Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837 – 1909)
English poet.
Forget that I remember
And dream that I forget.
Ah that such sweet things should be fleet,
Such fleet things sweet!
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.
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.
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.
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!
Not with dreams, but with blood and with iron,
Shall a nation be moulded at last.
Though one were fair as roses
His beauty clouds and closes.
For in the days we know not of
Did fate begin
Weaving the web of days that wove
Your doom.
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.
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.
Fear that makes faith may break faith; and a fool Is but in folly stable.
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 winds feet shine along the sea.
Mr. Swinburne
expresses in verse what he finds in books as passionately as a poet expresses what he finds in life.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Ah, ah, thy beauty! like a beast it bites,
Stings like an adder, like an arrow smites.