Silentium Amoris
Silentium Amoris - meaning Summary
Silence Born of Excess
Wilde's poem expresses a speaker's deliberate silence before an adored but overwhelming beloved. Beauty and passion are so intense they prevent speech and song, likened to sun eclipsing moon and wind snapping a reed. The silence is presented as proof of feeling rather than failure; the speaker hopes the beloved understands, or else they should part, leaving him to preserve the unfulfilled memory of love and songs unsung.
Read Complete AnalysesAs oftentimes the too resplendent sun Hurries the pallid and reluctant moon Back to her sombre cave, ere she hath won A single ballad from the nightingale, So doth thy Beauty make my lips to fail, And all my sweetest singing out of tune. And as at dawn across the level mead On wings impetuous some wind will come, And with its too harsh kisses break the reed Which was its only instrument of song, So my too stormy passions work me wrong, And for excess of Love my Love is dumb. But surely unto Thee mine eyes did show Why I am silent, and my lute unstrung; Else it were better we should part, and go, Thou to some lips of sweeter melody, And I to nurse the barren memory Of unkissed kisses, and songs never sung.
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