Oscar Wilde is noted more for his plays than for his poems. He was a proponent of "art for art's sake," a kind of precursor to the fragmentation of modernism.
Wilde’s poem, “To My Wife,” consists of three quatrains, each with the rime scheme ABAB; but for iambic pentameter and a couplet, the verse could profess the Elizabethan sonnet form. The poem’s message is little more than a note, making a remark about his poems. There was possibly a private joke playing between husband and wife.
First Quatrain: “I can write no stately proem”
In the opening quatrain, the speaker comments self-effacingly that he is incapable of composing a highbrow introduction to his poems, so he is offering this simple ditty. He cogitates that a poet talking to his poem is out of his purview. But he is tendering this sheaf of poems to his wife, so he feels he must introduce them somehow: “I can write no stately proem / As a prelude to my lay; / From a poet to a poem / I would dare to say.”
Second Quatrain: “For if of these fallen petals”
The speaker immediately becomes quite “poetic” as he shifts from the first to the second quatrain. He metaphorically likens his poems to “fallen petals.” This image both flatters and damns the verses: “For if of these fallen petals / One to you seem fair, / Love will waft it till it settles / On your hair.”
But if the wife likes one of them, the love that he has written into his efforts will communicate his feelings. He colorfully expresses that idea, by describing the “petal” as wafting through the air “till it settles / On [her] hair.”
The image of a petal on hair paints a delicate picture that his love will have created, that is, if she does, indeed, find one of them “fair.” He makes no account for the possibility that none of them will connect with her, so he must feel confident in his creations as well as his wife’s taste.
Third Quatrain: “And when wind and winter harden”
Then the poet/speaker continues to wax poetic while he retains the natural reference to foliage: “And when wind and winter harden / All the loveless land, / It will whisper of the garden, / You will understand.”
The speaker avows that when the coldness of the winter “harden[s] / All the loveless land,” the poem that she fancied will remind her of flowers in summer, and she will remember also his love for her, or whatever it is that he wishes to make her understand.
The nature of the whimsy of the poem leaves much of the communication non-specified. The speaker offers a simple verse simply for its own quick image, following Wilde’s own philosophical stance regarding art and its purpose.
