The kinetic base, the obvious framework, of _The Sphinx_ is an apostrophe addressed by a student to a Sphinx that lies in his room, perhaps a dream, perhaps a paperweight, an apostrophe that consists in the enumeration of her possible lovers, and the final selection of one of them as her supposed choice. It is a series rather than a whole, though an effect of form and cumulative weight is given to it by a carefully preserved monotony. In a firm, lava-like verse, the Sphinx's paramours are stiffened to a bas-relief. The water-horse, the griffon, the hawk-faced god, the mighty limbs of Ammon, are formed into a frieze of reverie; they do not collaborate in a picture, but are left behind as the dream goes on. It goes on, perhaps, just a little too long. So do some of the finest rituals; and _The Sphinx_ is among the rare incantations in our language. It is a piece of black magic. Of the student who saw such things men might well say:-- "Weave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes with holy dread," but they could never continue:-- "For he on honey-dew hath fed," and, with whatever milk he had been nourished, they would be certain that it was not that of Paradise. "Dawn follows Dawn and Nights grow old, and all the while this curious cat Lies crouching on the Chinese mat with eyes of satin rimmed with gold." To paint the visions she inspires, Wilde ransacks the world for magnificent colouring. He does not always secure magnificence in the noblest way, but is satisfied with an opulence, rather of things than of emotion, brought bodily into the verse and not suggested by the proud stepping of the mind. Cleopatra's wine, ivory-bodied Antinous, the crocodile with jewelled ears, metal-flanked gryphons, gilt-scaled dragons, "Some Nereid coiled in amber foam with curious rock-crystal breasts," the Ethiopian, "whose body was of polished jet," Pasht "who had green beryls for her eyes," Horus, "Whose wings, like strange transparent talc, rose high above his hawk-faced head, Painted with silver and with red and ribbed with rods of Oreichalch," the marble limbs of Ammon, "on pearl and porphyry pedestalled," an ocean emerald on his ivory breast-- "The merchants brought him steatite from Sidon in their painted ships: The meanest cup that touched his lips was fashioned from a chrysolite----" the lion's "long flanks of polished brass," the tiger's "amber sides":--I think it is worth while to notice the mineral character of all this imagery. It is as if a man were finding solace for his feverish hands in the touch of cool hard stones, and at the same time, stimulating his fever by the sexual excitement of contrast between the over-sensitive and the utterly insensible.