Desespoir
Desespoir - meaning Summary
Loss and Seasonal Cycles
Wilde contrasts nature's predictable renewal with human mortality and missed opportunity. While seasons cyclically restore flowers and trees, human life moves toward irreversible loss: ambitions, loves and bright moments disappear and cannot return. The poem frames memory as a poor consolation, offering only "withered husks" of past delight. It’s a quiet meditation on time’s asymmetry—nature revives, but individual lives and their cherished experiences are irretrievably diminished.
Read Complete AnalysesThe seasons send their ruin as they go, For in the spring the narciss shows its head Nor withers till the rose has flamed to red, And in the autumn purple violets blow, And the slim crocus stirs the winter snow; Wherefore yon leafless trees will bloom again And this grey land grow green with summer rain And send up cowslips for some boy to mow. But what of life whose bitter hungry sea Flows at our heels, and gloom of sunless night Covers the days which never more return? Ambition, love and all the thoughts that burn We lose too soon, and only find delight In withered husks of some dead memory.
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