Explore "Tædium Vitæ" by Oscar Wilde on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
TO stab my youth with desperate knives, to wear / This paltry age's gaudy livery, / To let each base hand filch my treasury, / To mesh my soul within a woman's hair, / And be mere Fortune's lackeyed groom,-I swear / I love it not! these things are less to me / Than the thin foam that frets upon the sea, / Less than the thistledown of summer air / Which hath no seed: better to stand aloof / Far from these slanderous fools who mock my life / Knowing me not, better the lowliest roof / Fit for the meanest hind to sojourn in, / Than to go back to that hoarse cave of strife / Where my white soul first kissed the mouth of sin.