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Oscar Wilde - Panthea
Work rating: Medium

. NAY, let us walk from fire unto fire,
     From passionate pain to deadlier delight,—
   I am too young to live without desire,
     Too young art thou to waste this summer night
   Asking those idle questions which of old
   Man sought of seer and oracle, and no reply was told.

   For, sweet, to feel is better than to know,
     And wisdom is a childless heritage,
   One pulse of passion—youth`s first fiery glow,—
     Are worth the hoarded proverbs of the sage:                      


   Vex not thy soul with dead philosophy,
   Have we not lips to kiss with, hearts to love, and eyes to see!

   Dost thou not hear the murmuring nightingale
     Like water bubbling from a silver jar,
   So soft she sings the envious moon is pale,
     That high in heaven she is hung so far
   She cannot hear that love-enraptured tune,—
   Mark how she wreathes each horn with mist, yon late and labouring
         moon.

   White lilies, in whose cups the gold bees dream,
     The fallen snow of petals where the breeze                       


   Scatters the chestnut blossom, or the gleam
     Of boyish limbs in water,—are not these
   Enough for thee, dost thou desire more?
   Alas! the Gods will give nought else from their eternal store.

   For our high Gods have sick and wearied grown
     Of all our endless sins, our vain endeavour
   For wasted days of youth to make atone
     By pain or prayer or priest, and never, never,
   Hearken they now to either good or ill,
   But send their rain upon the just and the unjust at will.          


   They sit at ease, our Gods they sit at ease,
     Strewing with leaves of rose their scented wine,
   They sleep, they sleep, beneath the rocking trees
     Where asphodel and yellow lotus twine,
   Mourning the old glad days before they knew
   What evil things the heart of man could dream, and dreaming do.

   And far beneath the brazen floor they see
     Like swarming flies the crowd of little men,
   The bustle of small lives, then wearily
     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.

   There all day long the golden-vestured sun,
     Their torch-bearer, stands with his torch a-blaze,
   And when the gaudy web of noon is spun
     By its twelve maidens through the crimson haze
   Fresh from Endymion`s arms comes forth the moon,
   And the immortal Gods in toils of mortal passions swoon.

   There walks Queen Juno through some dewy mead
     Her grand white feet flecked with the saffron dust               


   Of wind-stirred lilies, while young Ganymede
     Leaps in the hot and amber-foaming must,
   His curls all tossed, as when the eagle bare
   The frightened boy from Ida through the blue Ionian air.

   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 would be white yet blushes at its pride,
   Laughs low for love, till jealous Salmacis
   Peers through the myrtle-leaves and sighs for pain of lonely       


         bliss.

   There never does that dreary north-wind blow
     Which leaves our English forests bleak and bare,
   Nor ever falls the swift white-feathered snow,
     Nor doth the red-toothed lightning ever dare
   To wake them in the silver-fretted night
   When we lie weeping for some sweet sad sin, some dead delight.

   Alas! they know the far Lethæan spring,
     The violet-hidden waters well they know,
   Where one whose feet with tired wandering
     Are faint and broken may take heart and go,                      


   And from those dark depths cool and crystalline
   Drink, and draw balm, and sleep for sleepless souls, and anodyne.

   But we oppress our natures, God or Fate
     Is our enemy, we starve and feed
   On vain repentance—O we are born too late!
     What balm for us in bruisèd poppy seed
   Who crowd into one finite pulse of time
   The joy of infinite love and the fierce pain of infinite crime.

   O we are wearied of this sense of guilt,
     Wearied of pleasure`s paramour despair,                          


   Wearied of every temple we have built,
     Wearied of every right, unanswered prayer,
   For man is weak; God sleeps: and heaven is high:
   One fiery-coloured moment: one great love; and lo! we die.

   Ah! but no ferry-man with labouring pole
     Nears his black shallop to the flowerless strand,
   No little coin of bronze can bring the soul
     Over Death`s river to the sunless land,
   Victim and wine and vow are all in vain,
   The tomb is sealed; the soldiers watch; the dead rise not again.   


