Oscar Wilde Poems

Oscar Wilde poems continue to capture and delight readers everywhere, proving with each new generation of fans that the writer's famous flamboyance and unparalleled confidence was justified.

Wilde may have come by his love of poetry naturally, for his mother was a poet who wrote under the pen name Speranza. From a young age, Wilde learned to express some of his deepest feelings through his poetry. He wrote the poem "Requiescat" when he was only 12, a response to the death of his 8-year-old sister.  

In 1875, Wilde entered Oxford's Magdalen College on a scholarship, where he began to be influenced by poets such as Algernon Charles Swinburne and John Ruskin, as well as art critic Walter Pater. Wilde began publishing his poetry in literary magazines during the next year. The 1876 of his Wilde's father, Sir William Wilde, stretched the family budget, but Wilde continued to do well at Magdalen, graduating in 1878. His poem "The Harlot's House" was thought to have been written after a particular evening with a prostitute in France. In 1878, Wilde's "Ravenna" won the Newdigate Prize at Oxford for the "best poem in English verse."

Wilde married Constance Lloyd while living in London in 1884. Of his wife, he once said, "...she knows I am the greatest poet, so in literature she is all right." If the quote sounds harsh, consider the context-Wilde was known to have his share of male lovers on the side during his marriage.

One of Wilde's most famous poems, "The Ballad of Reading Gaol," was written as a result of Wilde's dalliances. Wilde wrote the 1898 poem, which addresses the hanging of a prisoner and prison cruelty, in response to his own two-year prison term. Wilde was arrested and imprisoned for gross indecency, stemming from a relationship with Lord Alfred "Bosie" Douglas. "Ballad of Reading Gaol" was soon quoted to express the need for prison reform. Wilde likely had a special affinity for this particular poem, as part of it was used as his epitaph: "And alien tears will fill for him, Pity's long-broken urn, For his mourners will be outcast men, And outcasts always mourn."