Цитаты из книги Collected poems of Oscar Wilde

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 bruised poppy seed Who crowd into one finite pulse of time The joy of infinite love and the fierce pain of infinite crime.

I may have run the glorious race, And caught the torch while yet aflame, And called upon the holy name Of Him who now doth hide His face.

The Warders with their shoes of felt Crept by each padlocked door, And peeped and saw, with eyes of awe, Grey figures on the floor, And wondered why men knelt to pray Who never prayed before.

I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky, And at every drifting cloud that went With sails of silver by.

My Voice Within this restless, hurried, modern world We took our hearts' full pleasure--You and I, And now the white sails of our ship are furled, And spent the lading of our argosy. Wherefore my cheeks before their time are wan, For very weeping is my gladness fled, Sorrow hath paled my lip's vermilion, And Ruin draws…

Or how the little flower he trod upon, The daisy, that white-feathered shield of gold, Followed with wistful eyes the wandering sun Content if once its leaves were aureoled. But surely it is something to have been The best beloved for a little while, To have walked hand in hand with Love, and seen His purple wings flit…

And alien tears will fill for him Pity`s long-broken urn, For his mourners will be outcast men, And outcasts always mourn.

Helas! To drift with every passion till my soul Is a stringed lute on which all winds can play, Is it for this that I have given away Mine ancient wisdom, and austere control? Methinks my life is a twice-written scroll Scrawled over on some boyish holiday With idle songs for pipe and virelay, Which do but mar the secret…