
A luminous early collection of verses captures a young poet’s restless wanderings through Italy, Greece, and the imagination of Victorian England. The poems echo the grandeur of ancient ruins while wrestling with the glitter of modern society, revealing a voice that balances delicate melancholy with sharp, witty observation. Wilde’s formal training at Oxford surfaces in polished sonnets and lyrical sketches that still pulse with personal longing and an almost reverent fascination with beauty.
When first released, the verses sparked lively debate: some dismissed them as overly ornamental, while others hailed them as a fresh gospel of aesthetic devotion. Listeners will hear the tension between classical reverence and the emerging “art for art’s sake” ethos, a tension that gives each line a resonant, timeless quality. The collection invites you to linger in its gardens of thought, where the pursuit of elegance and the quiet revolt against conventional morality unfold in a language that both soothes and provokes.
Language
fr
Duration
~3 hours (177K characters)
Publisher of text edition
Project Gutenberg
Credits
Produced by Miranda van de Heijning, Renald Levesque and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
Release date
2005-01-13
Rights
Public domain in the USA.
Subjects

1854–1900
Best known for sparkling wit, elegant plays, and the haunting novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, this Irish writer turned style, satire, and social criticism into unforgettable art. His life was as dramatic as his work, ending in exile after a trial that shocked Victorian society.
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