Les Silhouettes
Les Silhouettes - meaning Summary
Night Seaside, Fleeting Figures
Wilde paints a twilight coastal scene where a restless sea and a blown moon set a slightly ominous backdrop. Against that atmosphere a sailor boy boards a boat in carefree joy, while curlews and reapers move across the landscape like dark cutouts. The poem contrasts natural movement and human brightness with a sense of transience: the silhouetted figures feel both vividly present and quietly ephemeral within the dusky, mutable world.
Read Complete AnalysesThe sea is flecked with bars of grey, The dull dead wind is out of tune, And like a withered leaf the moon Is blown across the stormy bay. Etched clear upon the pallid sand Lies the black boat: a sailor boy Clambers aboard in careless joy With laughing face and gleaming hand. And overhead the curlews cry, Where through the dusky upland grass The young brown-throated reapers pass, Like silhouettes against the sky.
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