Page:The Poems of Oscar Wilde.pdf/246

 And some orient dawn had found me kneeling on the threshold of the House of Fame.

I had sat within that marble circle where the oldest bard is as the young,

And the pipe is ever dropping honey, and the lyre's strings are ever strung.

Keats had lifted up his hymeneal curls from out the poppy-seeded wine,

With ambrosial mouth had kissed my forehead, clasped the hand of noble love in mine.

And at springtide, when the apple-blossoms brush the burnished bosom of the dove,

Two young lovers lying in an orchard would have read the story of our love.

Would have read the legend of my passion, known the bitter secret of my heart,

Kissed as we have kissed, but never parted as we two are fated now to part.

For the crimson flower of our life is eaten by the cankerworm of truth,

And no hand can gather up the fallen withered petals of the rose of youth. 232