NOT that I love thy children, whose dull eyes
See nothing save their own unlovely woe,
Whose minds know nothing, nothing care to now, —
But that the roar of thy Democracies,
Thy reigns of Terror, thy great Anarchies,
Mirror my wildest passions like the sea
And give my rage a brother ——! Liberty!
For this sake only do thy dissonant cries
Delight my discreet soul, else might all kings
By bloody knout or treacherous cannonades
Rob nations of their rights inviolate
And I remain unmoved —and yet, and yet,
These Christs that die upon the barricades,
God knows it I am with them, in some things.
OSCAR WILDE (1854-1900). The Poems of Oscar Wilde. Vol. I. New York: F. M. Buckles & Company, 1906.
