Read Ebook: Rose Leaf and Apple Leaf by Rodd Rennell Wilde Oscar Author Of Introduction Etc

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 201 lines and 20126 words, and 5 pages

L'ENVOI BY OSCAR WILDE

ROSE LEAF AND APPLE LEAF FROM THE HILL OF GARDENS IN THE COLISEUM THE SEA-KING'S GRAVE A ROMAN MIRROR BY THE SOUTH SEA IN A CHURCH AT LANUVIUM "IF ANY ONE RETURN"

SONNETS:

"UNE HEURE VIENDRA QUI TOUT PAIERA" ACTEA IMPERATOR AUGUSTUS "ATQUE IN PERPETUUM FRATER AVE ATQUE VALE" ON THE BORDER HILLS

SONGS:

LONG AFTER "WHERE THE RHONE GOES DOWN TO THE SEA" A SONG OF AUTUMN "??????" ?????

ATALANTA THE DAISY "WHEN I AM DEAD" AFTER HEINE "THOSE DAYS ARE LONG DEPARTED" A STAR-DREAM AFTER HEINE AFTER HEINE ENDYMION DISILLUSION REQUIESCAT IN CHARTRES CATHEDRAL HIC JACET AT TIBER MOUTH

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

L'ENVOI

Now, this increased sense of the absolutely satisfying value of beautiful workmanship, this recognition of the primary importance of the sensuous element in art, this love of art for art's sake, is the point in which we of the younger school have made a departure from the teaching of Mr. Ruskin,--a departure definite and different and decisive.

Nor, in looking at a work of art, should we be dreaming of what it symbolises, but rather loving it for what it is. Indeed, the transcendental spirit is alien to the spirit of art. The metaphysical mind of Asia may create for itself the monstrous and many-breasted idol, but to the Greek, pure artist, that work is most instinct with spiritual life which conforms most closely to the perfect facts of physical life also. Nor, in its primary aspect, has a painting, for instance, any more spiritual message or meaning for us than a blue tile from the wall of Damascus, or a Hitzen vase. It is a beautifully-coloured surface, nothing more, and affects us by no suggestion stolen from philosophy, no pathos pilfered from literature, no feeling filched from a poet, but by its own incommunicable artistic essence--by that selection of truth which we call style, and that relation of values which is the draughtsmanship of painting, by the whole quality of the workmanship, the arabesque of the design, the splendour of the colour, for these things are enough to stir the most divine and remote of the chords which make music in our soul, and colour, indeed, is of itself a mystical presence on things, and tone a kind of sentiment.

But it is not enough that a work of art should conform to the aesthetic demands of the age: there should be also about it, if it is to give us any permanent delight, the impress of a distinct individuality. Whatever work we have in the nineteenth century must rest on the two poles of personality and perfection. And so in this little volume, by separating the earlier and more simple work from the work that is later and stronger and possesses increased technical power and more artistic vision, one might weave these disconnected poems, these stray and scattered threads, into one fiery-coloured strand of life, noting first a boy's mere gladness of being young, with all its simple joy in field and flower, in sunlight and in song, and then the bitterness of sudden sorrow at the ending by Death of one of the brief and beautiful friendships of one's youth, with all those unanswered longings and questionings unsatisfied by which we vex, so uselessly, the marble face of death; the artistic contrast between the discontented incompleteness of the spirit and the complete perfection of the style that expresses it forming the chief element of the aesthetic charm of these particular poems;--and then the birth of Love, and all the wonder and the fear and the perilous delight of one on whose boyish brows the little wings of love have beaten for the first time; and the love-songs, so dainty and delicate, little swallow-flights of music, and full of such fragrance and freedom that they might all be sung in the open air and across moving water; and then autumn, coming with its quireless woods and odorous decay and ruined loveliness, Love lying dead; and the sense of the mere pity of it.

