YOUNG CHARMIDES
by: Oscar Wilde
- N 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,
- Where thrushes never sing, and piping linnets mate no more,
-
- There by a dim and dark Lethaean well
- Young Charmides was lying, wearily
- He plucked the blossoms from the asphodel,
- And with its little rifled treasury
- 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
- 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,
- 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,
- 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.
- To 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 Castilian rill,
- Or from the Lesbian waters plucked down Sappho's golden quill!
- Enough, enough that he whose life had been
- A fiery pulse of sin, a splendid shame,
- Could in thy loveless land of Hades glean
- One scorching harvest from those fields of flame
- 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
- 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.
"Young Charmides" is reprinted from Poetica Erotica. Ed. T.R. Smith. New York: Crown Publishers, 1921. |
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