Algernon Charles Swinburne

Name: The Heptalogia — Last Words of a Seventh-Rate Poet
Author: Algernon Charles Swinburne

The Heptalogia — Last Words of a Seventh-Rate Poet (1880)

Summary

“The Heptalogia — Last Words of a Seventh-Rate Poet”, published in 1880, is a work by Algernon Charles Swinburne. It explores elements such as Bill, kiss and Pleiad.

Quotes from The Heptalogia — Last Words of a Seventh-Rate Poet (Algernon Charles Swinburne)

Algernon Charles Swinburne, The Heptalogia — Last Words of a Seventh-Rate Poet (1880)

“ Yes—I feel rather better. Man's life is a mull, at the best;
And the patent perturbator pills are like bullets of lead in my chest.
When a man's whole spirit is like the lost Pleiad, a blown-out star,
Is there comfort in Holloway, Bill? is there hope of salvation in Parr?
True, most things work to their end—and an end that the shroud overlaps.
Under lace, under silk, under gold, sir, the skirt of a winding-sheet flaps—
Which explains, if you think of it, Bill, why I can't, though my soul thereon broodeth,
Quite make out if I loved Lady Tamar as much as I loved Lady Judith. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Algernon Charles Swinburne, The Heptalogia — Last Words of a Seventh-Rate Poet (1880)

“ In the shudder and swoon of the sickness of colour, the agonies old
That engirdle the brows of the day when he sinks with a spasm into rest
And the splash of his kingly blood is dashed on the skirts of the west,
Even such was my own, when I felt how much sharper than any snake's tooth
Was the passion that made me mistake Lady Eve for her niece Lady Ruth.
The whole world, colourless, lapsed. Earth fled from my feet like a dream ”

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Source: Wikisource

Algernon Charles Swinburne, The Heptalogia — Last Words of a Seventh-Rate Poet (1880)

“ Flowing and ebbing and flowing all night to a weary tune
('Such as that of my verses'? Get out!) in the face of a sick-souled moon.
The keen stars kindled and faded and fled, and the wind in my ears
Was the wail of a poet for failure—you needn't come snivelling tears
And spoiling the mixture, confound you, with dropping your tears into that!
I know I'm pathetic—I must be—and you soft-hearted and fat,
And I'm grateful of course for your kindness—there, don't come hugging me, now—
But because a fellow's pathetic, you needn't low like a cow. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Algernon Charles Swinburne, The Heptalogia — Last Words of a Seventh-Rate Poet (1880)

“ In that poem I made years ago, I said this—'Love, the flower-time whose breath
Smells sweet through a summer of kisses and perfumes an autumn of tears
Is sadder at root than a winter—its hopes heavy-hearted like fears.
Though I love your Grace more than I love little Letty, the maid of the mill,
Yet the heat of your lips when I kiss them' (you see we were intimate, Bill)
'And the beat of the delicate blood in your eyelids of azure and white
Leave the taste of the grave in my mouth and the shadow of death on my sight. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Algernon Charles Swinburne, The Heptalogia — Last Words of a Seventh-Rate Poet (1880)

“ Where a lost man sits with his head drawn down, and a weight on his eyes.
You know what I mean, Bill—the tender and delicate mother of lies,
Woman, the devil's first cousin—no doubt by the female side.
The breath of her mouth still moves in my hair, and I know that she lied,
And I feel her, Bill, sir, inside me—she operates there like a drug.
Were it better to live like a beetle, to wear the cast clothes of a slug,
Be the louse in the locks of the hangman, the mote in the eye of the bat,
Than to live and believe in a woman, who must one day grow aged and fat? ”

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Source: Wikisource

Algernon Charles Swinburne, The Heptalogia — Last Words of a Seventh-Rate Poet (1880)

“ Better the porridge of patience a poor man snuffs in his plate
Than the water of poisonous laurels distilled by the fingers of hate.
'Tis a dark-purple sort of a moonlighted kind of a midnight, I know;
You remember those verses I wrote on Irene, from Edgar A. Poe?
It was Lady Aholibah Levison, daughter of old Lord St. Giles,
Who inspired those delectable strains, and rewarded her bard with her smiles.
I recited her charms, in conjunction with those of a girl at the café,
In a poem I published in collaboration with Templeton (Taffy) . ”

Algernon Charles Swinburne

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