{
 "id": "oscar-wilde/flower-of-love",
 "title": "Flower of Love",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": "Γλυκύπικροϛ Ερωϛ",
 "poet": "Oscar Wilde",
 "poet_slug": "oscar-wilde",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Poems",
 "book_slug": "poems",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 59,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1881,
  "venue": "Poems (1881)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1057"
  ]
 },
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  "file": "poetry.xhtml",
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   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1338",
   "https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Lotus_Leaves",
   "https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Wasted_Days_(from_a_Picture_Painted_by_Miss_V._T.)",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/102953450",
   "https://archive.org/details/ravennarecitedin00wildrich",
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   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/006061074",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100217578",
   "https://archive.org/details/cu31924013571082",
   "https://newspapers.bc.edu/?a=d&d=pilot18770721-01.2.24"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-12"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 30,
  "n_stanzas": 15,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 85,
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 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Sweet, I blame you not, for mine the fault was, had I not been made of common clay",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I had climbed the higher heights unclimbed yet, seen the fuller air, the larger day.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "From the wildness of my wasted passion I had struck a better, clearer song,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Lit some lighter light of freer freedom, battled with some Hydra-headed wrong.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Had my lips been smitten into music by the kisses that but made them bleed,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "You had walked with Bice and the angels on that verdant and enamelled mead.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I had trod the road which Dante treading saw the suns of seven circles shine,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Ay! perchance had seen the heavens opening, as they opened to the Florentine.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "And the mighty nations would have crowned me, who am crownless now and without name,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And some orient dawn had found me kneeling on the threshold of the House of Fame.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I had sat within that marble circle where the oldest bard is as the young,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the pipe is ever dropping honey, and the lyre’s strings are ever strung.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Keats had lifted up his hymeneal curls from out the poppy-seeded wine,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With ambrosial mouth had kissed my forehead, clasped the hand of noble love in mine.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "And at springtide, when the apple-blossoms brush the burnished bosom of the dove,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Two young lovers lying in an orchard would have read the story of our love.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Would have read the legend of my passion, known the bitter secret of my heart,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Kissed as we have kissed, but never parted as we two are fated now to part.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "For the crimson flower of our life is eaten by the cankerworm of truth,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And no hand can gather up the fallen withered petals of the rose of youth.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Yet I am not sorry that I loved you⁠—ah! what else had I a boy to do⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For the hungry teeth of time devour, and the silent-footed years pursue.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Rudderless, we drift athwart a tempest, and when once the storm of youth is past,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Without lyre, without lute or chorus, Death the silent pilot comes at last.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "And within the grave there is no pleasure, for the blindworm battens on the root,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And Desire shudders into ashes, and the tree of Passion bears no fruit.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Ah! what else had I to do but love you, God’s own mother was less dear to me,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And less dear the Cytheraean rising like an argent lily from the sea.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I have made my choice, have lived my poems, and, though youth is gone in wasted days,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I have found the lover’s crown of myrtle better than the poet’s crown of bays.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}