: Rose Leaf and Apple Leaf by Rodd Rennell Wilde Oscar Author Of Introduction Etc - English poetry 19th century

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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.

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