Algernon Charles Swinburne

Name: Studies in Song — Song for the Centenary of Walter Savage Landor
Author: Algernon Charles Swinburne

Studies in Song — Song for the Centenary of Walter Savage Landor (1880)

Summary

“Studies in Song — Song for the Centenary of Walter Savage Landor”, published in 1880, is a work by Algernon Charles Swinburne. It explores elements such as light, song and fire.

Quotes from Studies in Song — Song for the Centenary of Walter Savage Landor (Algernon Charles Swinburne)

Algernon Charles Swinburne, Studies in Song — Song for the Centenary of Walter Savage Landor (1880)

“ Shakespeare—him too, whom sea-like ages sever,
⁠As waves divide men's eyes from lights upholden
To landward, from our songs that find him never,
⁠Seeking, though memory fire and hope embolden—
⁠Him too this one song found,
⁠And raised at its sole sound
⁠Up from the dust of darkling dreams and olden
⁠Legends forlorn of breath,
⁠Up from the deeps of death,
⁠Ulysses: him whose name turns all songs golden,
⁠The wise divine strong soul, whom fate
Could make no less than change and chance beheld him great. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Algernon Charles Swinburne, Studies in Song — Song for the Centenary of Walter Savage Landor (1880)

“ Like the sun's rays that blind the night's wild beasts
⁠The sword of song shines as the swordsman sings;
From the west wind's verge even to the arduous east's
⁠The splendour of the shadow that it flings
Makes fire and storm in heaven above the feasts
⁠Of men fulfilled with food of evil things;
Strikes dumb the lying and hungering lips of priests,
⁠Smites dead the slaying and ravening hands of kings
⁠Turns dark the lamp's hot light,
⁠And turns the darkness bright
⁠As with the shadow of dawn's reverberate wings ”

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Source: Wikisource

Algernon Charles Swinburne, Studies in Song — Song for the Centenary of Walter Savage Landor (1880)

“ Who sing the golden garland woven of three,
⁠Thy daughters, Graces mightier than the morn,
More godlike than the graven gods men see
⁠Made all but all immortal, human born
And heavenly natured? With the first came He,
⁠Led by the living hand, who left forlorn
⁠Life by his death, and time
⁠More by his life sublime
⁠Than by the lives of all whom all men mourn,
⁠And even for mourning praise
⁠Heaven, as for all those days
⁠These dead men's lives clothed round with glories worn
⁠By memory till all time lie dead,
And higher than all behold the bay round Shakespeare's head. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Algernon Charles Swinburne, Studies in Song — Song for the Centenary of Walter Savage Landor (1880)

“ Freedom, whose light makes pale the mounting sun,
⁠And Song, whose fires are quenched when Freedom's are.
Of all that love not liberty let none
⁠Love her that fills our lips with fire from far
To mix with winds and seas in unison
⁠And sound athwart life's tideless harbour-bar ”

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Source: Wikisource

Algernon Charles Swinburne, Studies in Song — Song for the Centenary of Walter Savage Landor (1880)

“ The steps of the most highest, most awful-souled
⁠And mightiest-mouthed of singers, even as then
⁠Became a prophet's rod,
⁠A lyre on fire of God,
⁠Being still the staff of exile: yea, as when
⁠The voice poured forth on us
⁠Was even of Æschylus,
⁠And his one word great as the crying of ten,
⁠Crying in men's ears of wrath toward wrong,
Of love toward right immortal, sanctified with song. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Algernon Charles Swinburne, Studies in Song — Song for the Centenary of Walter Savage Landor (1880)

“ Song bade before him all their shadows stand
⁠For whom his will unbarred their funeral grate.
The father by whose wrong revenged his land
⁠Was given for sword and fire to desolate
Rose fire-encircled as a burning brand,
⁠Great as the woes he wrought and bore were great.
⁠Fair as she smiled and died,
⁠Death's crowned and breathless bride
⁠Smiled as one living even on craft and hate:
⁠And pity, a star unrisen,
⁠Scarce lit Ferrante's prison
⁠Ere night unnatural closed the natural gate
⁠That gave their life and love and light
To those fair eyes despoiled by fratricide of sight. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Algernon Charles Swinburne, Studies in Song — Song for the Centenary of Walter Savage Landor (1880)

