Reading time: 2 minutes

Let's read and listen to “It's Midwinter” by Oscar Wilde

Content index

Summary

The numbers are all there: freezing temperatures throughout Italy, snow and wind.

Winter has taken possession of its season: and who can blame it?

Every season has its own dress and every month has its own season.

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde, known as Oscar Wilde (Dublin, 16 October 1854 – Paris, 30 November 1900), wasan Irish writer, aphorist, poet, playwright, journalist, essayist, and literary critic of the Victorian age,exponent of British decadentism and aestheticism. Author from…View more

Let's read together:

It's the middle of winter

It's midwinter, the trees are bare
Except where the flock takes refuge
Huddling under the pine tree.
Sheep bleat in the muddy snow
Lean against the fence. The stable is closed
But the trembling dogs crawl out,
They go down to the frozen stream. To return
Disconsolate back. Wrapped in a sigh
They sound like the sounds of carts, the cries of shepherds.

The crows squawk in indifferent circles
Around the frozen haystack. Or they crouch
On the dripping branches. The ice breaks
Among the reeds of the pond where the bittern flaps its wings
and stretching his neck he cackles at the moon.

A poor hare hops across the meadows,
Small dark scared spot
and a lost seagull, like a sudden gust
Of snow, he starts shouting at the sky.

It's full winter

It is full winter now: the trees are bare,
Save where the cattle huddle from the cold
Beneath the pine, for it never wears
The autumn's gaudy livery whose gold
Her jealous brother pilfers, but it is true
To the green doublet; bitter is the wind, as though it blew

From Saturn's cave; a few thin wisps of hay
Lie on the sharp black hedges, where the wain
Dragged the sweet pillage of a summer's day
From the low meadows up the narrow lane;
Upon the half-thawed snow the bleating sheep
Press close against the hurdles, and the shivering house-dogs creep
From the shut stable to the frozen stream
And back again disconsolate, and miss
The bawling shepherds and the noisy team;

And overhead in circling listlessness
The cawing rooks whirl round the frosted stack,
Or crowd the dripping boughs; and in the fen the ice-pools crack
Where the gaunt bittern stalks among the reeds
And flaps his wings, and stretches back his neck,

And hoots to see the moon; across the meads
Limps the poor frightened hare, a little speck;
And a stray seamew with his fretful cry
Flits like a sudden drift of snow against the dull gray sky.