Sonnet to Liberty

by

Sonnet to Liberty (1881) is a powerful meditation on political freedom, reflecting Wilde's complex relationship with liberty, individualism, and social justice. 

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 
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.