I really love the repetition in the first line, even though I have a sneaking suspicion that that's due to a "oh snap, I need something to fill this line out" than an actual artistic point. "They sit at ease, our Gods they sit at ease/Strewing with leaves of rose their scented wine/They sleep, they sleep, beneath the rocking trees/Where asphodel and yellow lotus twine/Mourning the old glad days before they knew/What evil things the heart of man could dream, and dreaming do" (84). "But send their rain upon the just and the unjust at will" (83). Well, I guess there must have been some interest existent in the first place. Though this is kind of curious because Wilde wouldn't have any (recorded) homosexual affairs for another five or six years after this was published. (Just as a note, Ganymede was Zeus's eromenos.) And don't give me that, oh, oops, just an accident, with Wilde I don't accept a slip of the tongue. Oh, and "boyish limbs in water", the reference to Ganymede, the "little men" (84) kissing to pass the effects of opium onto one another-later in the poem Oscar refers to his lover as a fond maid, but there's some pretty strong homosexual imagery here. Doesn't Romeo refer to the moon as a pale, envious thing? Kill the envious moon? The bit about the envious moon being pale-I believe that's a reference to Romeo and Juliet. "Vex not the soul with dead philosophy/Have we not lips to kiss with, hearts to love and eyes to see!" (83). It's just what he does.īy the way, when he says "hoarded proverbs of the sage" (83), he's most likely referring to the book of Proverbs from the Bible. Romantics placed emotion above knowledge. "To feel is better than to know/And wisdom is a childless heritage" (83). (Maybe I should mention that this is if not my favourite poem of Wilde's, it's definitely in the top three?) First of all, wow! Way to start the poem off with a bang. "Nay, let us walk from fire unto fire/From passionate pain to deadlier delight,-/I am too young to live without desire/Too young art thou to waste this summer night/Asking those idle questions which of old/Man sought of seer and oracle, and no reply was told" (83). First of all, here is "Panthea" and second of all, here is my dissection of it: Well, I'm going to stumble through it anyways. So I'm going to be going through it line by line-well, maybe not line for line, but. I had to compare it to Romanticism styles, and unfortunately, there was a lot more I wanted to say about the poem itself than what those boundaries would let me. However, after writing this essay on "Panthea", I pretty much decided I have to. Hey, I know you know I normally avoid playing with poems on here.
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