Algernon Charles Swinburne

“ The seventh day in the wind's month, ten years gone ant. 13
Since heaven-espousing earth
Gave the Republic birth,
The mightiest soul put mortal raiment on ⁠500
That came forth singing ever in man's ears
Of all souls with us, and through all these years
Rings yet the lordliest, waxen yet more strong,
That on our souls hath shed itself in song,
Poured forth itself like rain
On souls like springing grain
That with its procreant beams and showers were fed
For living wine and sacramental bread;
Given all itself as air gives life and light,
Utterly, as of right ”

“ And tenderer than such tears of love as angels weep.⁠480
Dante, the seer of all things evil and good, str. 13
Beheld two ladies, Beauty
And high life-hallowing Duty,
That strove for sway upon his mind and mood
And held him in alternating accord
Fast bound at feet of either: but our lord,
The seer and singer of righteousness and wrong
Who stands now master of all the keys of song,
Sees both as dewdrops run
Together in the sun,⁠490
For him not twain but one thing twice divine ”

“ Spring, born in heaven ere many a springtime flown, strophe. 1
Dead spring that sawest on earth
A babe of deathless birth,
A flower of rosier flowerage than thine own,
A glory of goodlier godhead; even this day,
That floods the mist of February with May,
And strikes death dead with sunlight, and the breath
Whereby the deadly doers are done to death ”

“ Song bright as heaven above the mounting bird,
Song like a god's tears heard⁠310
Falling, fulfilled of life and death and light,
And all the stars and all the shadow of night.
⁠Till, when its flight hath past ep. 8
⁠Time's loftiest mark and last,
⁠The goal where good kills evil with a kiss,
⁠And Darkness in God's sight
⁠Grows as his brother Light,
⁠And heaven and hell one heart whence all the abyss
⁠Throbs with love's music; from his trance
Love waking leads it home to her who stayed in France.⁠320
But now from all the world-old winds of the air str. ”

“ And empire in mid feast
Fall as a slaughtered beast ⁠370
Headless, and ease men's hungering hearts of fear
Lest God were none in heaven, to see nor hear,
And purge his own pollution with the flood
Poured of his black base blood
So first found healing, poisonous as it poured;
And on the clouds the archangel cleanse his sword.
As at the word unutterable that made ant. ”