Panthea by Oscar Wilde

Hey, I know you know I normally avoid playing with poems on here.  However, after writing this essay on "Panthea", I pretty much decided I have to.  I had to compare it to Romanticism styles, and unfortunately, there was a lot more I wanted to say about the poem itself than what those boundaries would let me.  So I'm going to be going through it line by line--well, maybe not line for line, but... Well, I'm going to stumble through it anyways.  First of all, here is "Panthea" and second of all, here is my dissection of it:

"Nay, let us walk from fire unto fire/From passionate pain to deadlier delight,--/I am too young to live without desire/Too young art thou to waste this summer night/Asking those idle questions which of old/Man sought of seer and oracle, and no reply was told" (83).  First of all, wow!  Way to start the poem off with a bang.  So awesome.  (Maybe I should mention that this is if not my favourite poem of Wilde's, it's definitely in the top three?)

"To feel is better than to know/And wisdom is a childless heritage" (83).  1.  Oscar Wilde is awesome.  2. Romantics placed emotion above knowledge.  Clearly Oscar is echoing this.  He's also clearly being the best. It's just what he does.
By the way, when he says "hoarded proverbs of the sage" (83), he's most likely referring to the book of Proverbs from the Bible.
"Vex not the soul with dead philosophy/Have we not lips to kiss with, hearts to love and eyes to see!" (83).

The bit about the envious moon being pale--I believe that's a reference to Romeo and Juliet.  Doesn't Romeo refer to the moon as a pale, envious thing?  Kill the envious moon?

Oh, and "boyish limbs in water", the reference to Ganymede, the "little men" (84) kissing to pass the effects of opium onto one another--later in the poem Oscar refers to his lover as a fond maid, but there's some pretty strong homosexual imagery here.  (Just as a note, Ganymede was Zeus's eromenos.)  And don't give me that, oh, oops, just an accident, with Wilde I don't accept a slip of the tongue.  Though this is kind of curious because Wilde wouldn't have any (recorded) homosexual affairs for another five or six years after this was published... Well, I guess there must have been some interest existent in the first place.

"But send their rain upon the just and the unjust at will" (83).  This is a reference to Matthew 5:45.

"They sit at ease, our Gods they sit at ease/Strewing with leaves of rose their scented wine/They sleep, they sleep, beneath the rocking trees/Where asphodel and yellow lotus twine/Mourning the old glad days before they knew/What evil things the heart of man could dream, and dreaming do" (84).  I really love the repetition in the first line, even though I have a sneaking suspicion that that's due to a "oh snap, I need something to fill this line out" than an actual artistic point.

Oh, and the "poppy-seeded draught" (84) and "balm for us in a bruised poppy seed" (85)--those are references to opium.  Basically, I think Oscar is admitting that an opium, uh, trip caused his whole fantasy of seeing all these Grecian legend-figures come to life.  Oh you!

Oh, and I should mention that Wilde talks about Venus being in the nude once.

"But we oppress our natures, God or Fate/Is our enemy, we starve and feed/On vain repentance--O we are born too late!" (85).  That is, to indulge in the pleasures of Greeks or Romans that are more... eh... Observant to the needs of the id.  God--Fate--conscience (a society-instilled conscience, "What we call conscience, in many instances,is only a wholesome fear of the constable"--Christian Nestell Bovee) keep us from what we truly should be, or what our true natures are.  Hence, born too late, because Wilde and other Victorians must be stifled. (Also, in case if you didn't get it from the first stanza, this poem is basically about a random night of sex in some pretty portion of countryside.)  


"O we are wearied of this sense of guilt/Wearied of pleasure's paramour despair/Wearied of every temple we have built/Wearied of every right, unanswered prayer/For man is weak; God sleeps: and heaven is high:/One fiery-coloured moment: one great love; and lo!  we die" (85).  This is another Romantic belief, rejecting social institutions, especially that of religion.  God doesn't seem to be doing anything for man, so why should man listen to anything God supposedly asks of man?  I think that last line is particularly powerful too.  This is a very well-sculpted stanza.


Wilde goes on to discuss death--"no coin of bronze can bring back the soul" (85), that is, you can't pay to escape death (I don't know if he's referring to a specific myth, but the Greeks had a tradition of putting a coin under the tongues of the dead so they would be able to pay Charon to ferry them across the river Styx).  Once you die, every pleasure you've partaken in or stiff laws you abided to are all essentially for naught, because "the tomb is sealed... the dead rise not again" (85).  
However, he puts forth the idea that death isn't the end.  He never goes so far to say that death should be welcomed but he certainly implies it, because death of the body only frees the soul from its jail and limiter.  In fact, Wilde takes almost a Hinduistic


"This hot hard flame with which our bodies burn/Will make some meadow blaze with daffodil/Ay! and those argent breasts of thine will turn/To water-lilies; the brown fields men till/Will be more fruitful for our love tonight/Nothing is lost in nature, all things live in Death's despite" (86).  That is, the intensity of man's passion creates the energy which powers nature, and like the Romanticist, believed in the inverse as well.  Wilde sees man and nature as the two seemingly separate sides of a Mobius strip.  (Yes, I used this line in my essay and I was really proud of it.  I just had to use it here.)  Of course, the use of the word fruitful is important to note too.  And I guess I should mention that this poem was written the year he met his wife.  So... So yeah, it's problem a love poem meant for her.  (Ooh possible pre-marital sex.  Oscarrrr.)  
Oh, by the way, "All things live in Death's despite" is an awesome line as all, even if it seems like a sort of random tacking-on.


