[ { "title": "Etude Realiste", "author": "Algernon Charles Swinburne", "lines": [ "A Baby's feet, like sea-shells pink,", "Might tempt, should heaven see meet,", "An angel's lips to kiss, we think,", "A baby's feet.", "", "Like rose-hued sea-flowers toward the heat", "They stretch and spread and wink", "Their ten soft buds that part and meet.", "", "No flower-bells that expand and shrink", "Gleam half so heavenly sweet", "As shine on life's untrodden brink", "A baby's feet.", "", "II.", "", "A baby's hands, like rosebuds furled", "Whence yet no leaf expands,", "Ope if you touch, though close upcurled,", "A baby's hands.", "", "Then, fast as warriors grip their brands", "When battle's bolt is hurled,", "They close, clenched hard like tightening bands.", "", "No rosebuds yet by dawn impearled", "Match, even in loveliest lands,", "The sweetest flowers in all the world -", "A baby's hands.", "", "III.", "", "A baby's eyes, ere speech begin,", "Ere lips learn words or sighs,", "Bless all things bright enough to win", "A baby's eyes.", "", "Love, while the sweet thing laughs and lies,", "And sleep flows out and in,", "Sees perfect in them Paradise.", "", "Their glance might cast out pain and sin,", "Their speech make dumb the wise,", "By mute glad godhead felt within", "A baby's eyes." ], "linecount": "35" }, { "title": "Tiresias", "author": "Algernon Charles Swinburne", "lines": [ "PART I", "", "It is an hour before the hour of dawn.", "Set in mine hand my staff and leave me here", "Outside the hollow house that blind men fear,", "More blind than I who live on life withdrawn", "And feel on eyes that see not but foresee", "The shadow of death which clothes Antigone.", "", "Here lay her living body that here lies", "Dead, if man living know what thing is death,", "If life be all made up of blood and breath,", "And no sense be save as of ears and eyes.", "But heart there is not, tongue there is not found,", "To think or sing what verge hath life or bound.", "", "In the beginning when the powers that made", "The young child man a little loved him, seeing", "His joy of life and fair face of his being,", "And bland and laughing with the man-child played,", "As friends they saw on our divine one day", "King Cadmus take to queen Harmonia.", "", "The strength of soul that builds up as with hands", "Walls spiritual and towers and towns of thought", "Which only fate, not force, can bring to nought,", "Took then to wife the light of all men's lands,", "War's child and love's, most sweet and wise and strong,", "Order of things and rule and guiding song.", "", "It was long since: yea, even the sun that saw", "Remembers hardly what was, nor how long.", "And now the wise heart of the worldly song", "Is perished, and the holy hand of law", "Can set no tune on time, nor help again", "The power of thought to build up life for men.", "", "Yea, surely are they now transformed or dead,", "And sleep below this world, where no sun warms,", "Or move about it now in formless forms", "Incognizable, and all their lordship fled;", "And where they stood up singing crawl and hiss,", "With fangs that kill behind their lips that kiss.", "", "Yet though her marriage-garment, seeming fair,", "Was dyed in sin and woven of jealousy", "To turn their seed to poison, time shall see", "The gods reissue from them, and repair", "Their broken stamp of godhead, and again", "Thought and wise love sing words of law to men.", "", "I, Tiresias the prophet, seeing in Thebes", "Much evil, and the misery of men's hands", "Who sow with fruitless wheat the stones and sands,", "With fruitful thorns the fallows and warm glebes,", "Bade their hands hold lest worse hap came to pass;", "But which of you had heed of Tiresias?", "", "I am as Time's self in mine own wearied mind,", "Whom the strong heavy-footed years have led", "From night to night and dead men unto dead,", "And from the blind hope to the memory blind;", "For each man's life is woven, as Time's life is,", "Of blind young hopes and old blind memories.", "", "I am a soul outside of death and birth.", "I see before me and afterward I see,", "O child, O corpse, the live dead face of thee,", "Whose life and death are one thing upon earth", "Where day kills night and night again kills day", "And dies; but where is that Harmonia?", "", "O all-beholden light not seen of me,", "Air, and warm winds that under the sun's eye", "Stretch your strong wings at morning; and thou, sky,", "Whose hollow circle engirdling earth and sea", "All night the set stars limit, and all day", "The moving sun remeasures; ye, I say,", "", "Ye heights of hills, and thou Dircean spring", "Inviolable, and ye towers that saw cast down", "Seven kings keen-sighted toward your seven-faced town", "And quenched the red seed of one sightless king;", "And thou, for death less dreadful than for birth,", "Whose wild leaves hide the horror of the earth,", "", "O mountain whereon gods made chase of kings,", "Cithaeron, thou that sawest on Pentheus dead", "Fangs of a mother fasten and wax red", "And satiate with a son thy swollen springs,", "And heardst her cry fright all thine eyries' nests", "Who gave death suck at sanguine-suckling breasts;", "", "Yea, and a grief more grievous, without name,", "A curse too grievous for the name of grief,", "Thou sawest, and heardst the rumour scare belief", "Even unto death and madness, when the flame", "Was lit whose ashes dropped about the pyre", "That of two brethren made one sundering fire;", "", "O bitter nurse, that on thine hard bare knees", "Rear'dst for his fate the bloody-footed child", "Whose hands should be more bloodily defiled", "And the old blind feet walk wearier ways than these,", "Whose seed, brought forth in darkness unto doom,", "Should break as fire out of his mother's womb;", "", "I bear you witness as ye bear to me,", "Time, day, night, sun, stars, life, death, air, sea, earth,", "And ye that round the human house of birth", "Watch with veiled heads and weaponed hands, and see", "Good things and evil, strengthless yet and dumb,", "Sit in the clouds with cloudlike hours to come;", "", "Ye forces without form and viewless powers", "That have the keys of all our years in hold,", "That prophesy too late with tongues of gold,", "In a strange speech whose words are perished hours,", "I witness to you what good things ye give", "As ye to me what evil while I live.", "", "What should I do to blame you, what to praise,", "For floral hours and hours funereal?", "What should I do to curse or bless at all", "For winter-woven or summer-coloured days?", "Curse he that will and bless you whoso can,", "I have no common part in you with man.", "", "I hear a springing water, whose quick sound", "Makes softer the soft sunless patient air,", "And the wind's hand is laid on my thin hair", "Light as a lover's, and the grasses round", "Have odours in them of green bloom and rain", "Sweet as the kiss wherewith sleep kisses pain.", "", "I hear the low sound of the spring of time", "Still beating as the low live throb of blood,", "And where its waters gather head and flood", "I hear change moving on them, and the chime", "Across them of reverberate wings of hours", "Sounding, and feel the future air of flowers.", "", "The wind of change is soft as snow, and sweet", "The sense thereof as roses in the sun,", "The faint wind springing with the springs that run,", "The dim sweet smell of flowering hopes, and heat", "Of unbeholden sunrise; yet how long", "I know not, till the morning put forth song.", "", "I prophesy of life, who live with death;", "Of joy, being sad; of sunlight, who am blind;", "Of man, whose ways are alien from mankind", "And his lips are not parted with man's breath;", "I am a word out of the speechless years,", "The tongue of time, that no man sleeps who hears.", "", "I stand a shadow across the door of doom,", "Athwart the lintel of death's house, and wait;", "Nor quick nor dead, nor flexible by fate,", "Nor quite of earth nor wholly of the tomb;", "A voice, a vision, light as fire or air,", "Driven between days that shall be and that were.", "", "I prophesy, with feet upon a grave,", "Of death cast out and life devouring death", "As flame doth wood and stubble with a breath;", "Of freedom, though all manhood were one slave;", "Of truth, though all the world were liar; of love,", "That time nor hate can raze the witness of.", "", "Life that was given for love's sake and his law's", "Their powers have no more power on; they divide", "Spoils wrung from lust or wrath of man or pride,", "And keen oblivion without pity or pause", "Sets them on fire and scatters them on