A ruined heart, a careless listener
My Voice
"And Ruin draws the curtains of my bed."
Poem
Within this restless, hurried, modern worldWe took our hearts’ full pleasure—You and I,And now the white sails of our ship are furled,And spent the lading of our argosy.
Wherefore my cheeks before their time are wan,For very weeping is my gladness fled,Sorrow has paled my young mouth’s vermilion,And Ruin draws the curtains of my bed.
But all this crowded life has been to theeNo more than lyre, or lute, or subtle spellOf viols, or the music of the seaThat sleeps, a mimic echo, in the shell.
In brief
SummaryThe speaker looks back on a love affair lived in 'this restless, hurried, modern world'. The two lovers took their 'hearts' full pleasure', but now the sails of their ship are furled and its cargo spent. The speaker is pale before their time, gladness gone in weeping, the red of youth faded, with Ruin drawing the curtains of their bed. The last stanza turns to the beloved: all this 'crowded life' has been to them no more than music, a lute or viols, or the sea's echo sleeping in a shell.
Key themes
"Within this restless, hurried, modern world"
Summary
'Within this restless, hurried, modern world / We took our hearts' full pleasure', the speaker begins, 'You and I'. The love affair is pictured as a voyage that is now over: 'the white sails of our ship are furled', and the 'lading of our argosy', its rich cargo, has been spent.
The second stanza shows what this has cost the speaker. 'Wherefore my cheeks before their time are wan', and 'For very weeping is my gladness fled'. 'Sorrow has paled my young mouth's vermilion', and, in the stanza's last and darkest line, 'Ruin draws the curtains of my bed'.
The third stanza sets the beloved's experience against this. 'But all this crowded life has been to thee / No more than lyre, or lute, or subtle spell / Of viols', or 'the music of the sea / That sleeps, a mimic echo, in the shell'. What has wrecked one lover was, for the other, only something pleasant to listen to.
Characters
The speaker
The ruined lover
A young lover who shared 'our hearts' full pleasure' and is now pale, tearful and facing 'Ruin'. The speaker's complaint is less about the end of the affair than about how little it seems to have meant to the other person.
The beloved
The untouched listener
The 'You' of the first stanza and the 'thee' of the last, for whom the whole affair has been 'No more than lyre, or lute', a pleasing music. The beloved seems unharmed by what has ruined the speaker.
Themes
Unequal love
The poem turns on the difference between the two lovers. For the speaker the affair has meant tears, 'wan' cheeks and 'Ruin'. For the beloved the same 'crowded life' was 'No more than lyre, or lute, or subtle spell / Of viols'. The final image of the sea's 'mimic echo' in a shell suggests something heard at second hand, pleasant but without consequence.
Youth spent early
The speaker is young but already worn: 'my cheeks before their time are wan', and 'Sorrow has paled my young mouth's vermilion'. The voyage image of the first stanza, with sails 'furled' and 'the lading of our argosy' spent, suggests a store of youth and feeling used up in a single journey through a 'restless, hurried, modern world'.
Quotes
"Within this restless, hurried, modern world"
The speaker
"That sleeps, a mimic echo, in the shell."
The speaker
Context
'My Voice' appears in the 'Fourth Movement' section of Wilde's collected poems, and its title pairs it with 'Her Voice', which comes just before it. Both poems use the image of an argosy, a great merchant ship: in 'Her Voice' one sails outward, while here the lovers' own argosy has spent its cargo. It is written in three rhymed quatrains.
About this edition
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