The Poetry of Oscar Wilde. Оскар Уайльд

Poor mourning Philomel, what dost thou fear?

       Thy sister doth not haunt these fields,

       Pandion is not here, Here is no cruel

       Lord with murderous blade,

       No woven web of bloody heraldries,

       But mossy dells for roving comrades made,

       Warm valleys where the tired student lies

       With half-shut book, and many a winding walk

       Where rustic lovers stray at eve in happy simple talk.

       The harmless rabbit gambols with its young

       Across the trampled towing-path, where late

       A troop of laughing boys in jostling throng

       Cheered with their noisy cries the racing eight;

       The gossamer, with ravelled silver threads,

       Works at its little loom, and from the dusky red-caved sheds

       Of the lone Farm a flickering light shines out

       Where the swinked shepherd drives his bleating flock,

       Back to their wattled sheep-cotes, a faint shout

       Comes from some Oxford boat at Sandford lock,

       And starts the moor-hen from the sedgy rill,

       And the dim lengthening shadows flit like swallows up the hill.

       The heron passes homeward to the mere,

       The blue mist creeps among the shivering trees,

       Gold world by world the silent stars appear,

       And like a blossom blown before the breeze,

       A white moon drifts across the shimmering sky,

       Mute arbitress of all thy sad, thy rapturous threnody.

       She does not heed thee, wherefore should she heed,

       She knows Endymion is not far away,

       ‘Tis I, ‘tis I, whose soul is as the reed

       Which has no message of its own to play,

       So pipes another’s bidding, it is I,

       Drifting with every wind on the wide sea of misery.

       Ah! the brown bird has ceased: one exquisite trill

       About the sombre woodland seems to cling,

       Dying in music, else the air is still,

       So still that one might hear the bat’s small wing

       Wander and wheel above the pines, or tell

       Each tiny dewdrop dripping from the, bluebell’s brimming cell.

       And far across the lengthening wold,

       Across the willowy flats and thickets brown,

       Magdalen’s tall tower tipped with tremulous gold

       Marks the long High Street of the little town,

       And warns me to return; I must not wait,

       Hark! ‘tis the curfew booming from the bell of Christ Church Gate.