air", "Like ashes shaken from a suppliant's hair.", "", "But life they lay no hand on; life once given", "No force of theirs hath competence to take;", "Life that was given for some divine thing's sake,", "To mix the bitterness of earth with heaven,", "Light with man's night, and music with his breath,", "Dies not, but makes its living food of death.", "", "I have seen this, who live where men are not,", "In the high starless air of fruitful night", "On that serenest and obscurest height", "Where dead and unborn things are one in thought", "And whence the live unconquerable springs", "Feed full of force the torrents of new things.", "", "I have seen this, who saw long since, being man,", "As now I know not if indeed I be,", "The fair bare body of Wisdom, good to see", "And evil, whence my light and night began;", "Light on the goal and darkness on the way,", "Light all through night and darkness all through day.", "", "Mother, that by that Pegasean spring", "Didst fold round in thine arms thy blinded son,", "Weeping \"O holiest, what thing hast thou done,", "What, to my child? woe's me that see the thing!", "Is this thy love to me-ward, and hereof", "Must I take sample how the gods can love?", "", "\"O child, thou hast seen indeed, poor child of mine,", "The breasts and flanks of Pallas bare in sight,", "But never shalt see more the dear sun's light;", "O Helicon, how great a pay is thine", "For some poor antelopes and wild-deer dead,", "My child's eyes hast thou taken in their stead--\"", "", "Mother, thou knewest not what she had to give,", "Thy goddess, though then angered, for mine eyes;", "Fame and foreknowledge, and to be most wise,", "And centuries of high-thoughted life to live,", "And in mine hand this guiding staff to be", "As eyesight to the feet of men that see.", "", "Perchance I shall not die at all, nor pass", "The general door and lintel of men dead;", "Yet even the very tongue of wisdom said", "What grace should come with death to Tiresias,", "What special honour that God's hand accord", "Who gathers all men's nations as their lord.", "", "And sometimes when the secret eye of thought", "Is changed with obscuration, and the sense", "Aches with long pain of hollow prescience,", "And fiery foresight with foresuffering bought", "Seems even to infect my spirit and consume,", "Hunger and thirst come on me for the tomb.", "", "I could be fain to drink my death and sleep,", "And no more wrapped about with bitter dreams", "Talk with the stars and with the winds and streams", "And with the inevitable years, and weep;", "For how should he who communes with the years", "Be sometime not a living spring of tears?", "", "O child, that guided of thine only will", "Didst set thy maiden foot against the gate", "To strike it open ere thine hour of fate,", "Antigone, men say not thou didst ill,", "For love's sake and the reverence of his awe", "Divinely dying, slain by mortal law;", "", "For love is awful as immortal death.", "And through thee surely hath thy brother won", "Rest, out of sight of our world-weary sun,", "And in the dead land where ye ghosts draw breath", "A royal place and honour; so wast thou", "Happy, though earth have hold of thee too now.", "", "So hast thou life and name inviolable", "And joy it may be, sacred and severe,", "Joy secret-souled beyond all hope or fear,", "A monumental joy wherein to dwell", "Secluse and silent, a selected state,", "Serene possession of thy proper fate.", "", "Thou art not dead as these are dead who live", "Full of blind years, a sorrow-shaken kind,", "Nor as these are am I the prophet blind;", "They have not life that have not heart to give", "Life, nor have eyesight who lack heart to see", "When to be not is better than to be.", "", "O ye whom time but bears with for a span,", "How long will ye be blind and dead, how long", "Make your own souls part of your own soul's wrong?", "Son of the word of the most high gods, man,", "Why wilt thou make thine hour of light and breath", "Emptier of all but shame than very death?", "", "Fool, wilt thou live for ever? though thou care", "With all thine heart for life to keep it fast,", "Shall not thine hand forego it at the last?", "Lo, thy sure hour shall take thee by the hair", "Sleeping, or when thou knowest not, or wouldst fly;", "And as men died much mightier shalt thou die.", "", "Yea, they are dead, men much more worth than thou;", "The savour of heroic lives that were,", "Is it not mixed into thy common air?", "The sense of them is shed about thee now:", "Feel not thy brows a wind blowing from far?", "Aches not thy forehead with a future star?", "", "The light that thou may'st make out of thy name", "Is in the wind of this same hour that drives,", "Blown within reach but once of all men's lives;", "And he that puts forth hand upon the flame", "Shall have it for a garland on his head", "To sign him for a king among the dead.", "", "But these men that the lessening years behold,", "Who sit the most part without flame or crown,", "And brawl and sleep and wear their life-days down", "With joys and griefs ignobler than of old,", "And care not if the better day shall be -", "Are these or art thou dead, Antigone?", "", "PART II", "", "As when one wakes out of a waning dream", "And sees with instant eyes the naked thought", "Whereof the vision as a web was wrought,", "I saw beneath a heaven of cloud and gleam,", "Ere yet the heart of the young sun waxed brave,", "One like a prophet standing by a grave.", "", "In the hoar heaven was hardly beam or breath,", "And all the coloured hills and fields were grey,", "And the wind wandered seeking for the day,", "And wailed as though he had found her done to death", "And this grey hour had built to bury her", "The hollow twilight for a sepulchre.", "", "But in my soul I saw as in a glass", "A pale and living body full of grace", "There lying, and over it the prophet's face", "Fixed; and the face was not of Tiresias,", "For such a starry fire was in his eyes", "As though their light it was that made the skies.", "", "Such eyes should God's have been when very love", "Looked forth of them and set the sun aflame,", "And such his lips that called the light by name", "And bade the morning forth at sound thereof;", "His face was sad and masterful as fate,", "And like a star's his look compassionate.", "", "Like a star's gazed on of sad eyes so long", "It seems to yearn with pity, and all its fire", "As a man's heart to tremble with desire", "And heave as though the light would bring forth song;", "Yet from his face flashed lightning on the land,", "And like the thunder-bearer's was his hand.", "", "The steepness of strange stairs had tired his feet,", "And his lips yet seemed sick of that salt bread", "Wherewith the lips of banishment are fed;", "But nothing was there in the world so sweet", "As the most bitter love, like God's own grace,", "Wherewith he gazed on that fair buried face.", "", "Grief and glad pride and passion and sharp shame,", "Wrath and remembrance, faith and hope and hate", "And pitiless pity of days degenerate,", "Were in his eyes as an incorporate flame", "That burned about her, and the heart thereof", "And central flower was very fire of love.", "", "But all about her grave wherein she slept", "Were noises of the wild wind-footed years", "Whose footprints flying were full of blood and tears,", "Shrieks as of Maenads on their hills that leapt", "And yelled as beasts of ravin, and their meat", "Was the rent flesh of their own sons to eat:", "", "And fiery shadows passing with strange cries,", "And Sphinx-like shapes about the ruined lands,", "And the red reek of parricidal hands", "And intermixture of incestuous eyes,", "And light as of that self-divided flame", "Which made an end of the Cadmean name.", "", "And I beheld again, and lo the grave,", "And the bright body laid therein as dead,", "And the same shadow across another head", "That bowed down silent on that sleeping slave", "Who was the lady of empire from her birth", "And light of all the kingdoms of the earth.", "", "Within the compass of the watcher's hand", "All strengths of other men and divers powers", "Were held at ease and gathered up as flowers;", "His heart was as the heart of his whole land,", "And at his feet as natural servants lay", "Twilight and dawn and night and labouring day.", "", "He was most awful of the sons of God.", "Even now men seeing seemed at his lips to see", "The trumpet of the judgment that should be,", "And in his right hand terror for a rod,", "And in the breath that made the mountains bow", "The horned fire of Moses on his brow.", "", "The