T. R. Smith, comp. Poetica Erotica: Rare and Curious Amatory Verse. 1921–22.
Young Charmides
By Oscar Wilde (18541900)(From Charmides, 1881) IN melancholy moonless Acheron, | |
Far from the goodly earth and joyous day, | |
Where no spring ever buds, nor ripening sun | |
Weighs down the apple trees, nor flowery May | |
Chequers with chestnut blooms the grassy floor, | 5 |
Where thrushes never sing, and piping linnets mate no more, | |
There by a dim and dark Lethæan well | |
Young Charmides was lying, wearily | |
He plucked the blossoms from the asphodel, | |
And with its little rifled treasury | 10 |
Strewed the dull waters of the dusky stream, | |
And watched the white stars founder, and the land was like a dream, | |
When as he gazed into the watery glass | |
And through his brown hair’s curly tangles scanned | |
His own wan face, a shadow seemed to pass | 15 |
Across the mirror, and a little hand | |
Stole into his, and warm lips timidly | |
Brushed his pale cheeks, and breathed their secret forth into a sigh. | |
Then turned he round his weary eyes and saw, | |
And ever nigher still their faces came, | 20 |
And nigher ever did their young mouths draw | |
Until they seemed one perfect rose of flame, | |
And longing arms around her neck he cast, | |
And felt her throbbing bosom, and his breath came hot and fast, | |
And all his hoarded sweets were hers to kiss, | 25 |
And all her maidenhood was his to slay, | |
And limb to limb in long and rapturous bliss | |
Their passion waxed and waned,—O why essay | |
To pipe again of love too venturous reed! | |
Enough, enough that Eros laughed upon that flowerless mead. | 30 |
Too venturous poesy O why essay | |
To pipe again of passion! fold thy wings | |
O’er daring Icarus and bid thy lay | |
Sleep hidden in the lyre’s silent strings, | |
Till thou hast found the old Castalian rill, | 35 |
Or from the Lesbian waters plucked drowned Sappho’s golden quill! | |
Enough, enough that he whose life had been | |
A fiery pulse of sin, a splendid shame, | |
Could in the loveless land of Hades glean | |
One scorching harvest from those fields of flame | 40 |
Where passion walks with naked unshod feet | |
And is not wounded,—ah! enough that once their lips could meet | |
In that wild throb when all existences | |
Seemed narrowed to one single ecstasy | |
Which dies through its own sweetness and the stress | 45 |
Of too much pleasure, ere Persephone | |
Had bade them serve her by the ebon throne | |
Of the pale God who in the fields of Enna loosed her zone. | |