I was surfing one of my favorite online resources for poetry this evening, The Literature Network when I came across this poem by Oscar Wilde. If you know me a little, you know I'm a sucker for sad poems ;) I hope you enjoy this one.
Her Voice
The wild bee reels from bough to bough
With his furry coat and his gauzy wing,
Now in a lily-cup, and now
Setting a jacinth bell a-swing,
In his wandering;
Sit closer love: it was here I trow
I made that vow,
Swore that two lives should be like one
As long as the sea-gull loved the sea,
As long as the sunflower sought the sun,--
It shall be, I said, for eternity
'Twixt you and me!
Dear friend, those times are over and done;
Love's web is spun.
Look upward where the poplar trees
Sway and sway in the summer air,
Here in the valley never a breeze
Scatters the thistledown, but there
Great winds blow fair
From the mighty murmuring mystical seas,
And the wave-lashed leas.
Look upward where the white gull screams,
What does it see that we do not see?
Is that a star? or the lamp that gleams
On some outward voyaging argosy,--
Ah! can it be
We have lived our lives in a land of dreams!
How sad it seems.
Sweet, there is nothing left to say
But this, that love is never lost,
Keen winter stabs the breasts of May
Whose crimson roses burst his frost,
Ships tempest-tossed
Will find a harbour in some bay,
And so we may.
And there is nothing left to do
But to kiss once again, and part,
Nay, there is nothing we should rue,
I have my beauty,--you your Art,
Nay, do not start,
One world was not enough for two
Like me and you.
-Oscar Wilde
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I've been slacking a bit and hope to catch up on my reviews and blog hopping this weekend. Enjoy your Friday! I'll be back on Monday with my mailbox post and at least two book reviews next week.
sidenote: The painting above is called Flaming June and was painted by Lord Frederic Leighton. It hangs in the Ponce Museum of Art, in Puerto Rico. The painting was found abandoned in a corner in a gallery in Amsterdam in 1963. Luis A. Ferre, a Puerto Rican industrialist, fell in love with it, purchased it and brought it to the island to be displayed in the museum.
