Pale women who have lost their lord Will kiss the relics of the slain— Some tarnished epaulette—some sword— Poor toys to soothe such anguished pain. For not in quiet English fields Are these, our brothers, lain to rest, Where we might deck their broken shields With all the flowers the dead love best. For some are by the Delhi walls, And many in the Afghan land, And many where the Ganges falls Through seven mouths of shifting sand. And some in Russian waters lie, And others in the seas which are The portals to the East, or by The wind-swept heights of Trafalgar. O wandering graves! O restless sleep! O silence of the sunless day! O still ravine! O stormy deep! Give up your prey! Give up your prey! And thou whose wounds are never healed, Whose weary race is never won, O Cromwell’s England! must thou yield For every inch of ground a son? Go! crown with thorns thy gold-crowned head, Change thy glad song to song of pain; Wind and wild wave have got thy dead, And will not yield them back again. Wave and wild wind and foreign shore Possess the flower of English land— Lips that thy lips shall kiss no more, Hands that shall never clasp thy hand. What profit now that we have bound The whole round world with nets of gold, If hidden in our heart is found The care that groweth never old? What profit that our galleys ride, Pine-forest-like, on every main? Ruin and wreck are at our side, Grim warders of the House of Pain. Where are the brave, the strong, the fleet? Where is our English chivalry? Wild grasses are their burial-sheet, And sobbing waves their threnody. O loved ones lying far away, What word of love can dead lips send! O wasted dust! O senseless clay! Is this the end! is this the end! Peace, peace! we wrong the noble dead To vex their solemn slumber so; Though childless, and with thorn-crowned head, Up the steep road must England go, Yet when this fiery web is spun, Her watchmen shall descry from far The young Republic like a sun Rise from these crimson seas of war. TO MY WIFE WITH A COPY OF MY POEMS I CAN write no stately proem As a prelude to my lay; From a poet to a poem I would dare to say. For if of these fallen petals One to you seem fair, Love will waft it till it settles On your hair. And when wind and winter harden All the loveless land, It will whisper of the garden, You will understand. MAGDALEN WALKS [_After gaining the Berkeley Gold Medal for Greek at Trinity College_, _Dublin_, _in 1874_, _Oscar Wilde proceeded to Oxford_, _where he obtained a demyship at Magdalen College_. _He is the only real poet on the books of that institution_.]