Sonnet To Liberty

Oscar Wilde

            NOT that I love thy children, whose dull eyes
            See nothing save their own unlovely woe,
            Whose minds know nothing, nothing care to know,--
            But that the roar of thy Democracies,
            Thy reigns of Terror, thy great Anarchies,
            Mirror my wildest passions like the sea,--
            And give my rage a brother----! Liberty!
            For this sake only do thy dissonant cries
            Delight my discreet soul, else might all kings
            By bloody knout or treacherous cannonades                 10
            Rob nations of their rights inviolate
            And I remain unmoved--and yet, and yet,
            These Christs that die upon the barricades,
            God knows it I am with them, in some things.

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