strong wind of the coming of the Lord", "Had blown as flame upon him, and brought down", "On his bare head from heaven fire for a crown,", "And fire was girt upon him as a sword", "To smite and lighten, and on what ways he trod", "There fell from him the shadow of a God.", "", "Pale, with the whole world's judgment in his eyes,", "He stood and saw the grief and shame endure", "That he, though highest of angels might not cure,", "And the same sins done under the same skies,", "And the same slaves to the same tyrants thrown,", "And fain he would have slept, and fain been stone.", "", "But with unslumbering eyes he watched the sleep", "That sealed her sense whose eyes were suns of old;", "And the night shut and opened, and behold,", "The same grave where those prophets came to weep,", "But she that lay therein had moved and stirred,", "And where those twain had watched her stood a third.", "", "The tripled rhyme that closed in Paradise", "With Love's name sealing up its starry speech -", "The tripled might of hand that found in reach", "All crowns beheld far off of all men's eyes,", "Song, colour, carven wonders of live stone -", "These were not, but the very soul alone.", "", "The living spirit, the good gift of grace,", "The faith which takes of its own blood to give", "That the dead veins of buried hope may live,", "Came on her sleeping, face to naked face,", "And from a soul more sweet than all the south", "Breathed love upon her sealed and breathless mouth.", "", "Between her lips the breath was blown as fire,", "And through her flushed veins leapt the liquid life,", "And with sore passion and ambiguous strife", "The new birth rent her and the new desire,", "The will to live, the competence to be,", "The sense to hearken and the soul to see.", "", "And the third prophet standing by her grave", "Stretched forth his hand and touched her, and her eyes", "Opened as sudden suns in heaven might rise,", "And her soul caught from his the faith to save;", "Faith above creeds, faith beyond records, born", "Of the pure, naked, fruitful, awful morn.", "", "For in the daybreak now that night was dead", "The light, the shadow, the delight, the pain,", "The purpose and the passion of those twain,", "Seemed gathered on that third prophetic head,", "And all their crowns were as one crown, and one", "His face with her face in the living sun.", "", "For even with that communion of their eyes", "His whole soul passed into her and made her strong;", "And all the sounds and shows of shame and wrong,", "The hand that slays, the lip that mocks and lies,", "Temples and thrones that yet men seem to see -", "Are these dead or art thou dead, Italy?" ], "linecount": "386" }, { "title": "The Eve Of Revolution", "author": "Algernon Charles Swinburne", "lines": [ "The trumpets of the four winds of the world", "From the ends of the earth blow battle; the night heaves,", "With breasts palpitating and wings refurled,", "With passion of couched limbs, as one who grieves", "Sleeping, and in her sleep she sees uncurled", "Dreams serpent-shapen, such as sickness weaves,", "Down the wild wind of vision caught and whirled,", "Dead leaves of sleep, thicker than autumn leaves,", "Shadows of storm-shaped things,", "Flights of dim tribes of kings,", "The reaping men that reap men for their sheaves,", "And, without grain to yield,", "Their scythe-swept harvest-field", "Thronged thick with men pursuing and fugitives,", "Dead foliage of the tree of sleep,", "Leaves blood-coloured and golden, blown from deep to deep.", "", "", "", "I hear the midnight on the mountains cry", "With many tongues of thunders, and I hear", "Sound and resound the hollow shield of sky", "With trumpet-throated winds that charge and cheer,", "And through the roar of the hours that fighting fly,", "Through flight and fight and all the fluctuant fear,", "A sound sublimer than the heavens are high,", "A voice more instant than the winds are clear,", "Say to my spirit, \"Take", "Thy trumpet too, and make", "A rallying music in the void night's ear,", "Till the storm lose its track,", "And all the night go back;", "Till, as through sleep false life knows true life near,", "Thou know the morning through the night,", "And through the thunder silence, and through darkness light.\"", "", "", "", "I set the trumpet to my lips and blow.", "The height of night is shaken, the skies break,", "The winds and stars and waters come and go", "By fits of breath and light and sound, that wake", "As out of sleep, and perish as the show", "Built up of sleep, when all her strengths forsake", "The sense-compelling spirit; the depths glow,", "The heights flash, and the roots and summits shake", "Of earth in all her mountains,", "And the inner foamless fountains", "And wellsprings of her fast-bound forces quake;", "Yea, the whole air of life", "Is set on fire of strife,", "Till change unmake things made and love remake;", "Reason and love, whose names are one,", "Seeing reason is the sunlight shed from love the sun.", "", "", "", "The night is broken eastward; is it day,", "Or but the watchfires trembling here and there,", "Like hopes on memory's devastated way,", "In moonless wastes of planet-stricken air?", "O many-childed mother great and grey,", "O multitudinous bosom, and breasts that bare", "Our fathers' generations, whereat lay", "The weanling peoples and the tribes that were,", "Whose new-born mouths long dead", "Those ninefold nipples fed,", "Dim face with deathless eyes and withered hair,", "Fostress of obscure lands,", "Whose multiplying hands", "Wove the world's web with divers races fair", "And cast it waif-wise on the stream,", "The waters of the centuries, where thou sat'st to dream;", "", "", "", "O many-minded mother and visionary,", "Asia, that sawest their westering waters sweep", "With all the ships and spoils of time to carry", "And all the fears and hopes of life to keep,", "Thy vesture wrought of ages legendary", "Hides usward thine impenetrable sleep,", "And thy veiled head, night's oldest tributary,", "We know not if it speak or smile or weep.", "But where for us began", "The first live light of man", "And first-born fire of deeds to burn and leap,", "The first war fair as peace", "To shine and lighten Greece,", "And the first freedom moved upon the deep,", "God's breath upon the face of time", "Moving, a present spirit, seen of men sublime;", "", "", "", "There where our east looks always to thy west,", "Our mornings to thine evenings, Greece to thee,", "These lights that catch the mountains crest by crest,", "Are they of stars or beacons that we see?", "Taygetus takes here the winds abreast,", "And there the sun resumes Thermopylae;", "The light is Athens where those remnants rest,", "And Salamis the sea-wall of that sea.", "The grass men tread upon", "Is very Marathon,", "The leaves are of that time-unstricken tree", "That storm nor sun can fret", "Nor wind, since she that set", "Made it her sign to men whose shield was she;", "Here, as dead time his deathless things,", "Eurotas and Cephisus keep their sleepless springs.", "", "", "", "O hills of Crete, are these things dead? O waves,", "O many-mouthed streams, are these springs dry?", "Earth, dost thou feed and hide now none but slaves?", "Heaven, hast thou heard of men that would not die?", "Is the land thick with only such men's graves", "As were ashamed to look upon the sky?", "Ye dead, whose name outfaces and outbraves", "Death, is the seed of such as you gone by?", "Sea, have thy ports not heard", "Some Marathonian word", "Rise up to landward and to Godward fly?", "No thunder, that the skies", "Sent not upon us, rise", "With fire and earthquake and a cleaving cry?", "Nay, light is here, and shall be light,", "Though all the face of the hour be overborne with night.", "", "", "", "I set the trumpet to my lips and blow.", "The night is broken northward; the pale plains", "And footless fields of sun-forgotten snow", "Feel through their creviced lips and iron veins", "Such quick breath labour and such clean blood flow", "As summer-stricken spring feels in her pains", "When dying May bears June, too young to know", "The fruit that waxes from the flower that wanes;", "Strange tyrannies and vast,", "Tribes frost-bound to their past,", "Lands that are loud all through their length with chains,", "Wastes where the wind's wings break,", "Displumed by daylong ache", "And anguish of blind snows and rack-blown rains,", "And ice that seals the White Sea's lips,", "Whose monstrous weights crush flat the sides of shrieking ships;", "", "", "", "Horrible sights and sounds of the unreached pole,", "And