Oscar Wilde’s poems are known for their elegance, emotional intensity, and rich aesthetic beauty. Strongly influenced by the Aesthetic Movement, Wilde believed that art should exist for beauty itself, and this idea is clearly reflected in his poetry through musical language, vivid imagery, and classical references.
Many of Wilde’s poems explore themes of love, desire, loss, and spiritual conflict. In works like “Requiescat” and “The Sphinx,” he combines deep personal emotion with ornate, almost mythical symbolism. His long poem “The Ballad of Reading Gaol,” written after his imprisonment, stands apart from his earlier work—its tone is stark, compassionate, and morally powerful, focusing on suffering, injustice, and human dignity.
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| Oscar wilde |
Wilde’s poetry often blends romantic passion with tragic awareness. While his early poems celebrate beauty, youth, and art, his later poems reflect pain, humility, and moral reflection shaped by his personal downfall. He was deeply influenced by classical Greek culture, the Bible, and Romantic poets, yet his voice remains distinctly his own—witty, lyrical, and emotionally resonant.
Though Wilde is best known for his plays and novel, his poems remain an important part of his literary legacy, revealing both the brilliance of his artistic vision and the depth of his human experience.
Symphony In Yellow
An omnibus across the bridge
Crawls like a yellow butterfly,
And, here and there a passer-by
Shows like a little restless midge.
Big barges full of yellow hay
Are moored against the shadowy wharf,
And, like a yellow silken scarf,
The thick fog hangs along the quay.
The yellow leaves begin to fade
And flutter from the temple elms,
And at my feet the pale green Thames
Lies like a rod of rippled jade.
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 shadows 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.
Les Ballons
Against these turbid turquoise skies
The light and luminous balloons
Dip and drift like satin moons
Drift like silken butterflies;
Reel with every windy gust,
Rise and reel like dancing girls,
Float like strange transparent pearls,
Fall and float like silver dust.
Now to the low leaves they cling,
Each with coy fantastic pose,
Each a petal of a rose
Straining at a gossamer string.
Then to the tall trees they climb,
Like thin globes of amethyst,
Wandering opals keeping tryst
With the rubies of the lime.
In the Forest
Out of the mid-wood’s twilight
Into the meadow’s dawn,
Ivory limbed and brown-eyed,
Flashes my Faun!
He skips through the copses singing,
And his shadow dances along,
And I know not which I should follow,
Shadow or song!
O Hunter, snare me his shadow!
O Nightingale, catch me his strain!
Else moonstruck with music and madness
I track him in vain!
