Algernon Charles Swinburne

“ Full, serene, superb as time that kindles fruit from flower,
Lord alike of waves that rest and waves that roll.
Sunlight round the soft Virgilian meads where sunbeams sleep
Lulled not overlong a spirit of strength to strive
Right against the winds that stormier times heard strain and sweep
Round the rocks whereon man crucified alive
Man, and bade the soul of manhood cower and chant and weep,
Strong in vain to soar and seek, to delve and dive.
III
Time and change and death made music as of life and strife and doom
When his lyric spell bade ope the graves of ages dead as dust. ”

“ On the first of June 1885, the greatest poet of the nineteenth century was borne to his rest amid the lamentations and the applause of his countrymen, and of all to whom either the example of a noble life or the triumph of a genius inaccessible and unapproachable seemed worthy of honour and regard. Many earnest and cordial and admirable words of tribute and thanksgiving and farewell were uttered over the hearse of Victor Hugo; none more memorable than those in which a great poet became the spokesman of all his kind in honour of the greatest of them all. ”