Algernon Charles Swinburne

“ Fate.
p. 33THE LUTE AND THE LYRE. Deep desire, that pierces heart and spirit to the root,
Finds reluctant voice in verse that yearns like soaring fire,
Takes exultant voice when music holds in high pursuit
Deep desire.
Keen as burns the passion of the rose whose buds respire,
Strong as grows the yearning of the blossom toward the fruit,
Sounds the secret half unspoken ere the deep tones tire.
Slow subsides the rapture that possessed love’s flower-soft lute,
Slow the palpitation of the triumph of the lyre:
Still the soul feels burn, a flame unslaked though these be mute,
Deep desire. ”

“ The world's great heart, whence all things strange and rare
Take form and sound, that each inseparate part
May bear its burden in all tuned thoughts that share
⁠The world's great heart—
The fountain forces, whence like steeds that start
Leap forth the powers of earth and fire and air,
Seas that revolve and rivers that depart—
Spake, and were turned to song: yea, all they were,
With all their works, found in his mastering art
Speech as of powers whose uttered word laid bare
⁠The world's great heart. ”

“ Thronging the ways of the wind that shifts and veers,
Pass, and the flames of remembered fires requicken
Years upon years.
Surely the thought in a man’s heart hopes or fears
Now that forgetfulness needs must here have stricken
Anguish, and sweetened the sealed-up springs of tears.
Ah, but the strength of regrets that strain and sicken,
Yearning for love that the veil of death endears,
Slackens not wing for the wings of years that quicken—
Years upon years. ”

“ Only the sense of a heart that hearkens hears,
Louder than dreams that assail and doubts that palter,
Sorrow that slept and that wakes ere sundawn peers.
Wakes, that the heart may behold, and yet not falter,
Faces of children as stars unknown of, spheres
Seen but of love, that endures though all things alter,
Years upon years.
p. 7III. Years upon years, as a watch by night that passes,
Pass, and the light of their eyes is fire that sears
Slowly the hopes of the fruit that life amasses
Years upon years. ”

“ Wailing aloud from a heart unhealed,
It woke response of melodious breath
From lips now too by thy kiss congealed,
Death.
p. 79II. Ages ago, from the lips of a sad glad poet
Whose soul was a wild dove lost in the whirling snow,
The soft keen plaint of his pain took voice to show it
Ages ago.
So clear, so deep, the divine drear accents flow,
No soul that listens may choose but thrill to know it,
Pierced and wrung by the passionate music’s throe. ”

“ Three times thrice hath winter's rough white wing
Crossed and curdled wells and streams with ice
Since his birth whose praises love would sing
⁠Three times thrice.
Earth nor sea bears flower nor pearl of price
Fit to crown the forehead of my king,
Honey meet to please him, balm, nor spice.
Love can think of nought but love to bring
Fit to serve or do him sacrifice
Ere his eyes have looked upon the spring
⁠Three times thrice. ”

“ Three times thrice.
p. 58III. Three times thrice, in wine of song full-flowing,
Pledge, my heart, the child whose eyes suffice,
Once beheld, to set thy joy-bells going
Three times thrice.
Not the lands of palm and date and rice
Glow more bright when summer leaves them glowing,
Laugh more light when suns and winds entice.
Noon and eve and midnight and cock-crowing,
Child whose love makes life as paradise,
Love should sound your praise with clarions blowing
Three times thrice. ”

“ At its edge is a sepulchre hollowed and hewn for a lone man's bed,
Propped open with rock and agape on the sky and the sea thereunder,
But roofed and walled in well from the wrath of them slept its dead.
Here might not a man drink rapture of rest, or delight above wonder,
Beholding, a soul disembodied, the days and the nights that fled,
With splendour and sound of the tempest around and above him and under,
⁠Abreast and ahead? ”

“ Love than this which inly takes its fill,
Dear, of sight of your more perfect joy.
Nay, be aught you please, let all fulfil
All your pleasure; be your world your toy:
Mild or wild we love you, loud or still,
⁠Child or boy. ”

“ When a man's heart's pride grows great,
And nought seems now to foredoom
⁠Fate,
Fate, laden with fears in wait,
Draws close through the clouds that loom,
Till the soul see, all too late,
More dark than a dead world's tomb,
More high than the sheer dawn's gate,
More deep than the wide sea's womb,
⁠Fate. ”

