greykit.poetry — Oscar Wilde

• 1898 [oscar-wilde] The Ballad of Reading Gaol
  Poems

  Wilde's long narrative poem in six cantos about the hanging of a soldier at Reading Gaol — anchored in the refrain that each man kills the thing he loves, by each let this be heard.

  #ballad#prison#justice#death#narrative#1890s
• 1889 [oscar-wilde] Symphony in Yellow
  Uncollected Poems

  Twelve lines of London seen as colour: an omnibus crawling like a yellow butterfly, barges like shifting yellow hay, elm leaves falling yellow — and the Thames at his feet like a rod of rippled jade.

  #lyric#london#impressionism#1880s
• 1881 [oscar-wilde] Impression du Matin
  Poems (1881)

  A Thames nocturne of blue and gold changed to a harmony in grey as the fog lifts and the city wakes — and one woman still under the gas lamps, with lips of flame and heart of stone.

  #lyric#london#impressionism#1880s
• 1881 [oscar-wilde] Requiescat
  Poems

  Wilde's elegy for his sister Isola, who died aged nine — tread lightly, speak gently; all her bright golden hair tarnished with rust, all his life's buried here.

  #elegy#grief#death#lyric#1880s