Page:Writings of Oscar Wilde - Volume 01.djvu/90

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THE WRITINGS OF OSCAR WILDE.
But they are few, and all romance has flown,  And men can prophesy about the sun, And lecture on his arrows—how, alone,  Through a waste void the soulless atoms run, How from each tree its weeping nymph has fled, And that no more 'mid English reeds a Naïad shows her head.
Methinks these new Actæons boast too soon  That they have spied on beauty; what if we Have analysed the rainbow, robbed the moon  Of her most ancient, chastest mystery, Shall I, the last Endymion, lose all hope Because rude eyes peer at my mistress through a telescope!
What profit if this scientific age  Burst through our gates with all its retinue Of modern miracles! Can it assuage  One lover's breaking heart? what can it do To make one life more beautiful, one day More god-like in its period? but now the Age of Clay
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