Charmides And Other Poems

by Oscar Wilde

Stolen from Artemis that jealous maid
To please Athena, and the dappled hide
Of a tall stag who in some mountain glade
Had met the shaft; and then the herald cried,
And from the pillared precinct one by one
Went the glad Greeks well pleased that they their simple vows had done. Long time he lay and hardly dared to breathe,
And heard the cadenced drip of spilt-out wine,
And the rose-petals falling from the wreath
As the night breezes wandered through the shrine,
And seemed to be in some entranced swoon
Till through the open roof above the full and brimming moon Flooded with sheeny waves the marble floor,
When from his nook up leapt the venturous lad. . . .

Genres: Poetry, Fiction, Classics

108 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1913

About the author

Oscar Fingal O'Fflahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. He is best remembered for his epigrams and plays, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, and his criminal conviction for gross indecency for homosexual acts.
Wilde's parents were Anglo-Irish intellectuals in Dublin. In his youth, Wilde learned to speak fluent French and German. At university, he read Greats; he demonstrated himself to be an exceptional classicist, first at Trinity College Dublin, then at Magdalen College, Oxford. He became associated with the emerging philosophy of aestheticism, led by two of his tutors, Walter Pater and John Ruskin. After university, Wilde moved to London into fashionable cultural and social circles.
Wilde tried his hand at various literary activities: he wrote a play, published a book of poems, lectured in the United States and Canada on "The English Renaissance" in art and interior decoration, and then returned to London where he lectured on his American travels and wrote reviews for various periodicals. Known for his biting wit, flamboyant dress and glittering conversational skill, Wilde became one of the best-known personalities of his day. At the turn of the 1890s, he refined his ideas about the supremacy of art in a series of dialogues and essays, and incorporated themes of decadence, duplicity, and beauty into what would be his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). Wilde returned to drama, writing Salome (1891) in French while in Paris, but it was refused a licence for England due to an absolute prohibition on the portrayal of Biblical subjects on the English stage. Undiscouraged, Wilde produced four society comedies in the early 1890s, which made him one of the most successful playwrights of late-Victorian London.
At the height of his fame and success, while An Ideal Husband (1895) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) were still being performed in London, Wilde issued a civil writ against John Sholto Douglas, the 9th Marquess of Queensberry for criminal libel. The Marquess was the father of Wilde's lover, Lord Alfred Douglas. The libel hearings unearthed evidence that caused Wilde to drop his charges and led to his own arrest and criminal prosecution for gross indecency with other males. The jury was unable to reach a verdict and so a retrial was ordered. In the second trial Wilde was convicted and sentenced to two years' hard labour, the maximum penalty, and was jailed from 1895 to 1897. During his last year in prison he wrote De Profundis (published posthumously in abridged form in 1905), a long letter that discusses his spiritual journey through his trials and is a dark counterpoint to his earlier philosophy of pleasure. On the day of his release, he caught the overnight steamer to France, never to return to Britain or Ireland. In France and Italy, he wrote his last work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898), a long poem commemorating the harsh rhythms of prison life.

Reviews

[Hirdesh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oscar wilde's writing,always fascinates and captured my attention.
Either prose or poetry, drama or tragedy.

One of lyrical story written my Wilde, Comprises ethical and innate air of rhyme expressing every gestures through each word.
Incredible poetic devices and deeply personification among extremities.
Further later.

[John Yelverton · Rating 2 out of 5]

A long and epic poem with a litany of Greek mythological references, but t just wasn't that great of a poem in my opinion.

[Roger · Rating 3 out of 5]

"A dreaded sunny day
So let's go where we're wanted
And I meet you at the cemetry gates
Keats and Yeats are on your side
But you lose 'cause.. Wilde is on mine.."

So sang Morrissey on The Smiths' "Cemetry Gates", where, spending a summer day reciting poetry in a graveyard, his love of Wilde triumphs over his companion's knowledge of Keats and Yeats. Possibly not this collection, though, which is not Wilde's finest work. We have the longer poem "Charmides", which is surprisingly erotic for something published in the 1800's, beginning with a description of a beautiful Grecian lad on a boat wearing "a rich robe stained with the fishers’ juice which of some swarthy trader he had bought.." "Fisher's juice?" Is it just me? Then we have a few odd sonnets and villanelles, which are perfectly fine, but nothing with the depth and beauty of "De Profundis" or "The Ballad of Reading Gaol".

Based on this collection alone, my money would be on Keats and Yeats.

[T.S. Hottle · Rating 4 out of 5]

The version I have is actually within a Kindle version of Wilde's collected works. It was badly formatted for poetry.

Wilde obviously loves Greek mythology, Rome, Napoleon (at least Napoleon III), and despairs England run by demagogues.

[Byren Burdess · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are plenty instances of questionable behaviour in 'Charmides', so, naturally, I enjoyed it. The dryad lusting over a dead body is no worse than the characters of most popular contemporary writers, so that gets a pass.

The other poems brought this down a rating for me though.

[Rao Javed · Rating 3 out of 5]

The the perfect thing but fine anyhow.

[Sayo -bibliotequeish- · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I more so enjoy full stories written by Wilde, this book of poems was a nice look at a different side of one of my favorite authors.
A short read, and good read for any Wilde fan.

[Peter Longden · Rating 5 out of 5]

Day 20 #thesealeychallenge