The Harlot's House

We caught the tread of dancing feet,
We loitered down the moonlit street,
And stopped beneath the harlot's house.

Inside, above the din and fray,
We heard the loud musicians play
The "Treues Liebes Herz" of Strauss.

Like strange mechanical grotesques,
Making fantastic arabesques,
The shadows raced across the blind.

We watched the ghostly dancers spin
To sound of horn and violin,
Like black leaves wheeling in the wind.

Like wire-pulled automatons,
Slim silhouetted skeletons
Went sidling through the slow quadrille.

They took each other by the hand,
And danced a stately saraband;
Their laughter echoed thin and shrill.

Sometimes a clockwork puppet pressed
A phantom lover to her breast,
Sometimes they seemed to try to sing.

Sometimes a horrible marionette
Came out, and smoked its cigarette
Upon the steps like a live thing.

Then, turning to my love, I said,
"The dead are dancing with the dead,
The dust is whirling with the dust."

But she--she heard the violin,
And left my side, and entered in:
Love passed into the house of lust.

Then suddenly the tune went false,
The dancers wearied of the waltz,
The shadows ceased to wheel and whirl.

And down the long and silent street,
The dawn, with silver-sandalled feet,
Crept like a frightened girl.

--Oscar Wilde

Blinded by his razor sharp wit, it is easy to forget what a magician Wilde was with words. How exquisitely he has used 'automatons', 'quadrille', 'saraband', 'marionette', and cigarette'! Without being specific and direct (a trait only worthy of those who cannot do better. In words of Wilde himself, 'a man who calls a spade a spade should be compelled to use one. It is the only thing he is fit for.') he has painted a dying, decadent, smoke infested, blurry, immoral and stylish picture. And then 'Love passes into the house of Lust' and slowly and beautifully, 'the dawn, with silver-sandalled feet' creeps like a 'frightened child'.

This is what I enjoy in literature, as in anything else in fact. This urge and ability of making things more beautiful, more luxurious, more delicious, than mandated by mere utility. This is probably the essence of being human - that our luxuries and our necessities are indistinguishable at their confluence.