Richard Peterson
Here are two quotes from my hero Oscar Wilde.
Wilde, born in 1854, who died on my birthday, 30 November 1900, was a dandy, wit, Classicist, poet, playwright, tragedian and pioneer queer activist. This is an extract from his poem ‘Apologia’ from his first book, published when he was 27. 1
Perchance it may be better so - at least
I have not made my heart a heart of stone,
Nor starved my boyhood of its goodly feast,
Nor walked where Beauty is a thing unknown.
Many a man hath done so; sought to fence
In straitened bonds the soul that should be free,
Trodden the dusty road of common sense,
While all the forest sang of liberty,
In straitened bonds the soul that should be free,
Trodden the dusty road of common sense,
While all the forest sang of liberty,
But surely it is something to have been
The best belovèd for a little while,
To have walked hand in hand with Love, and seen
His purple wings flit once across thy smile.
Ay! though the gorgèd asp of passion feed
On my boy’s heart, yet have I burst the bars,
Stood face to face with Beauty, known indeed
The Love which moves the Sun and all the stars!
The best belovèd for a little while,
To have walked hand in hand with Love, and seen
His purple wings flit once across thy smile.
Ay! though the gorgèd asp of passion feed
On my boy’s heart, yet have I burst the bars,
Stood face to face with Beauty, known indeed
The Love which moves the Sun and all the stars!
A decade later Wilde wrote in The Picture of Dorian Gray: 2
To me, beauty is the wonder of wonders.
It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances.
The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the
invisible.
1 Oscar Wilde, Poems, Robert Brothers [publisher], London 1881.
2 Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter 2, first published in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine 1890, and later by Ward, Lock, and Company 1891.