within us!"

The lines speak for themselves and are strongly indicative of his att.i.tude 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 pa.s.sing 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 d.u.c.h.ess 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 ent.i.tled "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 ill.u.s.trations 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 l.u.s.t 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"

"_Fiere, autant qu'un vivant, de sa n.o.ble stature, Avec son gros bouquet son mouchoir et ses gants, Elle a la nonchalance et la desinvolture D'un coquette maigre aux airs extravagants._

_Vit-on jamais au bal une taille plus mince?

Sa robe exageree, en sa royale ampleur, S'ecroule abondamment sur un pied sec que pince Un soulier pomponne, joli comme une fleur._

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

_Ses yeux profonds sont faits de vide et de tenebres, Et son crane, de fleurs artistement coiffe, Oscille mollement sur ses freles vertebres, --O charme d'un neant follement attife!_

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

_Viens-tu troubler, avec ta puissante grimace, La fete de la Vie? ou quelque vieux desir, Eperonnant encor ta vivant carca.s.se, Te pousse-t-il, credule, au sabbat du Plaisir?_

_Au chant des violons, aux flammes des bougies, Esperes-tu cha.s.ser ton cauchemar moqueur, Et viens-tu demander au torrent des orgies De rafraichir l'enfer allume dans ton coeur?_