Poetry by Lord Alfred Douglas (Bosie)

Our October speaker, Lord Gawain Douglas, has kindly suggested the following examples of his great-uncle's poems to supplement Bill Doherty's account, (see below), of his talk to the Society in October:

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.

Paris, 1901

(Written about Oscar Wilde a year after his death.)

THE WASTES OF TIME

If you came back, perhaps you would not find

The old enchantment, nor again discern

The altered face of love. The wheels yet tum

That clocked the wasted hours, the spirit’s wind

Still fans the embers in the hidden mind.

But if I cried to you, “Return! return!”

How could you come? How could you ever learn

The old ways you have left so far behind?

How sweetly, forged in sleep, come dreams that make

Swift wings and ships that sail the estranging sea,

Less roughly than blown rose-leaves in a bowl,

To harboured bliss. But oh! the pain to wake

In empty night seeking what may not he

Till the dead flesh set free the living soul.

 February 1934