Tribute to Oscar Wilde

Depending on which account you read, the relationship between the Anglo-Irish playwright Oscar Wilde and his friend Lord Alfred 'Bosie' Douglas (above) seems either quite unpleasant or a thing of poetic beauty. It put Wilde into prison in 1895, where he wrote a long letter of recrimination ('De Profundis'). Their contact afterwards was sporadic, although Douglas was chief mourner at Wilde's funeral in Paris. After Wilde's death Douglas put a lot of effort into rewriting the relationship. But whatever his subsequent denials, the poem he wrote shortly after Wilde's death is a moving and beautiful tribute to Wilde's immense talent:

The Dead Poet

I dreamed of him last night, I saw his face
All radiant and unshadowed of distress,
And as of old, in music measureless,
I heard his golden voice and marked him trace
Under the common thing the hidden grace,
And conjure wonder out of emptiness,
Till mean things put on beauty like a dress
And all the world was an enchanted place.

And then methought outside a fast locked gate
I mourned the loss of unrecorded words,
Forgotten tales and mysteries half said,
Wonders that might have been articulate,
And voiceless thoughts like murdered singing birds.
And so I woke and knew that he was dead.