One might stop there, for from a young poet one should ask for no deeper chords of life than those that love and friendship make eternal for us; and the best poems in this volume belong clearly to a later time, a time when these real experiences become absorbed and gathered up into a form which seems from such real experiences to be the most alien and the most remote; when the simple expression of joy or sorrow suffices no longer, and lives rather in the stateliness of the cadenced metre, in the music and colour of the linked words, than in any direct utterance; lives, one might say, in the perfection of the form more than in the pathos of the feeling. And yet, after the broken music of love and the burial of love in the autumn woods, we can trace that wandering among strange people, and in lands unknown to us, by which we try so pathetically to heal the hurts of the life we know, and that pure and passionate devotion to Art which one gets when the harsh reality of life has too suddenly wounded one, and is with discontent or sorrow marring one's youth, just as often, I think, as one gets it from any natural joy of living; and that curious intensity of vision by which, in moments of over-mastering sadness and despair ungovernable, artistic things will live in one's memory with a vivid realism caught from the life which they help one to forget--an old gray tomb in Flanders with a strange legend on it, making one think how, perhaps, passion does live on after death, a necklace of blue and amber beads and a broken mirror found in a girl's grave at Rome, a marble image of a boy habited like Er?s, and with the pathetic tradition of a great king's sorrow lingering about it like a purple shadow,--over all these the tired spirit broods with that calm and certain joy that one gets when one has found something that the ages never dull and the world cannot harm; and with it comes that desire of Greek things which is often an artistic method of expressing one's desire for perfection; and that longing for the old dead days which is so modern, so incomplete, so touching, being, in a way, the inverted torch of Hope, which burns the hand it should guide; and for many things a little sadness, and for all things a great love; and lastly, in the pine-wood by the sea, once more the quick and vital pulse of joyous youth leaping and laughing in every line, the frank and fearless freedom of wave and wind waking into fire life's burnt-out ashes and into song the silent lips of pain,--how clearly one seems to see it all, the long colonnade of pines with sea and sky peeping in here and there like a flitting of silver; the open place in the green deep heart of the wood with the little moss-grown altar to the old Italian god in it; and the flowers all about, cyclamen in the shadowy places, and the stars of the white narcissus lying like snowflakes over the grass, where the quick, bright-eyed lizard starts by the stone, and the snake lies coiled lazily in the sun on the hot sand, and overhead the gossamer floats from the branches like thin tremulous threads of gold,--the scene is so perfect for its motive, for surely here, if anywhere, the real gladness of life might be revealed to one's youth--the gladness that comes, not from the rejection, but from the absorption, of all passion, and is like that serene calm that dwells in the faces of the Greek statues, and which despair and sorrow cannot disturb, but intensify only.

Now, this is the secret of the art of the modern romantic school, and gives one the right keynote for its apprehension; but the real quality of all work which, like Mr. Rodd's, aims, as I said, at a purely artistic effect, cannot be described in terms of intellectual criticism; it is too intangible for that. One can perhaps convey it best in terms of the other arts, and by reference to them; and, indeed, some of these poems are as iridescent and as exquisite as a lovely fragment of Venetian glass; others as delicate in perfect workmanship and as simple in natural motive as an etching by Whistler is, or one of those beautiful little Greek figures which in the olive woods round Tanagra men can still find, with the faint gilding and the fading crimson not yet fled from hair and lips and raiment; and many of them seem like one of Corot's twilights just passing into music, for not merely in visible colour, but in sentiment also--which is the colour of poetry--may there be a kind of tone.

OSCAR WILDE.

ROSE LEAF AND APPLE LEAF

FROM THE HILL OF GARDENS

The outline of a shadowy city spread Between the garden and the distant hill-- And o'er yon dome the flame-ring lingers still, Set like the glory on an angel's head: The light fades quivering into evening blue Behind the pine-tops on Ianiculum; The swallow whispered to the swallow "come!" And took the sunset on her wings, and flew.

One rift of cloud the wind caught up suspending A ruby path between the earth and sky; Those shreds of gold are angel wings ascending From where the sorrows of our singers lie; They have not found those wandering spirits yet, But seek for ever in the red sunset.

Pass upward angel wings! Seek not for these, They sit not in the cypress-planted graves; Their spirits wander over moonlit waves, And sing in all the singing of the seas; And by green places in the spring-tide showers, And in the re-awakening of flowers.

Some pearl-lipped shell still dewy with sea foam Bear back to whisper where their feet have trod; They are the earth's for evermore; fly home! And lay a daisy at the feet of God.

IN THE COLISEUM

Night wanes; I sit in the ruin alone; Beneath, the shadow of arches falls From the dim outline of the broken walls; And the half-light steals o'er the age-worn stone From a midway arch where the moon looks through, A silver shield in the deep, deep blue.

This is the hour of ghosts that rise; --Line on line of the noiseless dead-- The clouds above are their awning spread; Look into the shadow with moon-dazed eyes, You will see the writhing of limbs in pain, And the whole red tragedy over again.

The ghostly galleys ride out and meet, The Caesar sits in his golden chair, His fingers toy with his women's hair, The water is blood-red under his feet,-- Till the owl's long cry dies down with the night, And one star waits for the dawning light.

ROME, 1881.

