3-057-413 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Newdigate Prize Poem, "Ravenna", by Oscar Wilde, 1878. Wilde's response to the Italian city of Ravenna. 'A year ago I breathed the Italian air, --And yet, methinks this northern Spring is fair,--- These fields made golden with the flower of March, The throstle singing on the feathered larch, The cawing rooks, the wood-doves fluttering by, The little clouds that race across the sky; And fair the violet's gentle drooping head, The primrose, pale for love uncomforted, The rose that burgeons on the climbing briar, The crocus-bed, (that seems a moon of fire Round-girdled with a purple marriage-ring); And all the flowers of our English Spring, Fond snowdrops, and the bright-starred daffodil. Up starts the lark beside the murmuring mill, And breaks the gossamer-threads of early dew; And down the river, like a flame of blue, Keen as an arrow flies the water-king, While the brown linnets in the greenwood sing. A year ago!---it seems a little time Since last I saw that lordly southern clime, Where flower and fruit to purple radiance blow, And like bright lamps the fabled apples glow'. [Ravenna, March 1877. Oxford, 1878].