shrill fierce climes of inconsolable air,", "Shining below the beamless aureole", "That hangs about the north-wind's hurtling hair,", "A comet-lighted lamp, sublime and sole", "Dawn of the dayless heaven where suns despair;", "Earth, skies, and waters, smitten into soul,", "Feel the hard veil that iron centuries wear", "Rent as with hands in sunder,", "Such hands as make the thunder", "And clothe with form all substance and strip bare;", "Shapes, shadows, sounds and lights", "Of their dead days and nights", "Take soul of life too keen for death to bear;", "Life, conscience, forethought, will, desire,", "Flood men's inanimate eyes and dry-drawn hearts with fire.", "", "", "", "Light, light, and light! to break and melt in sunder", "All clouds and chains that in one bondage bind", "Eyes, hands, and spirits, forged by fear and wonder", "And sleek fierce fraud with hidden knife behind;", "There goes no fire from heaven before their thunder,", "Nor are the links not malleable that wind", "Round the snared limbs and souls that ache thereunder;", "The hands are mighty, were the head not blind.", "Priest is the staff of king,", "And chains and clouds one thing,", "And fettered flesh with devastated mind.", "Open thy soul to see,", "Slave, and thy feet are free;", "Thy bonds and thy beliefs are one in kind,", "And of thy fears thine irons wrought", "Hang weights upon thee fashioned out of thine own thought.", "", "", "", "O soul, O God, O glory of liberty,", "To night and day their lightning and their light!", "With heat of heart thou kindlest the quick sea,", "And the dead earth takes spirit from thy sight;", "The natural body of things is warm with thee,", "And the world's weakness parcel of thy might;", "Thou seest us feeble and forceless, fit to be", "Slaves of the years that drive us left and right,", "Drowned under hours like waves", "Wherethrough we row like slaves;", "But if thy finger touch us, these take flight.", "If but one sovereign word", "Of thy live lips be heard,", "What man shall stop us, and what God shall smite?", "Do thou but look in our dead eyes,", "They are stars that light each other till thy sundawn rise.", "", "", "", "Thou art the eye of this blind body of man,", "The tongue of this dumb people; shalt thou not", "See, shalt thou speak not for them?", "Time is wan And hope is weak with waiting, and swift thought", "Hath lost the wings at heel wherewith he ran,", "And on the red pit's edge sits down distraught", "To talk with death of days republican", "And dreams and fights long since dreamt out and fought;", "Of the last hope that drew", "To that red edge anew", "The firewhite faith of Poland without spot;", "Of the blind Russian might,", "And fire that is not light;", "Of the green Rhineland where thy spirit wrought;", "But though time, hope, and memory tire,", "Canst thou wax dark as they do, thou whose light is fire?", "", "", "", "I set the trumpet to my lips and blow.", "The night is broken westward; the wide sea", "That makes immortal motion to and fro", "From world's end unto world's end, and shall be", "When nought now grafted of men's hands shall grow", "And as the weed in last year's waves are we", "Or spray the sea-wind shook a year ago", "From its sharp tresses down the storm to lee,", "The moving god that hides", "Time in its timeless tides", "Wherein time dead seems live eternity,", "That breaks and makes again", "Much mightier things than men,", "Doth it not hear change coming, or not see?", "Are the deeps deaf and dead and blind,", "To catch no light or sound from landward of mankind?", "", "", "", "O thou, clothed round with raiment of white waves,", "Thy brave brows lightening through the grey wet air,", "Thou, lulled with sea-sounds of a thousand caves,", "And lit with sea-shine to thine inland lair,", "Whose freedom clothed the naked souls of slaves", "And stripped the muffled souls of tyrants bare,", "O, by the centuries of thy glorious graves,", "By the live light of the earth that was thy care,", "Live, thou must not be dead,", "Live; let thine armed head", "Lift itself up to sunward and the fair", "Daylight of time and man,", "Thine head republican,", "With the same splendour on thine helmless hair", "That in his eyes kept up a light", "Who on thy glory gazed away their sacred sight;", "", "", "", "Who loved and looked their sense to death on thee;", "Who taught thy lips imperishable things,", "And in thine ears outsang thy singing sea;", "Who made thy foot firm on the necks of kings", "And thy soul somewhile steadfast--woe are we", "It was but for a while, and all the strings", "Were broken of thy spirit; yet had he", "Set to such tunes and clothed it with such wings", "It seemed for his sole sake", "Impossible to break,", "And woundless of the worm that waits and stings,", "The golden-headed worm", "Made headless for a term,", "The king-snake whose life kindles with the spring's,", "To breathe his soul upon her bloom,", "And while she marks not turn her temple to her tomb.", "", "", "", "By those eyes blinded and that heavenly head", "And the secluded soul adorable,", "O Milton's land, what ails thee to be dead?", "Thine ears are yet sonorous with his shell", "That all the songs of all thy sea-line fed", "With motive sound of spring-tides at mid swell,", "And through thine heart his thought as blood is shed,", "Requickening thee with wisdom to do well;", "Such sons were of thy womb,", "England, for love of whom", "Thy name is not yet writ with theirs that fell,", "But, till thou quite forget", "What were thy children, yet", "On the pale lips of hope is as a spell;", "And Shelley's heart and Landor's mind", "Lit thee with latter watch-fires; why wilt thou be blind?", "", "", "", "Though all were else indifferent, all that live", "Spiritless shapes of nations; though time wait", "In vain on hope till these have help to give,", "And faith and love crawl famished from the gate;", "Canst thou sit shamed and self-contemplative", "With soulless eyes on thy secluded fate?", "Though time forgive them, thee shall he forgive,", "Whose choice was in thine hand to be so great?", "Who cast out of thy mind", "The passion of man's kind,", "And made thee and thine old name separate?", "Now when time looks to see", "New names and old and thee", "Build up our one Republic state by state,", "England with France, and France with Spain,", "And Spain with sovereign Italy strike hands and reign.", "", "", "", "O known and unknown fountain-heads that fill", "Our dear life-springs of England! O bright race", "Of streams and waters that bear witness still", "To the earth her sons were made of! O fair face", "Of England, watched of eyes death cannot kill,", "How should the soul that lit you for a space", "Fall through sick weakness of a broken will", "To the dead cold damnation of disgrace?", "Such wind of memory stirs", "On all green hills of hers,", "Such breath of record from so high a place,", "From years whose tongues of flame", "Prophesied in her name", "Her feet should keep truth's bright and burning trace,", "We needs must have her heart with us,", "Whose hearts are one with man's; she must be dead or thus.", "", "", "", "Who is against us? who is on our side?", "Whose heart of all men's hearts is one with man's?", "Where art thou that wast prophetess and bride,", "When truth and thou trod under time and chance?", "What latter light of what new hope shall guide", "Out of the snares of hell thy feet, O France?", "What heel shall bruise these heads that hiss and glide,", "What wind blow out these fen-born fires that dance", "Before thee to thy death?", "No light, no life, no breath,", "From thy dead eyes and lips shall take the trance,", "Till on that deadliest crime", "Reddening the feet of time", "Who treads through blood and passes, time shall glance", "Pardon, and Italy forgive,", "And Rome arise up whom thou slewest, and bid thee live.", "", "", "", "I set the trumpet to my lips and blow.", "The night is broken southward; the springs run,", "The daysprings and the watersprings that flow", "Forth with one will from where their source was one,", "Out of the might of morning: high and low,", "The hungering hills feed full upon the sun,", "The thirsting valleys drink of him and glow", "As a heart burns with some divine thing done,", "Or as blood burns again", "In the bruised heart of Spain,", "A rose renewed with red new life begun,", "Dragged down with thorns and briers,", "That puts forth buds like fires", "Till the whole tree take flower in unison,", "And prince that clogs and priest that clings", "Be cast as weeds upon the dunghill of