Oscar Wilde (1854-1900 / Dublin / Ireland)

Even after all these years, it still works.

I don't know for you but I have to admit that it is the greatest poem that history has met It's actually my fav...And just to answer to mr.Straw, a poet can make to his poem whatever he wants...You can't tell the artist not to paint the sea pink or tell the musician to stop writing his own music or tell the poet not to write something out of the world...And for Oscar Wilde's defence I may be a 14-year-old girl and maybe I know nothing of poetry, but I know that everubody knows Wilde so you can comment on his work but not the way you did...
PS I'm so sorry for any grammtical or vocabulary mistakes but I'm Greek....

utter genius. always loved Wilde. i think the job of the poet is to carry the feelings of all human beings within their hearts. emotions in their most naked form have no words to properly describe them, and yet, the world is occasionally blessed with men and women who feel the weight and love and sadnesses of the world so strongly that it haunts them day and night. their only option, not to get rid of it, but to understand it and thus be able to deal with it, is to write it in the form of poetry. They write not in ink. they write in tears and in the blood drawn from their very hearts.

Wilde's sexual orientation may bias the judgement of his critics. This poem is sex-neutral, however, and as a love poem-it speaks to all lovers.

This is a very British poem. If Mr Straw would like to know May's breast can be stabbed by winter, we have such weird weather we can have sun, rain, snow, and hail all in the same afternoon in spring! ! Also has he never heard of poetic licence. It not meant to be literal. e.g. The sun flower seeks the sun etc. Plus Gulls are found all over the place on land as well as sea. I have some flying out back at this moment and they live here all year. I live 70 miles from the sea.

beautiful vision of sea gulls, leas, poplars. not forcing his ideas but leaving the readers to understand the meaning behind his words.lot of depth in a short pithy poem 'one world was not enough for two like me and you.'

...there is nothing left to say
But this, that love is never lost,
.
.
How sweet the smell of love in the breath of needy

I don't know much about poetry but one of my favorite quotes is, The secret of life is to appreciate the pleasure of being terribly, terribly deceived ~
Oscar Wilde.

To refute Straw's angry comment line by line would take far too long, but what the hell here goes! Wilde has NOT written a prose critique or a scientific treatise about the birds and the bees cavorting as they are wont to do - just for starters, has our doughty word warrior never heard of or read about the seagulls that frequent the Great Salt Lake in Utah? That's west of the Rockies, you know? Take a gander at a map when you find time! Figurative language can embrace such diverse images as the faraway murmur of the sea as wave after wave assaults the dry sands of time (check it out, you who ignore Wilde's prosaic use of imagery and then submit sub-standard imagery of your own making on this site!): keen and cutting winds of winter pierce us to our very core! Take that, you unfeeling trog dragging your knuckles along the dusty ground! Today the snow fell long and fast this second day of Spring 2010! Of course we look upward to discern the crowns of evergreen trees that swing and sway hundreds of feet above us! Of course, I agree in these circumstances that we tempest-tossed by our passion in an imaginary land of dreams seek shelter and kiss and kiss before we go our separate ways! Give me Wilde's song over Straw's dreary complaint any day or night!

did Cory write this?