“ Times to be, conceived such hopes as time discrowns.
These we loved of old: but now for me the blasting
Breath of death makes dull the bright small seaward towns,
Clothes with human change these all but everlasting
Cliffs and downs.
p. 24AUTUMN AND WINTER. I. Three months bade wane and wax the wintering moon
Between two dates of death, while men were fain
Yet of the living light that all too soon
Three months bade wane.
Cold autumn, wan with wrath of wind and rain,
Saw pass a soul sweet as the sovereign tune
That death smote silent when he smote again. ”

“ As a song-bird's shadow flown
⁠Past!
⁠Death's reverberate blast
Now for music's lord has blown
⁠Whom thy love held fast.
Dead thy king, and void his throne:
⁠Yet for grief at last
Love makes music of his own
⁠Past. ”

“ Deep elements may scarce be felt as pure
Soul within sense.
From depth and height by measurers left immense,
Through sound and shape and colour, comes the unsure
Vague utterance, fitful with supreme suspense.
All that may pass, and all that must endure,
Song speaks not, painting shews not: more intense
And keen than these, art wakes with music’s lure
Soul within sense.
p. 35CHANGE. But now life’s face beholden
Seemed bright as heaven’s bare brow
With hope of gifts withholden
But now.
From time’s full-flowering bough
Each bud spake bloom to embolden
Love’s heart, and seal his vow. ”

“ One of twain, twin-born with flowers that waken,
Now hath passed from sense of sun and rain:
Wind from off the flower-crowned branch hath shaken
⁠One of twain.
One twin flower must pass, and one remain:
One, the word said soothly, shall be taken,
And another left: can death refrain? ”

“ Ere this, perchance, though love know nought,
Flowers fill them, grown in lovelier lands,
Where hands of guiding angels caught
⁠The little hands.
IV.
The little eyes that never knew
Light other than of dawning skies,
What new life now lights up anew
⁠The little eyes?
Who knows but on their sleep may rise
Such light as never heaven let through
To lighten earth from Paradise?
No storm, we know, may change the blue
Soft heaven that haply death descries ”

“ One thought lies close in her heart gnawn thorough
With pain, a weed in a dried-up river,
A rust-red share in an empty furrow.
Hearts that strain at her chain would sever
The link where yesterday frets to-morrow:
All things pass in the world, but never
Sorrow. ”

“ His golden godhead, marred and maimed,
Fast round with bonds that burnt and froze.
Ere evil faith struck blind and lamed
Love, pure as fire or flowers or snows,
Earth hailed as blameless and unblamed
⁠Eros. ”

“ LOVE IN A MIST.
Light love in a mist, by the midsummer moon misguided,
Scarce seen in the twilight garden if gloom insist,
Seems vainly to seek for a star whose gleam has derided
⁠Light love in a mist. ”

“ So might haply time, with voice represt,
Speak: is grief the last gift of my dealing?
⁠Nay, but rest.
All the world is wearied, east and west,
Tired with toil to watch the slow sun wheeling,
Twelve loud hours of life's laborious quest. ”

“ Seem there, perchance, ill dreams, not worth
⁠A little soul.
II.
The little feet that never trod
Earth, never strayed in field or street,
What hand leads upward back to God
⁠The little feet?
A rose in June's most honied heat,
When life makes keen the kindling sod,
Was not so soft and warm and sweet. ”

“ Heart, be thy joys now seven times seven:
Love shows in light more bright than morn
⁠All heaven.
III.
What likeness may define, and stray not
⁠From truth's exactest way,
A baby's beauty? Love can say not
⁠What likeness may. ”

“ Whose mysteries even itself not understands.
The scorn in Farinata’s eyes aglow
Seems visible in this flame: there Geryon stands:
No stage of earth’s is here, set forth to show
By mere men’s hands.
p. 97VI. Night, in utmost noon forlorn and strong, with heart athirst and fasting,
Hungers here, barred up for ever, whence as one whom dreams affright
Day recoils before the low-browed lintel threatening doom and casting
Night. ”

“ A baby's eyes, ere speech begin,
⁠Ere lips learn words or sighs,
Bless all things bright enough to win
⁠A baby's eyes.
Love, while the sweet thing laughs and lies,
⁠And sleep flows out and in,
Sees perfect in them Paradise. ”