   We are resolved into the supreme air,
     We are made one with what we touch and see,
   With our heart`s blood each crimson sun is fair,
     With our young lives each spring-impassioned tree
   Flames into green, the wildest beasts that range
   The moor our kinsmen are, all life is one, and all is change.

   With beat of systole and of diastole
     One grand great life throbs through earth`s giant heart,
   And mighty waves of single Being roll
     From nerve-less germ to man, for we are part                    


   Of every rock and bird and beast and hill,
   One with the things that prey on us, and one with what we kill.

   From lower cells of waking life we pass
     To full perfection; thus the world grows old:
   We who are godlike now were once a mass
     Of quivering purple flecked with bars of gold,
   Unsentient or of joy or misery,
   And tossed in terrible tangles of some wild and wind-swept sea.

   This hot hard flame with which our bodies burn
     Will make some meadow blaze with daffodil,                      


   Ay! and those argent breasts of thine will turn
     To water-lilies; the brown fields men till
   Will be more fruitful for our love to-night,
   Nothing is lost in nature, all things live in Death`s despite.

   The boy`s first kiss, the hyacinth`s first bell,
     The man`s last passion, and the last red spear
   That from the lily leaps, the asphodel
     Which will not let its blossoms blow for fear
   Of too much beauty, and the timid shame
   Of the young bride-groom at his lover`s eyes,—these with the     


         same

   One sacrament are consecrate, the earth
     Not we alone hath passions hymeneal,
   The yellow buttercups that shake for mirth
     At daybreak know a pleasure not less real
   Than we do, when in some fresh-blossoming wood
   We draw the spring into our hearts, and feel that life is good.

   So when men bury us beneath the yew
     Thy crimson-stainèd mouth a rose will be,
   And thy soft eyes lush bluebells dimmed with dew,
     And when the white narcissus wantonly                           


   Kisses the wind its playmate, some faint joy
   Will thrill our dust, and we will be again fond maid and boy.

   And thus without life`s conscious torturing pain
     In some sweet flower we will feel the sun,
   And from the linnet`s throat will sing again,
     And as two gorgeous-mailèd snakes will run
   Over our graves, or as two tigers creep
   Through the hot jungle where the yellow-eyed huge lions sleep

   And give them battle! How my heart leaps up
     To think of that grand living after death                       


   In beast and bird and flower, when this cup,
     Being filled too full of spirit, bursts for breath,
   And with the pale leaves of some autumn day
   The soul earth`s earliest conqueror becomes earth`s last great prey.

   O think of it! We shall inform ourselves
     Into all sensuous life, the goat-foot Faun,
   The Centaur, or the merry bright-eyed Elves
     That leave their dancing rings to spite the dawn
   Upon the meadows, shall not be more near
   Than you and I to nature`s mysteries, for we shall hear           


   The thrush`s heart beat, and the daisies grow,
     And the wan snowdrop sighing for the sun
   On sunless days in winter, we shall know
     By whom the silver gossamer is spun,
   Who paints the diapered fritillaries,
   On what wide wings from shivering pine to pine the eagle flies.

   Ay! had we never loved at all, who knows
     If yonder daffodil had lured the bee
   Into its gilded womb, or any rose
     Had hung with crimson lamps its little tree!                    


   Methinks no leaf would ever bud in spring,
   But for the lovers` lips that kiss, the poets` lips that sing.

   Is the light vanished from our golden sun,
     Or is this dædal-fashioned earth less fair,
   That we are nature`s heritors, and one
     With every pulse of life that beats the air?
   Rather new suns across the sky shall pass,
   New splendour come unto the flower, new glory to the grass.

   And we two lovers shall not sit afar,
     Critics of nature, but the joyous sea                           


   Shall be our raiment, and the bearded star
     Shoot arrows at our pleasure! We shall be
   Part of the mighty universal whole,
   And through all æons mix and mingle with the Kosmic Soul!

   We shall be notes in that great Symphony
     Whose cadence circles through the rhythmic spheres,
   And all the live World`s throbbing heart shall be
     One with our heart, the stealthy creeping years
   Have lost their terrors now, we shall not die,
   The Universe itself shall be our Immortality!
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