3-057-407 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Lecture and poems by Oscar Wilde, 1882. 'To drift with every passion till my soul Is a stringed lute on which can winds can play, Is it for this that I have given away Mine ancient wisdom and austere control? Methinks my life is a twice-written scroll Scrawled over on some boyish holiday With idle songs for pipe and virelay, Which do but mar the secret of the whole. Surely there was a time I might have trod The sunlit heights, and from life's dissonance Struck one clear chord to reach the ears of God: Is that time dead? lo! with a little rod I did but touch the honey of romance - And must I lose a soul's inheritance?'. Wilde's (1854-1900) lecture on the English Renaissance, and his poems "Helas!" and "Eleutheria", published in the "Seaside Library". (New York, 1882).