Oscar Wilde did not have a jealous care of the art poetic. There was
too much of that “style” for real ecstasy; that style, too, was too
often encumbered with preciosities, overhung with ornamentation. Then,
too, he was constantly trying new forms, experimenting, seeking a
satisfactory model. Yet it would be wrong to assert that his poetry
lacks verbal charm, and the average man who has no great patience with
poetry, who would never sit down to read an _In Memoriam_ or an _Ode
on a Grecian Urn_, the kind of a man who loses himself among poetic
phrases, finds that Wilde evokes a picture by words full of color. Take
this, for instance: