TOP18-DES17
This Old Poem #18:
Oscar Wilde’s Endymion
Copyright © by Dan Schneider, 8/28/02

  Oscar Wilde is 1 of those few artists it seems almost inconceivable to believe could have written anything badly. But he did. Like Shakespeare, Goethe, Dante, Homer, etc., he too penned a goodly amount of the mediocre- & outright shit. Yes, his plays & stories are full of wit, & alot of his poetry is, too. Yet, he is as guilty of poor writing as the next poet.
  Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1854. His father was a surgeon: Sir William Wilde, his mother a hostess. He went to Trinity College in Dublin, then Magdalen College, Oxford. OW proved was brilliant in all fields, but especially literature-  he won the prestigious Newdigate Prize for ‘Ravenna’- a poem he wrote in college. 1881 saw his 1^st book, Poems, published. He soon lit out for America & a lucrative lecture year-long tour. By 1890 he had become an international theatrical sensation- both for his own randy persona, as well as his hugely successful (literarily & financially) comedies Lady Windermere's Fan (1892), A Woman of No Importance (1893), An Ideal Husband (1895), & The Importance of Being Ernest (1895). By this time the bisexual OW was more well-known for his infidelities with young boys- especially the notorious Rimbaud wannabe Lord Alfred Douglas- aka Bosie. LAD’s dad, the Marquis of Queensberry loathed the debauched & notorious OW, labeled him a fiend, publicly insulted him, then ignited a trio of legal farces which led to OW’s exposure as a definite homosexual, & possible pedophile, & being sentenced to 2 years in prison- hard labor, which eventually broke the body & spirit of the once ultra-enthusiastic raconteur. By his release in 1897, bankrupt and weakened, OW had no friends, his wife & children had left for the continent, & had to rely on the generosity of friends. He moved to France, under the pseudonym Sebastian Melmoth. He had 1 last burst of creativity left- he wrote his famous poem on his jailhouse life, The Ballad of Reading Gaol, then died, expatriated & penniless, in 1900, in France.
  So, now that we have the sensationalism out of the way, let me attack 1 of OW’s lesser works, 1 drenched in sentimentality & Victorian drivel. Here we go:

Endymion (For music) 

The apple trees are hung with gold,
And birds are loud in Arcady,
The sheep lie bleating in the fold,
The wild goat runs across the wold,
But yesterday his love he told,
I know he will come back to me.
O rising moon! O Lady moon!
Be you my lover’s sentinel,
You cannot choose but know him well,
For he is shod with purple shoon,
You cannot choose but know my love,
For he a shepherd's crook doth bear,
And he is soft as any dove,
And brown and curly is his hair.

The turtle now has ceased to call
Upon her crimson-footed groom,
The grey wolf prowls about the stall,
The lily's singing seneschal
Sleeps in the lily-bell, and all
The violet hills are lost in gloom.
O risen moon! O holy moon!
Stand on the top of Helice,
And if my own true love you see,
Ah! if you see the purple shoon,
The hazel crook, the lad’s brown hair,
The goat-skin wrapped about his arm,
Tell him that I am waiting where
The rushlight glimmers in the Farm.

The falling dew is cold and chill,
And no bird sings in Arcady,
The little fauns have left the hill,
Even the tired daffodil
Has closed its gilded doors, and still
My lover comes not back to me.
False moon! False moon! O waning moon!
Where is my own true lover gone,
Where are the lips vermilion,
The shepherd's crook, the purple shoon?
Why spread that silver pavilion,
Why wear that veil of drifting mist?
Ah! thou hast young Endymion
Thou hast the lips that should be kissed!

  The tale of the snoozing shepherd boy has been done many a time- most notably by John Keats- so 1 would hope the poet that essays this well-trodden ground brings something fresh to it. OW does not. The clichés are rife & underlined. Obviously a bad day. Granted, the poem has a marvelous music, but absolutely nothing new is added to the mythos. Unfortunately this technically competent, but dull, poem is NOT from OW’s juvenilia. There are some good turns of phrases: crimson-footed groom, lily's singing seneschal, & rushlight glimmers in the Farm. But the last stanza is horrendous! By the way- the parenthetical For music is a dedication, not an indicator that these are song lyrivs- which might lessen the words’ negative impact.
  In the rewrite I will ax some of the clichés, trim some bad lines, but strike a balance by trying to retain the basic poetic structure.

Endymion (For music)

And birds are loud in Arcady,
The wild goat runs across the wold,
But yesterday his love he told,
I know he will come back to me.
O rising moon! O Lady moon!
Be you my lover's sentinel,
You cannot choose but know him well,
For he is shod with purple shoon,
For he a shepherd's crook doth bear,
And brown and curly is his hair.

The turtle now has ceased to call
Upon her crimson-footed groom,
The grey wolf prowls about the stall,
The lily hills are lost in gloom.
O risen moon! O holy moon!
Stand on the top of Helice,
Ah! if you see the purple shoon,
The hazel crook, the lad's brown hair,
The goat-skin wrapped about his arm,
Tell him that I am waiting where
The rushlight glimmers in the Farm.

And no bird sings in Arcady,
Even the tired daffodil
Has closed its gilded doors, and still
My lover comes not back to me.
False moon! False moon! O waning moon!
Where is my own true lover gone,
The shepherd's crook, the purple shoon?
Why spread that silver pavilion,
Why wear that veil of drifting mist?

  Let me restate, that in TOP I try not to impose what I would do were this MY poem. Instead, I want to show how this poem can get the most out of what is already there. & we have- starting stanzas 1 & 3 with the references to the birds lends a more musical refrain to the poem, while also dashing the original’s 2 horrid openers: The apple trees are hung with gold & The falling dew is cold and chill. In stanza 2 I lost the nice digression to the seneschal- but it was just that- unneeded. The other biggest improvement is where & how the poem ends. By dropping Ah! thou hast young Endymion/Thou hast the lips that should be kissed! we now end the poem with less despair, & more provocation. Granted, the new last line contains a cliché- but that is somewhat leavened by the narrative turn away from merely a love poem to the querying philosophic stance.
  Is my rewrite even a really good poem? No. But, it is better than the original, & if OW had another crack at it, my money says he would see the error of his original way, & take advantage of the new direction & possibilities TOP’s rewrite affords. After all, OW was known to love freebies! 

Final Score: (1-100): 

Oscar Wilde’s Endymion: 68
TOP’s Endymion: 77

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