THE SEA-KING'S GRAVE

High over the wild sea-border, on the furthest downs to the west, Is the green grave-mound of the Norseman, with the yew-tree grove on its crest. And I heard in the winds his story, as they leapt up salt from the wave, And tore at the creaking branches that grow from the sea-king's grave. Some son of the old-world Vikings, the wild sea-wandering lords, Who sailed in a snake-prowed galley, with a terror of twenty swords. From the fiords of the sunless winter, they came on an icy blast, Till over the whole world's sea-board the shadow of Odin passed, Till they sped to the inland waters and under the South-land skies, And stared on the puny princes, with their blue victorious eyes. And they said he was old and royal, and a warrior all his days, But the king who had slain his brother lived yet in the island ways. And he came from a hundred battles, and died in his last wild quest, For he said, "I will have my vengeance, and then I will take my rest." He had passed on his homeward journey, and the king of the isles was dead; He had drunken the draught of triumph, and his cup was the isle-king's head; And he spoke of the song and feasting, and the gladness of things to be, And three days over the waters they rowed on a waveless sea. Till a small cloud rose to the shoreward, and a gust broke out of the cloud, And the spray beat over the rowers, and the murmur of winds was loud, With the voice of the far-off thunders, till the shuddering air grew warm, And the day was as dark as at even, and the wild god rode on the storm. But the old man laughed in the thunder as he set his casque on his brow, And he waved his sword in the lightnings and clung to the painted prow. And the shaft of the storm-god's quiver, flashed out from the flame-flushed skies, Rang down on his war-worn harness, and gleamed in his fiery eyes. And his mail and his crested helmet, and his hair, and his beard burned red; And they said, "It is Odin calls;" and he fell, and they found him dead. So here, in his war-guise armoured, they laid him down to his rest, In his casque with the rein-deer antlers, and the long grey beard on his breast: His bier was the spoil of the islands, with a sail for a shroud beneath, And an oar of his blood-red galley, and his battle brand in the sheath; And they buried his bow beside him, and planted the grove of yew, For the grave of a mighty archer, one tree for each of his crew; Where the flowerless cliffs are sheerest, where the sea-birds circle and swarm, And the rocks are at war with the waters, with their jagged grey teeth in the storm; And the huge Atlantic billows sweep in, and the mists enclose The hill with the grass-grown mound where the Norseman's yew-tree grows.

A ROMAN MIRROR

They found it in her hollow marble bed, There where the numberless dead cities sleep, They found it lying where the spade struck deep, A broken mirror by a maiden dead.

These things--the beads she wore about her throat Alternate blue and amber all untied, A lamp to light her way, and on one side The toll men pay to that strange ferry-boat.

No trace to-day of what in her was fair! Only the record of long years grown green Upon the mirror's lustreless dead sheen, Grown dim at last, when all else withered there.

Dead, broken, lustreless! It keeps for me One picture of that immemorial land, For oft as I have held thee in my hand The dull bronze brightens, and I dream to see

A fair face gazing in thee wondering wise, And o'er one marble shoulder all the while Strange lips that whisper till her own lips smile, And all the mirror laughs about her eyes.

It was well thought to set thee there, so she Might smooth the windy ripples of her hair And knot their tangled waywardness, or ere She stood before the queen Persephone.

And still it may be where the dead folk rest She holds a shadowy mirror to her eyes, And looks upon the changelessness, and sighs And sets the dead land lilies in her breast.

BY THE SOUTH SEA

So here we have sat by the sea so late, And you with your dreaming eyes Have argued well what I know you hate, Till even my own dream dies.

Yet why will you smile at my old white years When love was a gift divine, When songs were laughter and hope and tears, And art was a people's shrine?

Must I change the burdens I loved to sing, The words of my worn-out song? The old fair thoughts have a hollow ring, My faiths have been dead so long.

And yet,--to have known that one did not know! To have dreamed with the poet priest! To have hope to feel that it might be so! And theirs was a faith at least.

When the priest was poet, and hearts were fain Of marvellous things to dream, To see God's tears in a cloud of rain, And his hair on a gold sunbeam;

To know that the sons of the old Sea King Roamed under their waves at will, To have heard a song that the wood gods sing On the other side of the hill!

And so I had held it,--for all things blend In the world's great harmony,-- That they served an end to an after-end, And were of the things that be.

Ye have learnt the riddle of seas and sand, Of leaves in the spring uncurled; There is no room left for my wonderland In the whole of the great wide world.

And what have ye left for a song to say? What now is a singer's fame? He may startle the ear with a word one day, And die,--and live in a name.

But the world has heed unto no fair thing, Men pass on their soulless ways, They give no faith unto those who sing, --Give hardly a heartless praise.

But you say, Let us go unto all wide lands, Let us speak to the people's heart! Let us make good use of our lips and hands, There is hope for the world in art!

Will the dull ears hear, will the dead souls see? Will they know what we hardly know? The chords of the wonderful harmony Of the earth and the skies?--if so--

We have talked too long till it all seems vain, The desire and the hopes that fired, The triumphs won and the needless pain, And the heart that has hoped is tired.

Do you see down there where the high cliffs shrink, And the ripples break on the bay, Our old sea boat at the white foam brink With the sail slackened down half-way?

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet