Page:Writings of Oscar Wilde - Volume 01.djvu/33

Rh which follow: that he who wrote that exquisitely tender "Requiescat"—

could, likewise, have written "The Sphinx," that strange, fascinating poem, so subtly and so learnedly charged with the lust of the ancient world, and written—was that another ironical paradox?—in the metre of "In Memoriam;" or, again, that he who, in his young days, used to luxuriate in over luscious imitations of Keats should end with a poem of such tragic strength as "The Ballad of Reading Gaol." Again, to many it may seem strange that the cynic of the comedies, the novelist of "Dorian Gray," should have written such tender pure-hearted fairy-tales as "The Happy Prince," or that beautiful letter about children in prison. But, of course, there is nothing contradictory in all this. Wilde, more than most artists, was remarkably many-sided, and lived up to his own dictum that