"The asphodel/Which will not let its blossoms blow for fear/Of too much beauty, and the timid shame/Of the young bridegroom at his lover's eyes" (86).  This is both really, really cute, and a teensy bit funny.  Juuust being honest.


"One sacrament are consecrate" (86).  OSCAR DAMMIT.  THE GRAMMAR NAZI IN ME HATES YOU BUT OH I SO SO LOVE YOU.  I'll just quietly bear a grudge I guess.  
"We draw the spring into our hearts, and feel that life is good" (86).  Love.


"So when men bury us beneath the yew/Thy crimson-stained mouth a rose will be/And thy soft eyes lush bluebells dimmed with dew/And when the white narcissus wantonly/Kisses the wind its playmate some faint joy/Will thrill our dust, and we will again be found maid and boy" (87).  I think there's definitely some significance in the fact that Wilde chose the Narcissus... But let's continue before I halt to digress: "And thus without life's conscious torturing pain/In some sweet flower we will feel the sun/And from the linnet's throat will sing again" (87).  Wilde is essentially pushing rebirth--and not just rebirth.  You remember that bit about one life, a few stanzas up?  He's promoting that, but instead of a nirvana-esque thing, being absorbed into one great consciousness or what have you, but that they will remain separate and it appears that they will get to choose where and what they will live as--mated tigers, flowers, "beast and bird" (87), satyrs--or even a more ethereal form if they so choose, so that "the joyous sea shall be our raiment" (88).  What gives them the right to be inheritor of this is that thanks to their passion and love their spirits will grow and grow to burst and overflow.  They have to live on because there's still oodles of life to be spent!  


"Ay!  If we had never loved at all, who knows/If yonder daffodil had the bee/Into its guilded womb, or any rose/Had hung with crimson lamps its little tree!/Methinks no leaf would ever bud in spring/But for the lover's lips that kiss, the poet's lips that sing" (87).


"And we two lovers shall not sit afar/Critics of nature, but the joyous sea/Shall be our raiment, and the bearded star/Shoot arrows at our pleasure!  We shall be/Part of the mighty universal whole/And through all aeons mix and mingle with the Kosmic soul!/We shall be notes in that great Symphony/Whose cadence circles though the rhythmic spheres/And all the live World's throbbing heart shall be/One with our heart; the stealthy creeping years/Have lost their terrors now, we shall not die/The Universe itself shall be our immortality" (88).  PS. Oscar, you're the best and I love you.  




MLA citation information: Wilde, Oscar.  Collected Poems of Oscar Wilde.  Wordsworth Editions: London, 1994.




Oh and by the way--information regarding Wilde and--uh--Mrs Wilde!  When I brought the rough draft to my teacher, we started talking about Wilde and his wife and his affair and all.  I'm not the only one who gets super-agitated over Lord Alfred Douglas, at least--first of all, if it wasn't for him, there's a chance that Wilde might not have been put on trial, secondly, after Wilde was released from prison, he went back to Douglas for a short time!  I--what!?  Oscar, WHAT?  You need a sassy gay friend!  Actually, that might get you into more trouble.  
...But the scenario in my head is hilarious.  Speaking of the sassy gay friend, there are two new videos--one for Black Swan and one for Great Expectations.  I suggest you watch Black Swan before watching that video though, because I feel like a lot of the reasons why I didn't like Black Swan was because I just wanted the sassy gay friend to come in and whip everybody into shape. ("Kill yourself?  It's ballet!  BALLET!  I'm gay and I don't even care!" ...I want him to be MY sassy gay friend, true story.)  
Oh, and by the way, it turns out Wilde was married till 1898.  Wow!  I mean, she got out of there with the kids during the scandal, so I figured she got divorced, but I guess not... And Mrs Clermont-Ferrand said that Wilde liked his wife, or at least seemed to be rather fond of her... Which at first I thought was odd (he's very critical of marriage, but that could just be his little Romantic-poet deal coming through), but it can easily make sense.  Just because he refused to have sex with her after kid number two (her second pregnancy apparently really grossed him out) doesn't mean he didn't love her.... I mean, to be honest, I really know nothing of their relationship other than that he seemed to enjoy men more, so I kind of always assumed it was unhappy (like I said, very critical or marriage--he's got some biting witticisms on the subject).  I really need to read up on his life, even though it kills me.  Then again, the conclusion to every single book about the Romanovs kills me too, yet I don't stop reading about them.  ...To be honest, though, the only reason why I haven't read a real biography on him is because I haven't found one.  I'd snap it up in a second regardless of the fact that the end kills me.  


Another note on Wilde's life: Apparently his mother was alive at the time of the charge.  She told her son that he should fight it, or deny it--which made me wonder if she knew about Oscar's affairs.  One minute later, I realized that was a stupid thought and that she most likely did not, because in general, you do not tell your mother you are having homosexual affairs.  At least... I would imagine so.  




Answer to last post's cryptic song lyrics: All Around the World by Oasis 
This post's cryptic song lyrics: In a field outside of town, we could always be alone, carry a blanket, maybe a basket--and that's it... Innocence was the key, I was locked up never free, till you turned me