Page:The Poems of Oscar Wilde.pdf/227

 Nay! for perchance that poppy-crownèd God

Is like the watcher by a sick man's bed

Who talks of sleep but gives it not; his rod

Hath lost its virtue, and, when all is said,

Death is too rude, too obvious a key

To solve one single secret in a life's philosophy.

And Love! that noble madness, whose august

And inextinguishable might can slay

The soul with honeyed drugs,—alas! I must

From such sweet ruin play the runaway,

Although too constant memory never can

Forget the archèd splendour of those brows Olympian

Which for a little season made my youth

So soft a swoon of exquisite indolence

That all the chiding of more prudent Truth

Seemed the thin voice of jealousy,—O Hence

Thou huntress deadlier than Artemis!

Go seek some other quarry! for of thy too perilous bliss

My lips have drunk enough,—no more, no more,—

Though Love himself should turn his gilded prow

Back to the troubled waters of this shore

Where I am wrecked and stranded, even now 213