# Chanson explained — Poetry

> Chapter companion for Poetry by Oscar Wilde.

## What happens

A lyrical poem contrasting gifts of love and death, using floral and symbolic imagery to juxtapose the beloved's fortune with the speaker's tragic fate.

## Themes in this chapter

### Love and Loss

The poem contrasts gifts for the beloved with symbols of the speaker's own death, highlighting the pain of unrequited or doomed love.

### Transience and Mortality

Imagery of the hempen rope, narrow bed, cypress, rue, and lilies underscores the inevitability of death and the fleeting nature of life.

## Character check-ins

### Love

Implied as the recipient of the speaker's devotion and the subject of the contrasting gifts.

### Death

Referenced through imagery of the hempen rope, narrow bed, cypress, rue, and lilies at the head.

## Key lines

> A ring of gold and a milk-white dove / Are goodly gifts for thee, / And a hempen rope for your own love / To hang upon a tree.

You receive precious tokens of love, while your beloved is destined for execution by hanging.

_Sets up the central contrast between the addressee's fortune and the lover's tragic end._

> For you a House of Ivory, / (Roses are white in the rose-bower)! / A narrow bed for me to lie, / (White, O white, is the hemlock flower)!

You have a beautiful home, but I have only a grave.

_Juxtaposes luxury with death using floral symbols._

> Myrtle and jessamine for you, / (O the red rose is fair to see)! / For me the cypress and the rue, / (Fairest of all is rosemary)!

You receive fragrant, joyful flowers, while I am given funeral plants.

_Further contrast between life-affirming and death-associated flora._

> For you three lovers of your hand, / (Green grass where a man lies dead)! / For me three paces on the sand, / (Plant lilies at my head)!

You have three suitors, but I have only a grave marked by lilies.

_Final stanza reinforces the speaker's lonely death versus the addressee's romantic fortune._

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/poetry_18_se/chapters/chanson
- Book: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/poetry_18_se
- All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/poetry_18_se/chapters