On the Sale by Auction of Keat's Love-letters
These are the letters which Endymion wrote To one he loved in secret and apart, And now the brawlers of the auction-mart Bargain and bid for each poor blotted note, Aye! for each separate pulse of passion quote The merchant's price! I think they love not art Who break the crystal of a poet's heart, That small and sickly eyes may glare or gloat. Is it not said, that many years ago, In a far Eastern town some soldiers ran With torches through the midnight, and began To wrangle for mean raiment, and to throw Dice for the garments of a wretched man, Not knowing the God's wonder, or his woe?
On the Sale by Auction of Keat's Love-letters - meaning Summary
Poetry Reduced to Commerce
Wilde denounces the auctioning of Keats's love letters as a vulgar commodification of private art. He portrays bidders as merchants who put a price on pulses of passion and who "gaze or gloat" at a poet's broken heart. The poem equates this desecration with soldiers casting lots for a suffering man's garments, implying moral blindness and sacrilege. It argues that true love of art cannot tolerate its reduction to market spectacle.
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