George Sylvester Viereck (Джордж Сильвестр Вирек)

The Ghost of Oscar Wilde

  Within the graveyard of Montmartre
    Where wreath on wreath is piled,
  Where Paris huddles to her breast
    Her genius like a child,
  The ghost of Heinrich Heine met
    The ghost of Oscar Wilde.

  The wind was howling desolate,
    The moon’s dead face shone bright;
  The ghost of Heinrich Heine hailed
    The sad wraith with delight:
  “Is it the slow worm’s slimy touch
    That makes you walk the night?

  “Or rankles still the bitter jibe
    Of fool and Pharisee,
  When angels wept that England’s law
    Had nailed you to the Tree,
  When from her brow she tore the rose
    Of golden minstrelsy?”

  Then spake the ghost of Oscar Wilde
    While shrill the night hawk cried:
  “Sweet singer of the race that bare
    Him of the Wounded Side,
  (I loved them not on earth, but men
    Change somehow, having died).

  “In Pere La Chaise my head is laid,
    My coffin-bed is cool,
  The mound above my grave defies
    The scorn of knave and fool,
  But may God’s mercy save me from
    The Psychopathic School!

  “Tight though I draw my cerecloth, still
    I hear the din thereof
  When with sharp knife and argument
    They pierce my soul above,
  Because I drew from Shakespeare’s heart
    The secret of his love....

  “Cite not Krafft-Ebing, nor his host
    Of lepers in my aid,
  I was sufficient as God’s flowers
    And everything He made;
  Yea, with the harvest of my song
    I face Him unafraid.

  “The fruit of Life and Death is His;
    He shapes both core and rind....”
  Cracked seemed and thin the golden voice,
    (The worm to none is kind),
  While through the graveyard of Montmartre
    Despairing howled the wind.

1. The Three Sphinxes
2. A Ballad of King David
3. The Candle and the Flame
4. The Cynic’s Credo
5. The Parrot

Распечатать (To print)

Количество обращений к стихотворению: 1624

Последние стихотворения

To English version