Note 36 — Chapter XXV
Reading edition
Though I have reported this conversation as faithfully as I can and have indeed softened the impression Lord Alfred Douglas made upon me at the time; still I am conscious that I may be doing him some injustice. I have never really been in sympathy with him and it may well be that in reporting him here faithfully I am showing him at his worst. I am aware that the incident does not reveal him at his best. He has proved since in his writings and notably in some superb sonnets that he had a real affection and admiration for Oscar Wilde. If I have been in any degree unfair to him I can best correct it, I think, by reproducing here the noble sonnet he wrote on Oscar after his death: in sheer beauty and sincerity of feeling it ranks with Shelley's lament for Keats:
The Dead Poet[37]
I dreamed of him last night, I saw his face All radiant and unshadowed of distress, And as of old, in music measureless, I heard his golden voice and marked him trace Under the common thing the hidden grace, And conjure wonder out of emptiness, Till mean things put on beauty like a dress And all the world was an enchanted place. And then methought outside a fast locked gate I mourned the loss of unrecorded words, Forgotten tales and mysteries half said Wonders that might have been articulate, And voiceless thoughts like murdered singing birds And so I woke and knew that he was dead.