THE GRAVE OF SHELLEY
by: Oscar Wilde
- IKE burnt-out torches by a sick
man's bed
- Gaunt cypress-trees stand round the sun-bleached stone;
- Here doth the little night-owl make her throne,
- And the slight lizard show his jewelled head.
- And, where the chaliced poppies flame to red,
- In the still chamber of yon pyramid
- Surely some Old-World Sphinx lurks darkly hid,
- Grim warder of this pleasaunce of the dead.
-
- Ah! sweet indeed to rest within the womb
- Of Earth, great mother of eternal sleep,
- But sweeter far for thee a restless tomb
- In the blue cavern of an echoing deep,
- Or where the tall ships founder in the gloom
- Against the rocks of some wave-shattered steep.
'The Grave of Shelley' was originally
published in Poems (1881). |
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POEMS BY OSCAR WILDE |
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