Back to Index

Sonnet to Liberty

by Oscar Wilde, 1881

Not that I love thy children, whose dull eyes
 See nothing save their own unlovely woe,
 Whose minds know nothing, nothing care to know,—
 But that the roar of thy Democracies,
 Thy reigns of Terror, thy great Anarchies,
 Mirror my wildest passions like the sea,—
 And give my rage a brother——! Liberty!
 For this sake only do thy dissonant cries
 Delight my discreet soul, else might all kings
 By bloody knout or treacherous cannonades
 Rob nations of their rights inviolate
 And I remain unmoved—and yet, and yet,
 These Christs that die upon the barricades,
 God knows it I am with them, in some things.

Published in Poems
Tags:

Any corrections or public domain poems I should have here? Email me at poems (at) this domain.