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Selected Poems of Oscar Wilde
It is thought that a selection from Oscar Wilde's early verses may be of interest to a large public at present familiar only with the always popular BALLAD OF READING GAOL, also included in this volume. The poems were first collected by their author when he was twenty-sex years old, and though never, until recently, well received by the critics, have survived the test of NINE editions. Readers will be able to make for themselves the obvious and striking contrasts between these first and last phases of Oscar Wilde's literary activity. The intervening period was devoted almost entirely to dramas, prose, fiction, essays, and criticism.
Robert Ross
Reform Club,
April 5, 1911
Contents
The Ballad Of Reading Gaol
Ave Imperatrix
To My Wife - With A Copy Of My Poems
Magdalen Walks
Theocritus - A Villanelle
Greece
Portia
Fabien Dei Franchi
Phedre
Sonnet On Hearing The Dies Irae Sung In The Sistine Chapel
Ave Maria Gratia Plena
Libertatis Sacra Fames
Roses And Rue
From 'The Garden Of Eros'
The Harlot's House
From 'The Burden Of Itys'
Flower of Love
NOTE
At the end of the complete text will be found a shorter version based on the original draft of the poem. This is included for the benefit of reciters and their audiences who have found the entire poem too long for declamation. I have tried to obviate a
difficulty, without officiously exercising the ungrateful
prerogatives of a literary executor, by falling back on a text which represents the author's first scheme for a poem - never intended of course for r