Comments on: Alas (Helas) by Oscar Wilde http://movingpoems.com/2009/10/alas-helas/ The best poetry videos on the web Tue, 07 Feb 2012 21:05:18 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Barbara http://movingpoems.com/2009/10/alas-helas/#comment-210 Barbara Thu, 15 Oct 2009 18:52:50 +0000 http://movingpoems.com/?p=1129#comment-210 This haunting video works very well with this poem. My only nig was the fact that this was written as a sonnet with an abba,abba,cdccdd rhyme pattern that you do not have the chance to appreciate, the way it was performed for this video. Helas Alas To drift with every passion till my soul Is a stringed lute on which all winds can play, Is it for this that I have given away Mine ancient wisdom, and austere control? Methinks my life is a twice-written scroll Scrawled over on some boyish holiday With idle songs for pipe and virelay Which do but mar the secret of the whole. Surely that was a time I might have trod The sunlit heights, and from life’s dissonance Struck one clear chord to reach the ears of God; is that time dead? lo! with a little rod I did but touch the honey of romance— And must I lose a soul’s inheritance? This haunting video works very well with this poem. My only nig was the fact that this was written as a sonnet with an abba,abba,cdccdd rhyme pattern that you do not have the chance to appreciate, the way it was performed for this video.

Helas Alas

To drift with every passion till my soul
Is a stringed lute on which all winds can play,
Is it for this that I have given away
Mine ancient wisdom, and austere control?

Methinks my life is a twice-written scroll
Scrawled over on some boyish holiday
With idle songs for pipe and virelay
Which do but mar the secret of the whole.

Surely that was a time I might have trod
The sunlit heights, and from life’s dissonance
Struck one clear chord to reach the ears of God;
is that time dead? lo! with a little rod
I did but touch the honey of romance—
And must I lose a soul’s inheritance?

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