Memphis daily appeal. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1847-1886, 1882-01-15

Bring not your wicked faces near that cay,
safe from your cruelty, safe from your ieers,
Spare me the N lckery of formal tears
Ny hungered hunted spirit shall have flown.
Dare not insult the frail, discarded she'll
Come not TO see If you have done it well.
POETIC SIDE OF THE ESTHETE.
The Kind of Poetry which Oscar wilde
Can Grind Ont.
Boston Herald
When an author becomes personally con
spicuous he is thereby apt to occasion criti-
cisms that reflect upon his productions, al
though in reality they have nothing to do
with them. Thus, people who read Of the
disagreeable Alterations of dress and manner
which have made Oscar Wilde notorious, are
too prone to draw the inference that his lit
erary work is also mere pretension and I'M
worthy OF serious consideration. Nothing
could be further from the truth, for few per-
sons who have any intuitive perception of
what true poetry is could fail to recognize
the qualities which mark Oscar Wilde as a
genuine poet. In the technique OF his
art he is finely equipped, having a rare
facility of expression and a mastery of
form, in which, however, his tendency is
not toward the involved and complex. He is
rather inclined toward symmetrical and
sensous feeling for color, and is a master in
its use. He has quick sympathy, too, and a
delicate, responsive touch. Indeed, his sem
sitively melodious verse is only too responsive,
too quick to strike any note which the mo-
ment offsrs; giving the impression, as the
Atlantic Monthly well says in a recent re-
view, that there i, more blaze than native
koa ahAV, a.,1a Ii
aud sports with his passions. He causes
suspicion of insincerily; not Intentional, but
more like the aimlessness OF a true artist
who has hardly found his field, but in his
quest for it he takes such occasion for the
careless exercise of his powers as may he
afforded by the incidents of his path. Thus
far Mr. WiIds-hevt,s 10 the suiface Tor the
most part and rarely ventures to sound tue
depths. He, as yet, does not really know
what he does want, and has no settled pur-
pose. But an encouraging side is his ami
nation by a noble discontent-the feeling of
unrest which is the handspring of human
progress. He confesses his want of purpose
in his sonnet "Helas~ which prefaces the
volume of poems recently published in this
country, and which seems meant to charac-
terize his work thus far:
To drift with every passion TIL my soul
Is a stringed lutte on which all winds can play
Mine ancient wisdom and aus.ere CONTROL
Methinks my life is a twice-written scroll,
Scrawl6d over ON some boyish holiday,
With idle songs for pipe and vireay
Which do but mar the secret of the whole
Surely there a time might have trod
The sunlit nights, and from flies dissonance
Struck one clear chord TO reach the ear of God.
Is that time dead? Loi with little rod
did but touch the honey OF romance
And must lose = souls inheritance?
In the use of the sonnet he has fine skill
In the following, called "Theoretikos, is
illustrated one of the controlling ideas to
which he steadfastly holds-his discomfort
with the England of to-day-and he also pro-
claims his allegiance TO art:
This mighty empire hath but feet of clay;
Ofall its ancient chivalry and might
Our little island is forsaken quite;
Some enemy hath stolen its crown of bay,
And from the hills that voice hath passed away
Which spoke of Freedom Q, come out OF it,
For this vile traffic house. where, day by day,
Wisdom and reverence are sold at mart,
And the rude people rage with ignorant cries
Against an heritage of csntuIies
And loftiest culture would stand apart
Neither for God nor for his enemies.
England is magnifcentiy pictured in the
poem of save Imperatrix," a long poem, full
of soul-stirring, heroic lines. 1t begin=:
Set in this stormy northern sea,
Queen of these restless fields of tide,
England what shall men say of thee,
Before whose feet the worlds divide?
The earth brittle globe of glass
Lies IN the hollow of thy hand,
And through its heart of crystal pass
Like shadows through twilight land
The spears of crimson suited war,
The long white-crested waves OF light,
And all the deadly fires which
The torches OF the lords of night.
