Sonnet Liberty

American Literature
Claudia Margarita Cortés
Sonnet to Liberty, Oscar Wilde
Not that I love thy children, whose dull eyes (a)
See nothing save their own unlovely woe, (b)
Whose mindsknow nothing, nothing care to know, - (b)
But that the roar of thy Democracies, (c)
Thy reigns of Terror, thy great Anarchies, (c)
Mirror my wildest passions like the sea (d)
And give myrage a brother -! Liberty! (d)
For this sake only do thy dissonant cries (a)
Delight my discreet soul, else might all kings (c)
By bloody knout or treacherouscannonades (e)
Rob nations of their rights inviolate (e)
And I remain unmoved - and yet, and yet, (f)
These Christs that die upon the barricades, (e)
God knows it I amwith them, in some things. (c)
This sonnet is taken from the book “Poems”, published in 1881 and expresses a strong position from Wilde about a notable and real social problem,and of course that opinion could not be like everybody’s. The first part of the poem describes the burden of the people and society have to bear in wartime, because are the sons of families who have topay the wreck of freedom. They are the children of the country, young men who defend an ideal that is not theirs, who, without wanting or knowing anything are forced to fight for “Freedom”, libertyfor all.
They are compared as children who do not know many things about the world but do not care to know about it, since is better to know and do not want to feel nothing when it is known everyoneis going to die, and it is preferable not to know life has no meaning.
Although they roar, by instinct, as animals; those roars are represented in the most important currently kinds of government:democracy, anarchy and terror. Everything is looking for just one thing: Liberty. But the search for liberty is not a justification for war. During that time the government of England was having wars...