“ Bow thou too down before me: though thou be
Great, all the pride shall fade from off thy brow,
When Time and strong Oblivion ask of thee,
⁠Man, what art thou?
III.
Death, if thou be or be not, as was said,
Immortal; if thou make us nought, or we
Survive: thy power is made but of our dread,
⁠Death, if thou be. ”

“ Love, that hears thy death-bell toll
⁠Yet, may call to mind
Scarce a soul as thy sweet soul
⁠Kind.
VI.
How should life, O friend, forget
⁠Death, whose guest art thou?
Faith responds to love's regret,
⁠How? ”

“ Heaven, with worlds on worlds that lighten and respond:
Thought can see not thence the goal of hope’s surmises
Far beyond.
Night and day have made an everlasting bond
Each with each to hide in yet more deep disguises
Truth, till souls of men that thirst for truth despond.
All that man in pride of spirit slights or prizes,
All the dreams that make him fearful, fain, or fond,
Fade at forethought’s touch of life’s unknown surprises
Far beyond.
p. 14A DEAD FRIEND. I. Gone, O gentle heart and true,
Friend of hopes foregone,
Hopes and hopeful days with you
Gone? ”

“ To the utmost verge where fed with many a rill
Low lies the mere.
The wind speaks only summer: eye nor ear
Sees aught at all of dark, hears aught of shrill,
From sound or shadow felt or fancied here.
Strange, as we praise the dead man’s might and skill,
Strange that harsh thoughts should make such heavy cheer,
While, clothed with peace by heaven’s most gentle will,
Low lies the mere.
p. 81A FLOWER-PIECE BY FANTIN. Heart’s ease or pansy, pleasure or thought,
Which would the picture give us of these?
Surely the heart that conceived it sought
Heart’s ease. ”

“ Is grief still sleeping, is joy not sighing
Outside?
p. 3THE WAY OF THE WIND. The wind’s way in the deep sky’s hollow
None may measure, as none can say
How the heart in her shows the swallow
The wind’s way. ”

“ Rise the walls and roofs that compass it about with everlasting
Night.
p. 98VII. The house accurst, with cursing sealed and signed,
Heeds not what storms about it burn and burst:
No fear more fearful than its own may find
The house accurst.
Barren as crime, anhungered and athirst,
Blank miles of moor sweep inland, sere and blind,
Where summer’s best rebukes not winter’s worst. ”

“ Time, thy name is sorrow, says the stricken
Heart of life, laid waste with wasting flame
Ere the change of things and thoughts requicken,
Time, thy name. ”

“ A little soul scarce fledged for earth
Takes wing with heaven again for goal
Even while we hailed as fresh from birth
A little soul. ”

“ Ring smooth, and as light as the spray that disperses
Be the gleam of the words for the garb thereof wrought.
Let the soul in it shine through the sound as it pierces
Men's hearts with possession of music unsought ”

“ Dead love.
His heart, that strained and yearned and strove
As toward the sundawn strives the lark,
Is cold as all the old joy thereof.
Dead men, re-risen from dust, may hark
When rings the trumpet blown above:
It will not raise from out the dark
Dead love.
p. 85DISCORD. Unreconciled by life’s fleet years, that fled
With changeful clang of pinions wide and wild,
Though two great spirits had lived, and hence had sped
Unreconciled;
Though time and change, harsh time’s imperious child,
That wed strange hands together, might not wed
High hearts by hope’s misprision once beguiled ”

“ A roundel is wrought as a ring or a starbright sphere,
With craft of delight and with cunning of sound unsought,
That the heart of the hearer may smile if to pleasure his ear
⁠A roundel is wrought. ”

“ LOVE LIES BLEEDING. Love lies bleeding in the bed whereover
Roses lean with smiling mouths or pleading:
Earth lies laughing where the sun’s dart clove her:
Love lies bleeding. ”

“ A Baby’s feet, like sea-shells pink,
Might tempt, should heaven see meet,
An angel’s lips to kiss, we think,
A baby’s feet. ”

“ That skims the gloom whence towers and bridges gleam
⁠Out of the dark,
Once more a face no glance might choose but mark
Shone pale and bright, with eyes whose deep slow beam
Made quick the twilight, lifeless else and stark. ”

“ Death, if thou wilt, fain would I plead with thee:
Canst thou not spare, of all our hopes have built,
One shelter where our spirits fain would be,
Death, if thou wilt? ”