Wilde, Oscar | Lines from "Resquiescat", on the death of his sister

Wilde, Oscar

Autograph manuscript signed ("Oscar Wilde")

1 page (93 x 111 mm) on paper mounted on card, being an excerpt from his poem "Requiescat", n.p., n.d.; minor soiling, glue stains at top margin not affecting text.

Oscar Wilde on the death of his sister. Ten-year-old Isola Wilde died of meningitis on 23 February 1867 at her parents' home in Dublin. Wilde was twelve years old and greatly affected by her death. Almost fifteen years later he published "Requiescat," his reflection on the subject, in Poems (1881), his only collection of poetry.

The fragment here is the third quatrain: "Lily-like, white as snow,/she hardly knew/she was a woman, so/sweetly she grew."