The Yorkshire Evening Post - Friday, April 19, 1895

GOSSIP OF THE DAY.
OSCAR WILDE'S PRIZE POEM.

In 1878 the poem that gained the Newdigate Prize at Oxford was written by Oscar Wilde, of Magdalen College, and recited in the Theatre on the 26th June in that year. The subject was "Ravenna," the time-worn Italian city, near the Adriatic,

Where Dante sleeps, where Byron loved to dwell.

The gems of the poem, says the Echo, are the following stanzas, the work of a master hand, and nothing of the poetaster about them:—

Now is the Spring of Love, yet soon will come
On meadow and tree the Summer's lordly bloom;
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Then, before long the Summer's conqueror,
Rich Autumn-time, the season's usurer,
Will lend his hoarded gold to all the trees,
And see it scattered by the spendthrift breeze;
And after that the Winter, cold and drear.
So runs the perfect cycle of the year.
And so from youth to manhood do we go,
And fall to weary days and locks of snow,
Love only knows no winter; never dies;
Nor cares for frowning storms or leaden skies.