Negative Space: Oscar Wilde
- Amor Intellectualis
- “Oft have we trod the vales of Castaly and heard sweet notes of sylvan music…”
- Apologia
- “Is it thy will that I should wax and wane, barter my cloth of gold for hodden gray, and at thy pleasure weave that web of pain, whose brightest threads are each a wasted day?”
- At Verona
- “How steep the stairs within Kings’ houses are for exile-wearied feet as mine to tread…”
- Athanasia
- “That gaunt House of Art which lacks for naught…”
- Ave Imperatrix
- “England! what shall men say of thee, before whose feet the worlds divide?”
- Ave Maria Plena Gratia
- “I had hoped to see a scene wondrous glory…”
- The Ballad of Reading Gaol
- Written during Wilde’s time in prison. “He did not wear his scarlet coat, for blood and wine are red…”
- Ballade De Marguerite: Normande
- “I am weary of lying within the chase when the knights are meeting in market-place.”
- The Burden of Itys
- Comparing the English Thames to Rome of old.
- By The Arno
- “The oleander on the wall grows crimson in the dawning light…”
- Chanson
- “For you a House of Ivory…”
- Charmides
- Charmides, the Grecian lad coming home with figs and wine from Sicily.
- The Dole Of The King’s Daughter: Breton
- “Seven stars in the still water, and seven in the sky…”
- E Tenebris
- “Come down, O Christ, and help me! reach thy hand, for I am drowning…”
- Easter Day
- “The silver trumpets rang across the Dome: the people knelt upon the ground with awe…”
- Eleutheria
- Oscar Wilde’s sonnets to liberty.
- Endymion: For Music
- “O rising moon! O Lady moon! Be you my lover’s sentinel…”
- Fabien Dei Franchi: To My Friend Henry Irving
- “The dead that travel fast, the opening door…”
- First Act, Part 1
- Act 1 of The Importance of Being Earnest in three acts. Algernon Moncrieff’s Flat in Half-Moon Street, W.
- First Act, Part 2
- Act I of The Importance of Being Earnest (Part 2)
- A Fistful of Wilde
- These poems and stories combined into one file for easy use on an iPhone or other portable device.
- Flower Or Love
- “From the wildness of my wasted passion I had struck a better, clearer song.”
- Flowers of Gold
- Rid of the world’s injustice and pain, the moon withdraws from the sky.
- The Fourth Movement
- “How steep the stairs within Kings’ houses are for exile-wearied feet as mine to tread… better far that I had died in the red ways of war… ”
- A Fragment
- “Beautiful star with the crimson lips and flagrant daffodil hair…”
- The Garden of Eros
- Full summer in the garden of Eros with the love-child of the Spring.
- The Grave Of Keats
- “Rid of the world’s injustice, and his pain, he rests at last beneath God’s veil of blue…”
- The Grave Of Shelley
- “Like burnt-out torches by a sick man’s bed…”
- The Harlot’s House
- What wonders can be seen behind the curtains of the harlot’s home?
- Helas
- “To drift with every passion till my soul is a stringed lute on which all winds can play…”
- Her Voice
- “The wild bee reels from bough to bough with his furry coat and his gauzy wing.”
- Humanitad
- “It is full winter now, the trees are bare save where the cattle huddle from the cold beneath the pine…”
- I
- “There is no peace beneath the moon…”
- I
- “These fields made golden with the flower of March…”
- I
- “The corn has turned from gray to red, since first my spirit wandered forth…”
- I
- “He did not wear his scarlet coat, for blood and wine are red…”
- I. Portia: To Ellen Terry
- “I marvel not Bassanio was so bold…”
- I: Le Jardin
- “The lily’s withered chalice falls around its rod of dusty gold…”
- I: Les Silhouettes
- “…like a withered leaf the moon is blown across the stormy bay.”
- II
- “Eastward the dawn has broken red; the circling mists and shadows flee…”
- II
- “How strangely still! no sound of life or joy startles the air!”
