“To drift with every passion till my soul
Is a stringed lute on which all winds can play,
Is it for this that I have given away
Mine ancient wisdom, and austere control?
Methinks my life is a twice-written scroll
Scrawled over on some boyish holiday
With idle songs for pipe and virelay,
Which do but mar the secret of the whole.”

—  Oscar Wilde , book Poems

"Hélas" (1881)
Poems (1881)

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Irish writer and poet 1854–1900

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