Oscar Wilde , "Sonnet to Liberty" (1881)
Transcribed from page 50 of the 1907 A.R. Keller edition of The Writings of Oscar Wilde: Poems.
SONNET TO LIBERTY.
- Not that I love thy children, whose dull eyes
- See nothing save their own unlovely woe,
- Whose minds know nothing, nothing care to know,—
- But that the roar of thy Democracies,
- Thy reigns of Terror, thy great Anarchies,
- Mirror my wildest passions like the sea,-
- And give my rage a brother——! Liberty!
- For his sake only do thy dissonant cries
- Delight my discreet soul, else might all kings
- By bloody knout or treacherous cannonades
- Rob nations of their rights inviolate
- And I remain unmoved—and yet, and yet,
- These Christs that die upon the barricades,
- God knows it I am with them, in some things.
Coins
Commentary
Fiction
Historical documents
Illustrations &
Cartoons
Paintings
Poetry
Sculpture
Seals