Welcome back to The Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios.

I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Monday, October 16, 2023.

Today is the birthday of Oscar Wilde.

If you are a listener to our flagship show, Close Reads,

you might have recently listened along to a discussion of Oscar Wilde's picture of Dorian Gray.

Wild is, it has been said, is known for being Oscar Wilde.

He's known after that maybe for being a novelist and the author of a picture of Doreen Gray.

After that, maybe as a playwright and the author of plays like The Importance of Being Earnest.

Perhaps even after that, the author of some children's stories and fables. And last of all, or maybe not at all,

is Oscar Wilde remembered or known as a poet? But today, I would like to bring some of his poems to light.

His best known poem, and for many, his only known poem, is a rather long poem he wrote

near the end of his life, The Ballad of Reading Jail, which is a moving poem written by,

I think, a broken and a transformed Oscar Wilde that ends with a seemingly

a sincere confession and reflection upon every man's need for Christ.

But he wrote a number of other poems. And though he was a flamboyant public figure, if you know much about Wild, you know that he dealt with a lot of internal turmoil and a lot of personal sorrows. And some of his poems reveal and reflect that.

And I think humanize Oscar Wilde a bit for us. So today I have two shorter poems by Wilde that

might encourage us to empathize with him.

On this, the anniversary of his birth.

The first is requiescot, the second, on the sale by auction of Keats' love letters.

I'll read each poem once, offer a few comments on them both, and then close out by reading them each one more time.

Requiescott

Tread lightly, she is near under the snow.

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