The Secrets of Immortality by Oscar Wilde — Read

On the mouldering citadel of Troy lies the lizard like a thing of green / bronze. The owl has built her nest in the palace of Priam. Over the / empty plain wander shepherd and goatherd with their flocks, and where, on / the wine-surfaced, oily sea, [Greek text], as Homer calls it, / copper-prowed and streaked with vermilion, the great galleys of the / Danaoi came in their gleaming crescent, the lonely tunny-fisher sits in / his little boat and watches the bobbing corks of his net. Yet, every / morning the doors of the city are thrown open, and on foot, or in horse- / drawn chariot, the warriors go forth to battle, and mock their enemies / from behind their iron masks. All day long the fight rages, and when / night comes the torches gleam by the tents, and the cresset burns in the / hall. Those who live in marble or on painted panel, know of life but a / single exquisite instant, eternal indeed in its beauty, but limited to / one note of passion or one mood of calm. Those whom the poet makes live / have their myriad emotions of joy and terror, of courage and despair, of / pleasure and of suffering. The seasons come and go in glad or saddening / pageant, and with winged or leaden feet the years pass by before them. / They have their youth and their manhood, they are children, and they grow / old. It is always dawn for St. Helena, as Veronese saw her at the / window. Through the still morning air the angels bring her the symbol of / God's pain. The cool breezes of the morning lift the gilt threads from / her brow.

On that little hill by the city of Florence, where the lovers / of Giorgione are lying, it is always the solstice of noon, of noon made / so languorous by summer suns that hardly can the slim naked girl dip into / the marble tank the round bubble of clear glass, and the long fingers of / the lute-player rest idly upon the chords. It is twilight always for the / dancing nymphs whom Corot set free among the silver poplars of France. In / eternal twilight they move, those frail diaphanous figures, whose / tremulous white feet seem not to touch the dew-drenched grass they tread / on. But those who walk in epos, drama, or romance, see through the / labouring months the young moons wax and wane, and watch the night from / evening unto morning star, and from sunrise unto sunsetting can note the / shifting day with all its gold and shadow. For them, as for us, the / flowers bloom and wither, and the Earth, that Green-tressed Goddess as / Coleridge calls her, alters her raiment for their pleasure. The statue / is concentrated to one moment of perfection. The image stained upon the / canvas possesses no spiritual element of growth or change. If they know / nothing of death, it is because they know little of life, for the secrets / of life and death belong to those, and those only, whom the sequence of / time affects, and who possess not merely the present but the future, and / can rise or fall from a past of glory or of shame. Movement, that / problem of the visible arts, can be truly realised by Literature alone. / It is Literature that shows us the body in its swiftness and the soul in / its unrest. -- _The Critic as Artist_.