“ Prefiguring all his love and faith in life and death.
7.
Who should love two things only and only praise
⁠More than all else for ever: even the glory
Of goodly beauty in women, whence all days
⁠Take light whereby death's self seems transitory;
And loftier love than loveliest eyes can raise,
⁠Love that wipes off the miry stains and gory
From Time's worn feet, besmirched on bloodred ways,
⁠And lightens with his light the night of story;
⁠Love that lifts up from dust
⁠Life, and makes darkness just,
⁠And purges as with fire of purgatory ”

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Source: Wikisource

Algernon Charles Swinburne, Studies in Song — Song for the Centenary of Walter Savage Landor (1880)

“ So strongly faith had fledged for flight from home
⁠The soul's large pinions till her strife should cease:
And through the trumpet of a child of Rome
⁠Rang the pure music of the flutes of Greece.
⁠As though some northern hand
⁠Reft from the Latin land
⁠A spoil more costly than the Colchian fleece
⁠To clothe with golden sound
⁠Of old joy newly found
⁠And rapture as of penetrating peace
⁠The naked north-wind's cloudiest clime,
And give its darkness light of the old Sicilian time. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Algernon Charles Swinburne, Studies in Song — Song for the Centenary of Walter Savage Landor (1880)

“ From the bright scripture of that present book
⁠Wherein his tired grand eyes got power to trace
⁠Comfort more sweet than youth,
⁠And hope whose child was truth,
⁠And love that brought forth sorrow for a space,
⁠Only that she might bear
⁠Joy: these things, written there,
⁠Made even his soul's high heaven a heavenlier place,
⁠Perused with eyes whose glory and glow
Had in their fires the spirit of Michael Angelo. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Algernon Charles Swinburne, Studies in Song — Song for the Centenary of Walter Savage Landor (1880)

“ What sound, what storm and splendour of what fire,
⁠Darkening the light of heaven, lightening the night,
Rings, rages, flashes round what ravening pyre
⁠That makes time's face pale with its reflex light
And leaves on earth, who seeing might scarce respire,
⁠A shadow of red remembrance? Right nor might
Alternating wore ever shapes more dire
⁠Nor manifest in all men's awful sight
⁠In form and face that wore
⁠Heaven's light and likeness more
⁠Than these, or held suspense men's hearts at height ”

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Source: Wikisource

Algernon Charles Swinburne, Studies in Song — Song for the Centenary of Walter Savage Landor (1880)

“ That kindled once with love should kindle Troy with flame.
19.
Nor less the light of story than of song
⁠With graver glories girt his godlike head,
Reverted alway from the temporal throng
⁠Of lives that live not toward the living dead. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Algernon Charles Swinburne, Studies in Song — Song for the Centenary of Walter Savage Landor (1880)

“ By their own works of light or darkness done
⁠Clothed round with light or girt about with gloom.
⁠In speech of purer gold
⁠Than even they spake of old
⁠He bade the breath of Sidney's lips relume
⁠The fire of thought and love
⁠That made his bright life move
⁠Through fair brief seasons of benignant bloom
⁠To blameless music ever, strong
As death and sweet as death-annihilating song.
17.
Thought gave his wings the width of time to roam,
⁠Love gave his thought strength equal to release
From bonds of old forgetful years, like foam
⁠Vanished, the fame of memories that decrease ”

[↩︎]

Source: Wikisource

Algernon Charles Swinburne, Studies in Song — Song for the Centenary of Walter Savage Landor (1880)

“ His father Ammon in a stranger's land,
⁠And shrank before the serpentining fold,
⁠Stood in our seer's wide eye
⁠No higher than man most high,
⁠And lowest in heart when highest in hope to hold
⁠Fast as a scripture furled
⁠The scroll of all the world
⁠Sealed with his signet: nor the blind and bold
⁠First thief of empire, round whose head
Swarmed carrion flies for bees, on flesh for violets fed. [1]
42. ”

Algernon Charles Swinburne

Summary

Quotes from Studies in Song — Song for the Centenary of Walter Savage Landor (Algernon Charles Swinburne)

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