Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837 – 1909)
English poet.
Time found our tired love sleeping,
And kissed away his breath;
But what should we do weeping,
Though light love sleep to death?
We have drained his lips at leisure,
Till there's not left to drain
A single sob of pleasure,
A single pulse of pain.
I have no remedy for fear; there grows
No herb of help to heal a coward heart.
I believe
Not more in God's word than in yours; and this
Not for your station's sake, nor yet your fame's,
How high soe'er the wind of war have blown
The splendour of your standard: but, my lord,
Your face and heart and speech, being one, require
Of any not base-born and servile-souled
Faith: and my faith I give you.
Fear that makes faith may break faith; and a fool Is but in folly stable.
If love were what the rose is,
And I were like the leaf,
Our lives would grow together
In sad or singing weather,
Blown fields or flowerful closes,
Green pasture or gray grief;
If love were what the rose is,
And I were like the leaf.
I had grown pure as the dawn and the dew,
You had grown strong as the sun or the sea.
But none shall triumph a whole life through:
For death is one, and the fates are three.
At the door of life, by the gate of breath,
There are worse things waiting for men than death;
Death could not sever my soul and you,
As these have severed your soul from me.
For in the days we know not of
Did fate begin
Weaving the web of days that wove
Your doom.
Though one were fair as roses
His beauty clouds and closes.
Not with dreams, but with blood and with iron,
Shall a nation be moulded at last.
In the change of years, in the coil of things,
In the clamour and rumour of life to be,
We, drinking love at the furthest springs,
Covered with love as a covering tree,
We had grown as gods, as the gods above,
Filled from the heart to the lips with love,
Held fast in his hands, clothed warm with his wings,
O love, my love, had you loved but me!
Ah, yet would God this flesh of mine might be
Where air might wash and long leaves cover me;
Where tides of grass break into foam of flowers,
Or where the wind’s feet shine along the sea.
Did I bid thee
Mock, and forget me for thy friend — I say not,
King? Is thy heart so light and lean a thing,
So loose in faith and faint in love? I bade thee
Stand to me, help me, hold my hand in thine
And give my heart back answer. This it is,
Old friend and fool, that gnaws my life in twain —
The worm that writhes and feeds about my heart —
The devil and God are crying in either ear
One murderous word for ever, night and day,
Dark day and deadly night and deadly day,
Can she love thee who slewest her father? I
Love her.
From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no man lives forever,
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.
Ah that such sweet things should be fleet,
Such fleet things sweet!
Forget that I remember
And dream that I forget.
I can truly say with Shelley I have been fortunate in friendships: that I have been no less fortunate in my enemies than in my friends.
The more congenial page of some tenth-rate poeticule worn out with failure after failure and now squat in his hole like the tailless fox, he is curled up to snarl and whimper beneath the inaccessible vine of song.
Swinburne was perpetually talking shop: the bookish spirit in which he looked on nature and mankind, with his head full of his own trade, is essentially the same as the spirit in which The Tailor and Cutter annually criticises the portraits in the Royal Academy, interested, not in the artist, not in the subject, but in the cut of the subject's clothes.
A blatant Bassarid of Boston, a rampant Maenad of Massachusetts.
She hath wasted with fire thine high places,
She hath hidden and marred and made sad
The fair limbs of the Loves, the fair faces
Of gods that were goodly and glad.
She slays, and her hands are not bloody;
She moves as a moon in the wane,
White-robed, and thy raiment is ruddy,
Our Lady of Pain.