Oscar Wilde

To My Wife

To My Wife - meaning Summary

Affection Preserved in Verse

A short, intimate address to Wilde’s wife, this poem offers a modest gift of affection rather than grand rhetoric. The speaker imagines fallen petals carried by love to settle in his wife’s hair, and contrasts that fragile image with a harsh winter that hardens the world. The poem presents memory and tenderness as small preservations of beauty, meant to whisper of a private garden even when outward life grows loveless.

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I can write no stately proem As a prelude to my lay; From a poet to a poem I would dare to say. For if of these fallen petals One to you seem fair, Love will waft it till it settles On your hair. And when wind and winter harden All the loveless land, It will whisper of the garden, You will understand.

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