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Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

005. "Roses and Rue", page 4

Oscar Wilde
1854–1900

"Roses and Rue."

Autograph manuscript signed, ca. 1884–1885. 4 p.

MA 7258.1

Gift of Lucia Moreira Salles, 2008

Transcription

Page 4

I had wasted my boyhood, true,
    But it was for you,
You had poets enough on the shelf,
    I gave you myself!

IV.

Well, if my heart must break,
    Dear love, for your sake,
It will break in music, I know;
    Poets' hearts break so.

But strange that I was not told,
    That the brain can hold
In a tiny ivory cell
    God's Heaven and Hell.

    Oscar Wilde