dead things.", "", "", "", "Ah heaven, bow down, be nearer! This is she,", "Italia, the world's wonder, the world's care,", "Free in her heart ere quite her hands be free,", "And lovelier than her loveliest robe of air.", "The earth hath voice, and speech is in the sea,", "Sounds of great joy, too beautiful to bear;", "All things are glad because of her, but we", "Most glad, who loved her when the worst days were.", "O sweetest, fairest, first,", "O flower, when times were worst,", "Thou hadst no stripe wherein we had no share.", "Have not our hearts held close,", "Kept fast the whole world's rose?", "Have we not worn thee at heart whom none would wear?", "First love and last love, light of lands,", "Shall we not touch thee full-blown with our lips and hands?", "", "", "", "O too much loved, what shall we say of thee?", "What shall we make of our heart's burning fire,", "The passion in our lives that fain would be", "Made each a brand to pile into the pyre", "That shall burn up thy foemen, and set free", "The flame whence thy sun-shadowing wings aspire?", "Love of our life, what more than men are we,", "That this our breath for thy sake should expire,", "For whom to joyous death", "Glad gods might yield their breath,", "Great gods drop down from heaven to serve for hire?", "We are but men, are we,", "And thou art Italy;", "What shall we do for thee with our desire?", "What gift shall we deserve to give?", "How shall we die to do thee service, or how live?", "", "", "", "The very thought in us how much we love thee", "Makes the throat sob with love and blinds the eyes.", "How should love bear thee, to behold above thee", "His own light burning from reverberate skies?", "They give thee light, but the light given them of thee", "Makes faint the wheeling fires that fall and rise.", "What love, what life, what death of man's should move thee,", "What face that lingers or what foot that flies?", "It is not heaven that lights", "Thee with such days and nights,", "But thou that heaven is lit from in such wise.", "O thou her dearest birth,", "Turn thee to lighten earth,", "Earth too that bore thee and yearns to thee and cries;", "Stand up, shine, lighten, become flame,", "Till as the sun's name through all nations be thy name.", "", "", "", "I take the trumpet from my lips and sing.", "O life immeasurable and imminent love,", "And fear like winter leading hope like spring,", "Whose flower-bright brows the day-star sits above,", "Whose hand unweariable and untiring wing", "Strike music from a world that wailed and strove,", "Each bright soul born and every glorious thing,", "From very freedom to man's joy thereof,", "O time, O change and death,", "Whose now not hateful breath", "But gives the music swifter feet to move", "Through sharp remeasuring tones", "Of refluent antiphones", "More tender-tuned than heart or throat of dove,", "Soul into soul, song into song,", "Life changing into life, by laws that work not wrong;", "", "", "", "O natural force in spirit and sense, that art", "One thing in all things, fruit of thine own fruit,", "O thought illimitable and infinite heart", "Whose blood is life in limbs indissolute", "That still keeps hurtless thine invisible part", "And inextirpable thy viewless root", "Whence all sweet shafts of green and each thy dart", "Of sharpening leaf and bud resundering shoot;", "Hills that the day-star hails,", "Heights that the first beam scales,", "And heights that souls outshining suns salute,", "Valleys for each mouth born", "Free now of plenteous corn,", "Waters and woodlands' musical or mute;", "Free winds that brighten brows as free,", "And thunder and laughter and lightning of the sovereign sea;", "", "", "", "Rivers and springs, and storms that seek your prey;", "With strong wings ravening through the skies by night;", "Spirits and stars that hold one choral way;", "O light of heaven, and thou the heavenlier light", "Aflame above the souls of men that sway", "All generations of all years with might;", "O sunrise of the repossessing day,", "And sunrise of all-renovating right;", "And thou, whose trackless foot", "Mocks hope's or fear's pursuit,", "Swift Revolution, changing depth with height;", "And thou, whose mouth makes one", "All songs that seek the sun,", "Serene Republic of a world made white;", "Thou, Freedom, whence the soul's springs ran;", "Praise earth for man's sake living, and for earth's sake man.", "", "", "", "Make yourselves wings, O tarrying feet of fate,", "And hidden hour that hast our hope to bear,", "A child-god, through the morning-coloured gate", "That lets love in upon the golden air,", "Dead on whose threshold lies heart-broken hate,", "Dead discord, dead injustice, dead despair;", "O love long looked for, wherefore wilt thou wait,", "And shew not yet the dawn on thy bright hair.", "Not yet thine hand released", "Refreshing the faint east,", "Thine hand reconquering heaven, to seat man there?", "Come forth, be born and live,", "Thou that hast help to give", "And light to make man's day of manhood fair:", "With flight outflying the sphered sun,", "Hasten thine hour and halt not, till thy work be done." ], "linecount": "432" }, { "title": "Sorrow", "author": "Algernon Charles Swinburne", "lines": [ "SORROW, on wing through the world for ever,", "Here and there for awhile would borrow", "Rest, if rest might haply deliver", "Sorrow.", "", "One thought lies close in her heart gnawn thorough", "With pain, a weed in a dried-up river,", "A rust-red share in an empty furrow.", "", "Hearts that strain at her chain would sever", "The link where yesterday frets to-morrow:", "All things pass in the world, but never", "Sorrow." ], "linecount": "11" }, { "title": "Autumn And Winter", "author": "Algernon Charles Swinburne", "lines": [ "Three months bade wane and wax the wintering moon", "Between two dates of death, while men were fain", "Yet of the living light that all too soon", "Three months bade wane.", "", "Cold autumn, wan with wrath of wind and rain,", "Saw pass a soul sweet as the sovereign tune", "That death smote silent when he smote again.", "", "First went my friend, in life's mid light of noon,", "Who loved the lord of music: then the strain", "Whence earth was kindled like as heaven in June", "Three months bade wane.", "", "", "", "A herald soul before its master's flying", "Touched by some few moons first the darkling goal", "Where shades rose up to greet the shade, espying", "A herald soul;", "", "Shades of dead lords of music, who control", "Men living by the might of men undying,", "With strength of strains that make delight of dole.", "", "The deep dense dust on death's dim threshold lying", "Trembled with sense of kindling sound that stole", "Through darkness, and the night gave ear, descrying", "A herald soul.", "", "", "", "One went before, one after, but so fast", "They seem gone hence together, from the shore", "Whence we now gaze: yet ere the mightier passed", "One went before;", "", "One whose whole heart of love, being set of yore", "On that high joy which music lends us, cast", "Light round him forth of music's radiant store.", "", "Then went, while earth on winter glared aghast,", "The mortal god he worshipped, through the door", "Wherethrough so late, his lover to the last,", "One went before.", "", "", "", "A star had set an hour before the sun", "Sank from the skies wherethrough his heart's pulse yet", "Thrills audibly: but few took heed, or none,", "A star had set.", "", "All heaven rings back, sonorous with regret,", "The deep dirge of the sunset: how should one", "Soft star be missed in all the concourse met?", "", "But, O sweet single heart whose work is done,", "Whose songs are silent, how should I forget", "That ere the sunset's fiery goal was won", "A star had set?" ], "linecount": "44" }, { "title": "On the Death of Robert Browning", "author": "Algernon Charles Swinburne", "lines": [ "He held no dream worth waking; so he said,", "He who stands now on death's triumphal steep,", "Awakened out of life wherein we sleep", "And dream of what he knows and sees, being dead.", "But never death for him was dark or dread;", "\"Look forth,\" he bade the soul, and fear not. Weep,", "All ye that trust not in his truth, and keep", "Vain memory's vision of a vanished head", "As all that lives of all that once was he", "Save that which lightens from his word; but we,", "Who, seeing the sunset-colored waters roll,", "Yet know the sun subdued not of the sea,", "Nor weep nor doubt that still the spirit is whole,", "And life and death but shadows of the soul." ], "linecount": "14" }, { "title": "A Ballad of