Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837 – 1909)
English poet.
Change lays not her hand upon truth.
Dream that the lips once breathless
Might quicken if they would;
Say that the soul is deathless;
Dream that the gods are good;
Say March may wed September,
And time divorce regret;
But not that you remember,
And not that I forget.
Like rose-hued sea-flowers toward the heat,
They stretch and spread and wink
Their ten soft buds that part and meet.
I have no remedy for fear; there grows
No herb of help to heal a coward heart.
And the best and the worst of this is
That neither is most to blame,
If you have forgotten my kisses
And I have forgotten your name.
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.
To wipe off the froth of falsehood from the foaming lips of inebriated virtue, when fresh from the sexless orgies of morality and reeling from the delirious riot of religion, may doubtless be a charitable office.
The pulse of war and passion of wonder,
The heavens that murmur, the sounds that shine,
The stars that sing and the loves that thunder,
The music burning at heart like wine,
An armed archangel whose hands raise up
All senses mixed in the spirit's cup
Till flesh and spirit are molten in sunder —
These things are over, and no more mine.
Ah, ah, thy beauty! like a beast it bites,
Stings like an adder, like an arrow smites.
A poor man's wrong and mine and all the world's,
Diverse and individual, many and one,
Insufferable of long-suffering less than God's,
Of all endurance unendurable else,
Being come to flood and fullness now, the tide
Is risen in mine as in the sea's own heart
To tempest and to triumph. Not for nought
Am I that wild wife's bridegroom — old and hoar,
Not sapless yet nor soulless.
Though they be
Ill rulers of this household, be not thou
Too swift to strike ere time be ripe to strike,
Nor then by darkling stroke, against them: I
Have erred, who thought by wrong to vanquish wrong,
To smite by violence violence, and by night
Put out the power of darkness: time shall bring
A better way than mine, if God's will be —
As how should God's will be not? — to redeem
Venice. I was not worthy — nor may man,
Till one as Christ shall come again, be found
Worthy to think, speak, strike, foresee, foretell,
The thought, the word, the stroke, the dawn, the day,
That verily and indeed shall bid the dead
Live, and this old dear land of all men's love
Arise and shine for ever: but if Christ
Came, haply such an one may come, and do
With hands and heart as pure as his a work
That priests themselves may mar not.
It is not much that a man can save
On the sands of life, in the straits of time,
Who swims in sight of the great third wave
That never a swimmer shall cross or climb.
Some waif washed up with the strays and spars
That ebb-tide shows to the shore and the stars;
Weed from the water, grass from a grave,
A broken blossom, a ruined rhyme.
When the hounds of spring are on winter's traces,
The mother of months in meadow or plain
Fills the shadows and windy places
With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain.
So be it the wind and sun
That reared thy limbs and lit thy veins with life
Have blown and shone upon thee not for nought—
If these have fed and fired thy spirit as mine
With love, with faith that casts out fear, with joy,
With trust in truth and pride in trust — if thou
Be theirs indeed as theirs am I, with me
Shalt thou take part and with my sea-folk — aye,
Make thine eyes wide and give God wondering thanks
That grace like ours is given thee — thou shalt bear
Part of our praise for ever.
Mr. Swinburne … expresses in verse what he finds in books as passionately as a poet expresses what he finds in life.
Sins are sin-begotten, and their seed
Bred of itself and singly procreative;
Nor is God served with setting this to this
For evil evidence of several shame,
That one may say, Lo now! so many are they;
But if one, seeing with God-illumined eyes
In his full face the encountering face of sin,
Smite once the one high-fronted head, and slay,
His will we call good service. For myself,
If ye will make a counsellor of me,
I bid you set your hearts against one thing
To burn it up, and keep your hearts on fire,
Not seeking here a sign and there a sign,
Nor curious of all casual sufferances,
But steadfast to the undoing of that thing done
Whereof ye know the being, however it be,
And all the doing abominable of God.
Who questions with a snake if the snake sting?
Who reasons of the lightning if it burn?
While these things are, deadly will these things be;
And so the curse that comes of cursed faith.
Before our lives divide for ever,
While time is with us and hands are free,
(Time, swift to fasten and swift to sever
Hand from hand, as we stand by the sea)
I will say no word that a man might say
Whose whole life's love goes down in a day;
For this could never have been; and never,
Though the gods and the years relent, shall be.
I attempt to describe Mr. Swinburne; and lo! the Bacchanal screams, the sterile Dolores sweats, serpents dance, men and women wrench, wriggle and foam in an endless alliteration of heated and meaningless words, the veriest garbage of Baudelaire flowered over with the epithets of the Della Cruscans.
Life is the lust of a lamp for the light that is dark till the dawn of the day that we die.
Not from without us, only from within,
Comes or can ever come upon us light
Whereby the soul keeps ever truth in sight.
No truth, no strength, no comfort man may win,
No grace for guidance, no release from sin,
Save of his own soul's giving.