- II
- “What joy it were for me to turn my feet unto the south…”
- II
- “Six weeks the guardsman walked the yard, in the suit of shabby gray…”
- II. Queen Henrietta Maria: To Ellen Terry
- “Waiting for victory, she stands with eyes marred by the mists of pain…”
- II: La Fuite de la Lune
- “A dreamy peace on either hand…”
- II: La Mer
- “A white mist drifts across the shrouds…”
- III
- “Deep silence in the shadowy land…”
- III
- “Yon lonely pillar, rising on the plain, marks where the bravest knight of France was slain…”
- III
- “What joy for me to seek alone the wondrous Temple, and the throne of Him who holds the awful keys!”
- III
- “In Debtors’ Yard the stones are hard, and the dripping wall is high…”
- III. CAMMA: To Ellen Terry
- “As one who poring on a Grecian urn scans the fair shapes some Attic hand hath made…”
- The Importance of Being Earnest
- The full text of The Importance of Being Earnest in three acts.
- Impression De Voyage
- “The sea was sapphire colored, and the sky burned like a heated opal through the air.”
- Impression Du Matin
- “St. Paul’s loomed like a bubble o’er the town.”
- Impression: Le Reveillon
- “The sky is laced with fitful red…”
- Impressions
- “The sea is flecked with bars of gray,…”
- Impressions
- “From the beech trees on the wold, the last wood-pigeon coos and calls…”
- Impressions de Theatre
- Various poems to Wilde’s friends and acquaintances in the theater.
- In The Gold Room: A Harmony
- “Her ivory hands on the ivory keys strayed in a fitful fantasy…”
- An Inscription
- “Go, little book…”
- Italia
- “Italia! thou art fallen, though with sheen of battle-spears…”
- IV
- “ Up sprang the sun to run his race…”
- IV
- “How lone this palace is; how grey the walls!”
- IV
- “The cycles of revolving years may free my heart from all its fears…”
- IV
- “There is no chapel on the day on which they hang a man…”
- La Bella Donna Del Mia Mente
- “My lips have now forgot to sing.”
- A Lament
- “Well for him who lives at ease…”
- Le Jardin Des Tuileries
- “This winter air is keen and cold…”
- Libertatis Sacra Fames
- “Where every man is Kinglike and no man is crowned above his fellows…”
- Lotus Leaves
- “In those meadows is there peace, where, girdled with a silver fleece, as a bright shepherd, strays the moon?”
- Louis Napoleon
- “In fight unequal, by an obscure hand, fell the last scion of thy brood of Kings.”
- Madonna Mia
- “Like bluest water seen through mists of rain; pale cheeks whereon no love hath left its stain…”
- Magdalen Walks
- “The daffodil breaks underfoot, and the tasselled larch sways and swings as the thrush goes hurrying by.”
- Miscellaneous Poems of Oscar Wilde
- Miscelleneous poetry of Oscar Wilde: The True Knowledge, A Lament, Wasted Days, Lotus Leaves, Impressions, Under the Balcony, A Fragment, Le Jardin des Tuileries, and more.
- My Voice
- “Within this restless, hurried, modern world…”
- The New Helen
- “Where hast thou been since round the walls of Troy the sons of God fought in that great emprise?”
- The New Remorse
- “The sin was mine; I did not understand.”
- Oscar Wilde (Selected Works)
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Poetry and prose by Oscar Wilde, and a few links to pages about the man and his life.
- Panthea
- “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…”
- Phedre: To Sarah Bernhardt
- “How vain and dull this common world must seem to such a One as thou…”
- The Picture of Dorian Gray
- “From the point of view of form, the type of all the arts is the art of the musician. From the point of view of feeling, the actor’s craft is the type.”
- Preface
- The artist is the creator of beautiful things.
- Quantum Mutata
- “There was a time in Europe long ago, when no man died for freedom anywhere…”
- Quia Multum Amavi
- “All night long before thy feet I knelt till thou wert wearied of Idolatry.”