Burdens", "author": "Algernon Charles Swinburne", "lines": [ "The burden of fair women. Vain delight,", "And love self-slain in some sweet shameful way,", "And sorrowful old age that comes by night", "As a thief comes that has no heart by day,", "And change that finds fair cheeks and leaves them grey,", "And weariness that keeps awake for hire,", "And grief that says what pleasure used to say;", "This is the end of every man's desire.", "", "The burden of bought kisses. This is sore,", "A burden without fruit in childbearing;", "Between the nightfall and the dawn threescore,", "Threescore between the dawn and evening.", "The shuddering in thy lips, the shuddering", "In thy sad eyelids tremulous like fire,", "Makes love seem shameful and a wretched thing.", "This is the end of every man's desire.", "", "The burden of sweet speeches. Nay, kneel down,", "Cover thy head, and weep; for verily", "These market-men that buy thy white and brown", "In the last days shall take no thought for thee.", "In the last days like earth thy face shall be,", "Yea, like sea-marsh made thick with brine and mire,", "Sad with sick leavings of the sterile sea.", "This is the end of every man's desire.", "", "The burden of long living. Thou shalt fear", "Waking, and sleeping mourn upon thy bed;", "And say at night \"Would God the day were here,\"", "And say at dawn \"Would God the day were dead.\"", "With weary days thou shalt be clothed and fed,", "And wear remorse of heart for thine attire,", "Pain for thy girdle and sorrow upon thine head;", "This is the end of every man's desire.", "", "The burden of bright colours. Thou shalt see", "Gold tarnished, and the grey above the green;", "And as the thing thou seest thy face shall be,", "And no more as the thing beforetime seen.", "And thou shalt say of mercy \"It hath been,\"", "And living, watch the old lips and loves expire,", "And talking, tears shall take thy breath between;", "This is the end of every man's desire.", "", "The burden of sad sayings. In that day", "Thou shalt tell all thy days and hours, and tell", "Thy times and ways and words of love, and say", "How one was dear and one desirable,", "And sweet was life to hear and sweet to smell,", "But now with lights reverse the old hours retire", "And the last hour is shod with fire from hell;", "This is the end of every man's desire.", "", "The burden of four seasons. Rain in spring,", "White rain and wind among the tender trees;", "A summer of green sorrows gathering,", "Rank autumn in a mist of miseries,", "With sad face set towards the year, that sees", "The charred ash drop out of the dropping pyre,", "And winter wan with many maladies;", "This is the end of every man's desire.", "", "The burden of dead faces. Out of sight", "And out of love, beyond the reach of hands,", "Changed in the changing of the dark and light,", "They walk and weep about the barren lands", "Where no seed is nor any garner stands,", "Where in short breaths the doubtful days respire,", "And time's turned glass lets through the sighing sands;", "This is the end of every man's desire.", "", "The burden of much gladness. Life and lust", "Forsake thee, and the face of thy delight;", "And underfoot the heavy hour strews dust,", "And overhead strange weathers burn and bite;", "And where the red was, lo the bloodless white,", "And where the truth was, the likeness of a liar,", "And where the day was, the likeness of the night;", "This is the end of every man's desire.", "", "L'ENVOY", "", "Princes, and ye whom pleasure quickeneth,", "Heed well this rhyme before your pleasure tire;", "For life is sweet, but after life is death.", "This is the end of every man's desire." ], "linecount": "77" }, { "title": "In Memory of Walter Savage Landor", "author": "Algernon Charles Swinburne", "lines": [ "Back to the flower-town, side by side,", "The bright months bring,", "New-born, the bridegroom and the bride,", "Freedom and spring.", "The sweet land laughs from sea to sea,", "Filled full of sun;", "All things come back to her, being free;", "All things but one.", "In many a tender wheaten plot", "Flowers that were dead", "Live, and old suns revive; but not", "That holier head.", "", "By this white wandering waste of sea,", "Far north, I hear", "One face shall never turn to me", "As once this year:", "", "Shall never smile and turn and rest", "On mine as there,", "Nor one most sacred hand be prest", "Upon my hair.", "", "I came as one whose thoughts half linger,", "Half run before;", "The youngest to the oldest singer", "That England bore.", "", "I found him whom I shall not find", "Till all grief end,", "In holiest age our mightiest mind,", "Father and friend.", "", "But thou, if anything endure,", "If hope there be,", "O spirit that man's life left pure,", "Man's death set free,", "", "Not with disdain of days that were", "Look earthward now;", "Let dreams revive the reverend hair,", "The imperial brow;", "", "Come back in sleep, for in the life", "Where thou art not", "We find none like thee. Time and strife", "And the world's lot", "", "Move thee no more; but love at least", "And reverent heart", "May move thee, royal and released,", "Soul, as thou art.", "", "And thou, his Florence, to thy trust", "Receive and keep,", "Keep safe his dedicated dust,", "His sacred sleep.", "", "So shall thy lovers, come from far,", "Mix with thy name", "As morning-star with evening-star", "His faultless fame." ], "linecount": "52" }, { "title": "Mentana : First Anniversary", "author": "Algernon Charles Swinburne", "lines": [ "At the time when the stars are grey,", "And the gold of the molten moon", "Fades, and the twilight is thinned,", "And the sun leaps up, and the wind,", "A light rose, not of the day,", "A stronger light than of noon.", "", "As the light of a face much loved", "Was the face of the light that clomb;", "As a mother's whitened with woes", "Her adorable head that arose;", "As the sound of a God that is moved,", "Her voice went forth upon Rome.", "", "At her lips it fluttered and failed", "Twice, and sobbed into song,", "And sank as a flame sinks under;", "Then spake, and the speech was thunder,", "And the cheek as he heard it paled", "Of the wrongdoer grown grey with the wrong.", "", "\"Is it time, is it time appointed,", "Angel of time, is it near?", "For the spent night aches into day", "When the kings shall slay not or pray,", "And the high-priest, accursed and anointed,", "Sickens to deathward with fear.", "", "\"For the bones of my slain are stirred,", "And the seed of my earth in her womb", "Moves as the heart of a bud", "Beating with odorous blood", "To the tune of the loud first bird", "Burns and yearns into bloom.", "", "\"I lay my hand on her bosom,", "My hand on the heart of my earth,", "And I feel as with shiver and sob", "The triumphant heart in her throb,", "The dead petals dilate into blossom,", "The divine blood beat into birth.", "", "\"O my earth, are the springs in thee dry?", "O sweet, is thy body a tomb?", "Nay, springs out of springs derive,", "And summers from summers alive,", "And the living from them that die;", "No tomb is here, but a womb.", "", "\"O manifold womb and divine,", "Give me fruit of my children, give!", "I have given thee my dew for thy root,", "Give thou me for my mouth of thy fruit;", "Thine are the dead that are mine,", "And mine are thy sons that live.", "", "\"O goodly children, O strong", "Italian spirits, that wear", "My glories as garments about you,", "Could time or the world misdoubt you,", "Behold, in disproof of the wrong,", "The field of the grave-pits there.", "", "\"And ye that fell upon sleep,", "We have you too with us yet.", "Fairer than life or than youth", "Is this, to die for the truth:", "No death can sink you so deep", "As their graves whom their brethren forget.", "", "\"Were not your pains as my pains?", "As my name are your names not divine?", "Was not the light in your eyes", "Mine, the light of my skies,", "And the sweet shed blood of your veins,", "O my beautiful martyrs, mine?", "", "\"Of mine earth were your dear limbs made,", "Of mine air was your sweet life's breath;", "At the breasts of my love ye were fed,", "O my children, my chosen, my dead,", "At my breasts where again ye are laid,", "At the old mother's bosom, in death.", "", "\"But ye that live, O their brothers,", "Be ye to me as they were;", "Give me, my children that live,", "What these dead grudged not to give,", "Who alive were sons of your mother's,", "Whose lips drew breath of your air.", "", "\"Till darkness by dawn be cloven,", "Let youth's self mourn and abstain;", "And love's self find not an hour,", "And spring's self wear not a flower,", "And Lycoris, with hair unenwoven,", "Hail back to the banquet in vain.", "", "\"So sooner and surer the glory", "That is not with us shall be,", "And stronger the hands that smite", "The heads of the sons of night,", "And the sound throughout earth of our story", "Give all men heart to be free.