Page:The Poems of Oscar Wilde.pdf/200

 There in the green heart of some garden close

Queen Venus with the shepherd at her side,

Her warm soft body like the briar rose

Which would be white yet blushes at its pride,

Laughs low for love, till jealous Salmacis

Peers through the myrtle-leaves and sighs for pain of lonely bliss.

There never does that dreary north-wind blow

Which leaves our English forests bleak and bare,

Nor ever falls the swift white-feathered snow,

Nor ever doth the red-toothed lightning dare

To wake them in the silver-fretted night

When we lie weeping for some sweet sad sin, some dead delight.

Alas! they know the far Lethæan spring,

The violet-hidden waters well they know,

Where one whose feet with tired wandering

Are faint and broken may take heart and go,

And from those dark depths cool and crystalline

Drink, and draw balm, and sleep for sleepless souls, and anodyne.

But we oppress our natures, God or Fate

Is our enemy, we starve and feed

On vain repentance—O we are born too late!

What balm for us in bruisèd poppy seed 186