Gifts for her, a grave for him
Chanson
"A narrow bed for me to lie,"
Poem
A ring of gold and a milk-white doveAre goodly gifts for thee,And a hempen rope for your own loveTo hang upon a tree.
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)!
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)!
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)!
In brief
SummaryA rejected lover sets his lady's future against his own. She will have a ring of gold, a white dove, a house of ivory, myrtle and jessamine and three lovers to choose from; he will have a hempen rope to hang himself, a narrow bed, cypress and rue, and three paces of sand for a grave. Bracketed refrains about roses, hemlock, rosemary and lilies run between the lines like a sung chorus, turning the song from the flowers of courtship to the flowers of a funeral.
Key themes
"A ring of gold and a milk-white dove"
Summary
The French title means 'song'. The first stanza sets the pattern: 'A ring of gold and a milk-white dove Are goodly gifts for thee', while for 'your own love', the speaker, there is 'a hempen rope' 'To hang upon a tree'. Each later stanza sets 'For you' against 'For me'. She will have 'a House of Ivory', he 'A narrow bed for me to lie'. She will have 'Myrtle and jessamine', flowers of love; he 'the cypress and the rue', the plants of mourning.
The last stanza gives her 'three lovers of your hand' and him 'three paces on the sand', the length of a grave. Between these lines run bracketed refrains like a chorus: 'Roses are white in the rose-bower', 'White, O white, is the hemlock flower', 'O the red rose is fair to see', 'Fairest of all is rosemary', 'Green grass where a man lies dead' and finally 'Plant lilies at my head'. The refrains move from roses to poison and remembrance, and end with the speaker giving directions for his own grave.
Characters
The speaker
The rejected lover
The lady's 'own love', who expects nothing from her but death. He lists her gifts and lovers beside his own rope, narrow bed and grave, and ends by asking that lilies be planted at his head.
The beloved
The lady with three lovers
The woman the song is sung to, who will receive a ring of gold, a milk-white dove, a 'House of Ivory', myrtle and jessamine, and 'three lovers of your hand'. She never speaks, and her good fortune is measured against the speaker's ruin.
Themes
Love and death
Every gift in the poem is paired with a death. Her ring and dove answer his 'hempen rope'; her 'House of Ivory' answers his 'narrow bed'; her 'three lovers' answer his 'three paces on the sand'. The pattern is so strict that the song becomes a kind of sentence: whatever she gains, he loses. The last line, 'Plant lilies at my head', shows him already imagining his grave.
The language of flowers
The poem relies on the old meanings of plants. Myrtle and jessamine belong to love and weddings; cypress and rue to mourning and regret; rosemary to remembrance; hemlock is a poison. The refrains move through white roses, 'the hemlock flower', 'the red rose' and 'rosemary' to lilies on a grave. The flowers tell the story as much as the statements do.
A ballad refrain
Like a folk song, the poem uses short lines, simple repeated forms and refrains set in brackets and closed with exclamation marks. The refrains seem to come from another voice, a chorus commenting on the speaker's fate, and their light rhythm ('O the red rose is fair to see') makes the grim content sharper.
Quotes
"A ring of gold and a milk-white dove"
The poem
"A narrow bed for me to lie,"
The poem
"(Plant lilies at my head)!"
The poem
Context
Chanson closes the Wind Flowers group of Wilde's Poems (1881). The French title simply means 'song', and the poem is built like a folk ballad: four short stanzas setting the lady's gifts against the speaker's grave, with bracketed refrains in the last three.
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