In "Panthea" Oscar Wilde gives rein to his amorous fancy, and, inspired by the poets of Greece and Rome, peoples the world with gods and goddesses who mourn the old glad pagan days-- "Back to their lotus-haunts they turn again Kissing each other's mouths, and mix more deep The poppy-seeded draught which brings soft purple-lidded sleep." How rich is the language here employed, how exquisite the lilt of "soft purple-lidded sleep." Not even Tennyson in "The Lotus Eaters" has done anything better than this. And how delicately expressed is the idea embodied in the lines-- "There in the green heart of some garden close Queen Venus with the shepherd at her side, Her warm soft body like the briar rose Which should be white yet blushes at its pride--" or, how tender the fancy that inspired "So when men bury us beneath the yew Thy crimson-stained mouth a rose will be, And thy soft eyes lush bluebells dimmed with dew." None but a poet could have written those lines; the stately wording of the second line is purposely chosen to enhance the perfect simplicity of the third. The poems comprised within "The Fourth Movement" include the "Impression," "Le Reveillon," the first verse of which runs-- "The sky is laced with fitful red, The circling mists and shadows flee, The dawn is rising from the sea, Like a white lady from her bed--" which inspired the parodist with-- "MORE IMPRESSIONS" (_By Oscuro Wildgoose_) DES SPONETTES "My little fancy's clogged with gush, My little lyre is false in tone, And when I lyrically moan, I hear the impatient critic's 'Tush!' But I've 'Impressions.' These are grand! Mere dabs of words, mere blobs of tint, Displayed on canvas or in print, Men laud, and think they understand. A smudge of brown, a smear of yellow, No tale, no subject,--there you are! Impressions!--and the strangest far Is--that the bard's a clever fellow." I quote the two parodies to show how little Oscar Wilde's verse was appreciated by his contemporaries. There is an unfairness and misrepresentation about them which is significant of how the poet's poses and extravagancies had prejudiced the public mind. In the two love poems "Apologia" and "Quia multi Amori" a deeper key is struck, and a note of pain predominates. There is a restraint about the versification and the colour of the words that strikes the right chord and tunes the lyre to a subdued note. The underlying passion and regret find their supreme expression in the lines-- "Ah! hadst thou liked me less and loved me more, Through all those summer days of joy and rain, I had not now been sorrow's heritor Or stood a lackey in the House of Pain." The "hadst thou liked me less and loved me more" deserves to pass into the language with Richard Lovelace's "I could not love thee, dear, so much, Loved I not honour more."