Poem by Oscar Wilde

Phèdre

                         To Sarah Bernhardt

How vain and dull this common world must seem
    To such a One as thou, who should'st have talked
    At Florence with Mirandola, or walked
Through the cool olives of the Academe:
Thou should'st have gathered reeds from a green stream
    For Goat-foot Pan's shrill piping, and have played
    With the white girls in that Phaacian glade
Where grave Odysseus wakened from his dream.
Ah! surely once some urn of Attic clay
    Held thy wan dust, and thou hast come again
    Back to this common world so dull and vain,
For thou wert weary of the sunless day,
    The heavy fields of scentless asphodel,
    The loveless lips with which men kiss in Hell.

1. Hélas!
2. The Garden of Eros
3. Portia
4. Urbs Sacra Æterna
5. Queen Henrietta Maria

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