A Vision

by Oscar Wilde

 A Vision 

Two crowned Kings, and One that stood alone

With no green weight of laurels round his head,

But with sad eyes as one uncomforted,

And wearied with man's never-ceasing moan

For sins no bleating victim can atone,

And sweet long lips with tears and kisses fed.

Girt was he in a garment black and red,

And at his feet I marked a broken stone

Which sent up lilies, dove-like, to his knees.

Now at their sight, my heart being lit with flame,

I cried to Beatrice, 'Who are these? '

And she made answer, knowing well each name,

'AEschylos first, the second Sophokles,

And last (wide stream of tears!) Euripides.' 

Impression Du Voyage 

THE sea was sapphire coloured, and the sky

Burned like a heated opal through the air,

We hoisted sail; the wind was blowing fair

For the blue lands that to the eastward lie.

From the steep prow I marked with quickening eye

Zakynthos, every olive grove and creek,

Ithaca's cliff, Lycaon's snowy peak,

And all the flower-strewn hills of Arcady.

The flapping of the sail against the mast,

The ripple of the water on the side,

The ripple of girls' laughter at the stern,

The only sounds:--when 'gan the West to burn,

And a red sun upon the seas to ride,

I stood upon the soil of Greece at last! 

Phedre 

(To Sarah Bernhardt) 

How vain and dull this common world must seem

To such a One as thou, who should'st have talked

At Florence with Mirandola, or walked

Through the cool olives of the Academe:

Thou should'st have gathered reeds from a green stream

For Goat-foot Pan's shrill piping, and have played

With the white girls in that Phaeacian glade

Where grave Odysseus wakened from his dream. 

Ah! surely once some urn of Attic clay

Held thy wan dust, and thou hast come again

Back to this common world so dull and vain,

For thou wert weary of the sunless day,

The heavy fields of scentless asphodel,

The loveless lips with which men kiss in Hell.