- Ravenna
- “The pine-tops rocked before the evening breeze with the hoarse murmur of the wintry seas, and the tall stems were streaked with amber bright; I wandered through the wood in wild delight…”
- Requiescat
- “Tread lightly, she is near under the snow…”
- Rome Unvisited
- “I set my face toward home, for all my pilgrimage is done…”
- Rosa Mystica
- “Tread lightly, she is near under the snow, speak gently, she can hear the daisies grow. All her bright golden hair tarnished with rust, she that was young and fair fallen to dust.”
- Salve Saturnia Tellus
- “I reached the Alps: the soul within me burned…”
- San Miniato
- “have climbed the mountain side up to this holy house of God…”
- Santa Decca
- “The Gods are dead…”
- Second Act, Part 1
- Act 2 of The Importance of Being Earnest in three acts. The Garden at the Manor House, Woolton.
- Second Act, Part 2
- Act 2 of The Importance of Being Earnest in three acts.
- The Selfish Giant
- “Every afternoon, as they were coming from school, the children used to go and play in the Giant’s garden.”
- Serenade: For Music
- “The western wind is blowing fair across the dark Aegean sea…”
- Silentium Amoris
- “As oftentimes the too resplendent sun, hurries the pallid and reluctant moon back to her sombre cave…”
- Sonnet
- “I wandered in Scoglietto’s green retreat, the oranges on each o’erhanging spray…”
- Sonnet On Hearing the Dies Irae Sung in the Sistine Chapel
- “White lilies in the spring, teach me more clearly of Thy life and love than terrors of red flame and thundering…”
- Sonnet On the Massacre of the Christians in Bulgaria
- “Christ, dost Thou live indeed?”
- Sonnet On the Sale by Auction of Keats’ Love Letters
- “These are the letters which Endymion wrote to one he loved in secret and apart…”
- Sonnet To Liberty
- “The roar of thy Democracies.”
- The Sphinx
- “Red follows grey across the air, the waves of moonlight ebb and flow, but with the dawn she does not go, and in the night-time she is there.”
- Taedium Vitae
- “To stab my youth with desperate knife, to wear this paltry age’s gaudy livery…”
- Theocritus: A Villanelle
- “Still through the ivy flits the bee…”
- Theoretikos
- “This mighty empire hath but feet of clay…”
- Third Act
- Act 3 of The Importance of Being Earnest in three acts. Drawing-Room at the Manor House, Woolton.
- To Milton
- “This gorgeous fiery-colored world of ours seems fallen into ashes dull and gray.”
- The True Knowledge
- “I trust I shall not live in vain.”
- Under The Balcony
- “O beautiful star with the crimson mouth! O moon with the brows of gold!”
- Urbs Sacra Aeterna
- “Rome! What a scroll of History thine has been!”
- V
- “Shall I be gladdened for the day, and let my inner heart be stirred?”
- V
- “The pine-tops rocked before the evening breeze, and the tall stems were streaked with amber bright…”
- V
- “I know not whether Laws be right, or whether Laws be wrong…”
- VI
- “O lone Ravenna! many a tale is told of thy great glories in the days of old…”
- VI
- “In Reading gaol by Reading town there is a pit of shame…”
- VII
- “Adieu, Ravenna! but a year ago, I stood and watched the crimson sunset glow from the lone chapel on thy marshy plain…”
- A Vision
- “With sad eyes as one uncomforted, and wearied with man’s never-ceasing moan.”
- Vita Nuova
- “I stood by the unvintageable sea till the wet waves drenched face and hair with spray…”
- Wasted Days
- “ A fair slim boy not made for this world’s pain…”
- Wind Flowers
- Impressions of morning at the Thames and other somewhat related works of natural beauty.
More Information
- The Picture of Dorian Gray•
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A strange tale of morals and epigrams, Dorian Gray is about beauty, art, and romance. “There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.”
