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				Title:     Helas! 
			    Author: Oscar Wilde [More Titles by Wilde ]		                
			     To drift with every passion till my soulIs a stringed lute on which can 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 there 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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 Oscar Wilde's poem: Helas!
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