Wilde (1854-1900)

Dear Oscar was a darling for a day, In fashion with the fawning, fickle press, Who later laughed his dignity away, And saw his soul unbutton and undress. The once delightful dilettante was stilled, His unborn epigrams aborted in his mind, His future poetry and plays each killed, His fancy faltering mute, deaf and blind. For Oscar’s art was not enough to check His masochistic challenge of propriety, So into Reading Gaol they locked the wreck Of Oscar Wilde, whose wit once fluttered free: In tears and blood he scribbled and he scrawled— The butterfly that once had flown, now crawled.