\"" ], "linecount": "90" }, { "title": "Four Songs Of Four Seasons", "author": "Algernon Charles Swinburne", "lines": [ "I. WINTER IN NORTHUMBERLAND", "OUTSIDE the garden", "The wet skies harden;", "The gates are barred on", "The summer side:", "\"Shut out the flower-time,", "Sunbeam and shower-time;", "Make way for our time,\"", "Wild winds have cried.", "Green once and cheery,", "The woods, worn weary,", "Sigh as the dreary", "Weak sun goes home:", "A great wind grapples", "The wave, and dapples", "The dead green floor of the sea with foam.", "", "Through fell and moorland,", "And salt-sea foreland,", "Our noisy norland", "Resounds and rings;", "Waste waves thereunder", "Are blown in sunder,", "And winds make thunder", "With cloudwide wings;", "Sea-drift makes dimmer", "The beacon's glimmer;", "Nor sail nor swimmer", "Can try the tides;", "And snowdrifts thicken", "Where, when leaves quicken,", "Under the heather the sundew hides.", "", "Green land and red land,", "Moorside and headland,", "Are white as dead land,", "Are all as one;", "Nor honied heather,", "Nor bells to gather,", "Fair with fair weather", "And faithful sun:", "Fierce frost has eaten", "All flowers that sweeten", "The fells rain-beaten;", "And winds their foes", "Have made the snow's bed", "Down in the rose-bed;", "Deep in the snow's bed bury the rose.", "", "Bury her deeper", "Than any sleeper;", "Sweet dreams will keep her", "All day, all night;", "Though sleep benumb her", "And time o'ercome her,", "She dreams of summer,", "And takes delight,", "Dreaming and sleeping", "In love's good keeping,", "While rain is weeping", "And no leaves cling;", "Winds will come bringing her", "Comfort, and singing her", "Stories and songs and good news of the spring.", "", "Draw the white curtain", "Close, and be certain", "She takes no hurt in", "Her soft low bed;", "She feels no colder,", "And grows not older,", "Though snows enfold her", "From foot to head;", "She turns not chilly", "Like weed and lily", "In marsh or hilly", "High watershed,", "Or green soft island", "In lakes of highland;", "She sleeps awhile, and she is not dead.", "", "For all the hours,", "Come sun, come showers,", "Are friends of flowers,", "And fairies all;", "When frost entrapped her,", "They came and lapped her", "In leaves, and wrapped her", "With shroud and pall;", "In red leaves wound her,", "With dead leaves bound her", "Dead brows, and round her", "A death-knell rang;", "Rang the death-bell for her,", "Sang, \"is it well for her,", "Well, is it well with you, rose?\" they sang.", "", "O what and where is", "The rose now, fairies,", "So shrill the air is,", "So wild the sky?", "Poor last of roses,", "Her worst of woes is", "The noise she knows is", "The winter's cry;", "His hunting hollo", "Has scared the swallow;", "Fain would she follow", "And fain would fly:", "But wind unsettles", "Her poor last petals;", "Had she but wings, and she would not die.", "", "Come, as you love her,", "Come close and cover", "Her white face over,", "And forth again", "Ere sunset glances", "On foam that dances,", "Through lowering lances", "Of bright white rain;", "And make your playtime", "Of winter's daytime,", "As if the Maytime", "Were here to sing;", "As if the snowballs", "Were soft like blowballs,", "Blown in a mist from the stalk in the spring.", "", "Each reed that grows in", "Our stream is frozen,", "The fields it flows in", "Are hard and black;", "The water-fairy", "Waits wise and wary", "Till time shall vary", "And thaws come back.", "\"O sister, water,\"", "The wind besought her,", "\"O twin-born daughter", "Of spring with me,", "Stay with me, play with me,", "Take the warm way with me,", "Straight for the summer and oversea.\"", "", "But winds will vary,", "And wise and wary", "The patient fairy", "Of water waits;", "All shrunk and wizen,", "In iron prison,", "Till spring re-risen", "Unbar the gates;", "Till, as with clamor", "Of axe and hammer,", "Chained streams that stammer", "And struggle in straits", "Burst bonds that shiver,", "And thaws deliver", "The roaring river in stormy spates.", "", "In fierce March weather", "White waves break tether,", "And whirled together", "At either hand,", "Like weeds uplifted,", "The tree-trunks rifted", "In spars are drifted,", "Like foam or sand,", "Past swamp and sallow", "And reed-beds callow,", "Through pool and shallow,", "To wind and lee,", "Till, no more tongue-tied,", "Full flood and young tide", "Roar down the rapids and storm the sea.", "", "As men's cheeks faded", "On shores invaded,", "When shorewards waded", "The lords of fight;", "When churl and craven", "Saw hard on haven", "The wide-winged raven", "At mainmast height;", "When monks affrighted", "To windward sighted", "The birds full-flighted", "Of swift sea-kings;", "So earth turns paler", "When Storm the sailor", "Steers in with a roar in the race of his wings.", "", "O strong sea-sailor,", "Whose cheek turns paler", "For wind or hail or", "For fear of thee?", "O far sea-farer,", "O thunder-bearer,", "Thy songs are rarer", "Than soft songs be.", "O fleet-foot stranger,", "O north-sea ranger", "Through days of danger", "And ways of fear,", "Blow thy horn here for us,", "Blow the sky clear for us,", "Send us the song of the sea to hear.", "", "Roll the strong stream of it", "Up, till the scream of it", "Wake from a dream of it", "Children that sleep,", "Seamen that fare for them", "Forth, with a prayer for them:", "Shall not God care for them", "Angels not keep?", "Spare not the surges", "Thy stormy scourges;", "Spare us the dirges", "Of wives that weep.", "Turn back the waves for us:", "Dig no fresh graves for us,", "Wind, in the manifold gulfs of the deep.", "", "O stout north-easter,", "Sea-king, land-waster,", "For all thine haste, or", "Thy stormy skill,", "Yet hadst thou never,", "For all endeavour,", "Strength to dissever", "Or strength to spill,", "Save of his giving", "Who gave our living,", "Whose hands are weaving", "What ours fulfil;", "Whose feet tread under", "The storms and thunder;", "Who made our wonder to work his will.", "", "His years and hours,", "His world's blind powers,", "His stars and flowers,", "His nights and days,", "Sea-tide and river,", "And waves that shiver,", "Praise God, the giver", "Of tongues to praise.", "Winds in their blowing,", "And fruits in growing;", "Time in its going,", "While time shall be;", "In death and living,", "With one thanksgiving,", "Praise him whose hand is the strength of the sea.", "", "II. SPRING IN TUSCANY", "ROSE-RED lilies that bloom on the banner;", "Rose-cheeked gardens that revel in spring;", "Rose-mouthed acacias that laugh as they climb,", "Like plumes for a queen's hand fashioned to fan her", "With wind more soft than a wild dove's wing,", "What do they sing in the spring of their time", "", "If this be the rose that the world hears singing,", "Soft in the soft night, loud in the day,", "Songs for the fireflies to dance as they hear;", "If that be the song of the nightingale, springing", "Forth in the form of a rose in May,", "What do they say of the way of the year?", "", "What of the way of the world gone Maying,", "What of the work of the buds in the bowers,", "What of the will of the wind on the wall,", "Fluttering the wall-flowers, sighing and playing,", "Shrinking again as a bird that cowers,", "Thinking of hours when the flowers have to fall?", "", "Out of the throats of the loud birds showering,", "Out of the folds where the flag-lilies leap,", "Out of the mouths of the roses stirred,", "Out of the herbs on the walls reflowering,", "Out of the heights where the sheer snows sleep,", "Out of the deep and the steep, one word.", "", "One from the lips of the lily-flames leaping,", "The glad red lilies that burn in our sight,", "The great live lilies for standard and crown;", "One from the steeps where the pines stand sleeping,", "One from the deep land, one from the height,", "One from the light and the might of the town.", "", "The lowlands laugh with delight of the highlands,", "Whence May winds feed them with balm and breath", "From hills that beheld in the years behind", "A shape as of one from the blest souls' islands,", "Made fair by a soul too fair for death,", "With eyes on the light that should smite them blind.", "", "Vallombrosa