Explore "Phèdre" by Oscar Wilde on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
To Sarah Bernhardt / How vain and dull this common world must seem / To such a One as thou, who should'st have talked / At Florence with Mirandola, or walked / Through the cool olives of the Academe:
Thou should'st have gathered reeds from a green stream / For Goat-foot Pan's shrill piping, and have played / With the white girls in that Phaeacian glade / Where grave Odysseus wakened from his dream.
Ah! surely once some urn of Attic clay / Held thy wan dust, and thou hast come again / Back to this common world so dull and vain, / For thou wert weary of the sunless day, / The heavy fields of scentless asphodel, / The loveless lips with which men kiss in Hell.