The whole poem is foil of stately figures
like the foregoing. The poet laments the Eng
glish dead who have fallen, while az lgland,
with bare and bloody feet, climbs the steep
road of wide empire" and closing with re-
publican prophecy, asks:
hot hat ,a,-
The whele round world with nets of gold,
If hidden in our hearts is found
The care that groweth never old3
What profit that our galleys ride,
Pine-forest-like on every main?
Ruin and wreck at our side,
Grim wardeIs of the House of Pain.
Where are the brave, the strong. the fleet?
Where is our English chivalry?
Wild grasses are their burial sheet,
And sobbing waves their threnody.
o, loved ones lying far away,
What word of love can dead lips sends
., wasted dust! o, senseless clay,
Is this the end? Is this the end
Peace. Peaeei we wrong the noble dead
Though chIldless and with thorn crowned head
Up the steep road must England go.
Yet when this fiery web is spun,
Her Waterman shall descry from far
The young republic like sun
Rise from these crimson seas of
The young e,thetic 70 t certainly has a
good foundation, for the grand old Puritan
soldier and statesman is his greatest hero,
and "Cromwell's England" are frequent
words in his lines. His special models, as
the reader at once sees, have been Shak-
speare in lis lyrics, Keats, sMorris aud R.
setti. His erotic notes have more of Rosetti's
tone than Swinburne's. His intense love of
beauty is in his strongest passion, and he is a
master in imagery, modelled with a sure hand
and plastic touch. He is more lucid than
Swinburne and more idyllic. As for the mas
l.. L
tation, this is concentrated in a single dose
one great and most audacious gust of indie
cent sensuality in "Charmides" For the
rest, there is little to give offense, and his
poems are most marked by a boy-like
frankness. often coupled with a boy-like
statement of wide experience. His "sestheti-
cism"-much abused and sadly misunder-
stood words picturesquely illustrated in
the poem, "In the Gold Room: a Harmony"
Her ivory hands on the ivory keys
Strayed in a ftful fantasy
Like the silver CLEAN when The poplar trees
Rustic their pale leaves listlessly,
Or the drifting foam of a restless sea
wh.n the waves show their teeth il the flying
breeze.
Her gold hair fell on the wall of gold
On the FURNISHED disc Of the maiigoid.
Or the sunfower turning to meet the sun
When the gloom of the jealous night is done,
Aud the spear of the lily is aureo,ed.
There are some pieces of questionable art,
evidently inspired by Whistler's "nocturnes,"
arrangements, symphonies" and the
like, as in impressions du Matin," French
name for purely English subject. The bad
taste of this is manifest. The easily manu-
featured babblipg ballads are not, also, COM
mendable, and they invite parody. The fine
quality of the intrinsic element in Oscar
Wilde's verse gives warrant that greater and
better things may be expected from him.
There is promise of this grander manner in
the long poem called "Humanitad," a beau
tiful example of sustained artistic effort, the
beginning of which is worthy to stand beside
that of Keats's ''St. Agnes Eye" Its theme
is the beginning OF all mankind to lead a
life of freedom, health and beauty. Its
spirit is shown by the following stanzas:
For gentle brotherhood, the harmony
OF living in the healthiul air. the swift
Clean beauty of strong limbs when men are free
And women chsste, these are the things which
Our souls ND more thsn even Angeles
Gaunt, blinded sybil Pouring Ger the scroll of
human woes
Or Titian's little maiden on the stair
Or Mona Lisa smiling through her hair
All somehow life is bigger after all
Than any painted angel could we
The Cod that is within US, The old creek serenity
Which curbs the passion of that level line
OF marble youths who with untroubled eyes
And chastened / Inbs, ride round Athena's shrine
And mirror her divine economies,
Of balanced symmetry of what in man
Would else wage ceaseess warfare-this i at least
within the SPAN
Between our mothers kisses and the grave
Might so inform our lives that we could win
Such mighty empires that fIom her cave
TemptS ton would grow hoarSe. and palhd Sin
Would walk ashamed of his adulteries,
And Passion creep from out the House OF Lust
with ST artled eyes.
WilbOr's Compound of Pure COd-Liyer
Oil and Lime.
The advantage of this compound over the
plain oil is that the nauseating taste of the
oil is entirely removed, and the whole rem
dered palatable. The offensive taste of the
oil has long acted as great objection to its