Explore "Silentium Amoris" by Oscar Wilde on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
As often-times the too resplendent sun / Hurries the pallid and reluctant moon / Back to her sombre cave, ere she hath won / A single ballad from the nightingale, / So doth thy Beauty make my lips to fail, / And all my sweetest singing out of tune.
And as at dawn across the level mead / On wings impetuous some wind will come, / And with its too harsh kisses break the reed / Which was its only instrument of song, / So my too stormy passions work me wrong, / And for excess of Love my Love is dumb.
But surely unto Thee mine eyes did show / Why I am silent, and my lute unstrung;
Else it were better we should part, and go, / Thou to some lips of sweeter melody, / And I to nurse the barren memory / Of unkissed kisses, and songs never sung.