Page:The Poems of Oscar Wilde.pdf/160

 Sobbing her life out with a bitter cry

On the boy's body fell the Dryad maid,

Sobbing for incomplete virginity,

And raptures unenjoyed, and pleasures dead,

And all the pain of things unsatisfied,

And the bright drops of crimson youth crept down her throbbing side.

Ah! pitiful it was to hear her moan,

And very pitiful to see her die

Ere she had yielded up her sweets, or known

The joy of passion, that dread mystery

Which not to know is not to live at all,

And yet to know is to be held in death's most deadly thrall.

But as it hapt the Queen of Cythere,

Who with Adonis all night long had lain

Within some shepherd's hut in Arcady,

On team of silver doves and gilded wain

Was journeying Paphos-ward, high up afar

From mortal ken between the mountains and the morning star,

And when low down she spied the hapless pair,

And heard the Oread's faint despairing cry,

Whose cadence seemed to play upon the air

As though it were a viol, hastily 146