Selected Poems

by Oscar Wilde

It is sweet to dance to violins When Love and Life are fair: To dance to flutes, to dance to lutes Is delicate and rare: But it is not sweet with nimble feet To dance upon the air!

Like two doomed ships that pass in storm We had crossed each other's way: But we made no sign, we said no word, We had no word to say; For we did not meet in the holy night, But in the shameful day.

We waited for the stroke of eight: Each tongue was thick with thirst: For the stroke of eight is the stroke of Fate That makes a man accursed, And Fate will use a running noose For the best man and the worst.

For the crimson flower of our life is eaten by the cankerworm of truth, And no hand can gather up the fallen withered petals of the rose of youth.

Yet I am not sorry that I loved you - ah! what else had I a boy to do, - For the hungry teeth of time devour, and the silent-footed years pursue.

Ah! what else had I to do but love you? God's own mother was less dear to me, And less dear the Cytheraean rising like an argent lily from the sea.