remotely remembers,", "Perchance, what still to us seems so near", "That time not darkens it, change not mars,", "The foot that she knew when her leaves were September's,", "The face lift up to the star-blind seer,", "That saw from his prison arisen his stars.", "", "And Pisa broods on her dead, not mourning,", "For love of her loveliness given them in fee;", "And Prato gleams with the glad monk's gift", "Whose hand was there as the hand of morning;", "And Siena, set in the sand's red sea,", "Lifts loftier her head than the red sand's drift.", "", "And far to the fair south-westward lightens,", "Girdled and sandalled and plumed with flowers,", "At sunset over the love-lit lands,", "The hill-side's crown where the wild hill brightens,", "Saint Fina's town of the Beautiful Towers,", "Hailing the sun with a hundred hands.", "", "Land of us all that have loved thee dearliest,", "Mother of men that were lords of man,", "Whose name in the world's heart work a spell", "My last song's light, and the star of mine earliest,", "As we turn from thee, sweet, who wast ours for a span,", "Fare well we may not who say farewell.", "", "III. SUMMER IN AUVERGNE", "THE sundawn fills the land", "Full as a feaster's hand", "Fills full with bloom of bland", "Bright wine his cup;", "Flows full to flood that fills", "From the arch of air it thrills", "Those rust-red iron hills", "With morning up.", "", "Dawn, as a panther springs,", "With fierce and fire-fledged wings", "Leaps on the land that rings", "From her bright feet", "Through all its lava-black", "Cones that cast answer back", "And cliffs of footless track", "Where thunders meet.", "", "The light speaks wide and loud", "From deeps blown clean of cloud", "As though day's heart were proud", "And heaven's were glad;", "The towers brown-striped and grey", "Take fire from heaven of day", "As though the prayers they pray", "Their answers had.", "", "Higher in these high first hours", "Wax all the keen church towers,", "And higher all hearts of ours", "Than the old hills' crown,", "Higher than the pillared height", "Of that strange cliff-side bright", "With basalt towers whose might", "Strong time bows down.", "", "And the old fierce ruin there", "Of the old wild princes' lair", "Whose blood in mine hath share", "Gapes gaunt and great", "Toward heaven that long ago", "Watched all the wan land's woe", "Whereon the wind would blow", "Of their bleak hate.", "", "Dead are those deeds; but yet", "Their memory seems to fret", "Lands that might else forget", "That old world's brand;", "Dead all their sins and days;", "Yet in this red clime's rays", "Some fiery memory stays", "That sears their land.", "", "IV. AUTUMN IN CORNWALL", "THE year lies fallen and faded", "On cliffs by clouds invaded,", "With tongues of storms upbraided,", "With wrath of waves bedinned;", "And inland, wild with warning,", "As in deaf ears or scorning,", "The clarion even and morning", "Rings of the south-west wind.", "", "The wild bents wane and wither", "In blasts whose breath bows hither", "Their grey-grown heads and thither,", "Unblest of rain or sun;", "The pale fierce heavens are crowded", "With shapes like dreams beclouded,", "As though the old year enshrouded", "Lay, long ere life were done.", "", "Full-charged with oldworld wonders,", "From dusk Tintagel thunders", "A note that smites and sunders", "The hard frore fields of air;", "A trumpet stormier-sounded", "Than once from lists rebounded", "When strong men sense-confounded", "Fell thick in tourney there.", "", "From scarce a duskier dwelling", "Such notes of wail rose welling", "Through the outer darkness, telling", "In the awful singer's ears", "What souls the darkness covers,", "What love-lost souls of lovers,", "Whose cry still hangs and hovers", "In each man's born that hears.", "", "For there by Hector's brother", "And yet some thousand other", "He that had grief to mother", "Passed pale from Dante's sight;", "With one fast linked as fearless,", "Perchance, there only tearless;", "Iseult and Tristram, peerless", "And perfect queen and knight.", "", "A shrill-winged sound comes flying", "North, as of wild souls crying", "The cry of things undying,", "That know what life must be;", "Or as the old year's heart, stricken", "Too sore for hope to quicken", "By thoughts like thorns that thicken,", "Broke, breaking with the sea." ], "linecount": "400" }, { "title": "Concord", "author": "Algernon Charles Swinburne", "lines": [ "Reconciled by death's mild hand, that giving", "Peace gives wisdom, not more strong than mild,", "Love beholds them, each without misgiving", "Reconciled.", "", "Each on earth alike of earth reviled,", "Hated, feared, derided, and forgiving,", "Each alike had heaven at heart, and smiled.", "", "Both bright names, clothed round with man's thanksgiving,", "Shine, twin stars above the storm-drifts piled,", "Dead and deathless, whom we saw not living", "Reconciled." ], "linecount": "11" }, { "title": "Babyhood", "author": "Algernon Charles Swinburne", "lines": [ "A baby shines as bright", "If winter or if May be", "On eyes that keep in sight", "A baby.", "", "Though dark the skies or grey be,", "It fills our eyes with light,", "If midnight or midday be.", "", "Love hails it, day and night,", "The sweetest thing that may be", "Yet cannot praise aright", "A baby.", "", "II.", "", "All heaven, in every baby born,", "All absolute of earthly leaven,", "Reveals itself, though man may scorn", "All heaven.", "", "Yet man might feel all sin forgiven,", "All grief appeased, all pain outworn,", "By this one revelation given.", "", "Soul, now forget thy burdens borne:", "Heart, be thy joys now seven times seven:", "Love shows in light more bright than morn", "All heaven.", "", "III.", "", "What likeness may define, and stray not", "From truth's exactest way,", "A baby's beauty? Love can say not", "What likeness may.", "", "The Mayflower loveliest held in May", "Of all that shine and stay not", "Laughs not in rosier disarray.", "", "Sleek satin, swansdown, buds that play not", "As yet with winds that play,", "Would fain be matched with this, and may not:", "What likeness may?", "", "IV.", "", "Rose, round whose bed", "Dawn's cloudlets close,", "Earth's brightest-bred", "Rose!", "", "No song, love knows,", "May praise the head", "Your curtain shows.", "", "Ere sleep has fled,", "The whole child glows", "One sweet live red", "Rose." ], "linecount": "47" }, { "title": "Hymn to Proserpine (After the Proclamation of the Christian", "author": "Algernon Charles Swinburne", "lines": [ "Vicisti, Galilæe", "I have lived long enough, having seen one thing, that love hath an end;", "Goddess and maiden and queen, be near me now and befriend.", "Thou art more than the day or the morrow, the seasons that laugh or that weep;", "For these give joy and sorrow; but thou, Proserpina, sleep.", "Sweet is the treading of wine, and sweet the feet of the dove;", "But a goodlier gift is thine than foam of the grapes or love.", "Yea, is not even Apollo, with hair and harpstring of gold,", "A bitter God to follow, a beautiful God to behold?", "I am sick of singing; the bays burn deep and chafe: I am fain", "To rest a little from praise and grievous pleasure and pain.", "For the Gods we know not of, who give us our daily breath,", "We know they are cruel as love or life, and lovely as death.", "O Gods dethroned and deceased, cast forth, wiped out in a day!", "From your wrath is the world released, redeemed from your chains, men say.", "New Gods are crowned in the city; their flowers have broken your rods;", "They are merciful, clothed with pity, the young compassionate Gods.", "But for me their new device is barren, the days are bare;", "Things long past over suffice, and men forgotten that were.", "Time and the Gods are at strife; ye dwell in the midst thereof,", "Draining a little life from the barren breasts of love.", "I say to you, cease, take rest; yea, I say to you all, be at peace,", "Till the bitter milk of her breast and the barren bosom shall cease.", "Wilt thou take all, Galilean? but these thou shalt not take,", "The laurel, the palms and the paean, the breasts of the nymphs in the brake;", "Breasts more soft than a dove's, that tremble with tenderer breath;", "And all the wings of the Loves, and all the joy before death;", "All the feet of the hours that sound as a single lyre,", "Dropped and deep in the flowers, with strings that flicker like fire.", "More than these wilt thou give, things fairer than all these things?", "Nay, for a little we live, and life hath mutable wings.", "A little while and we die; shall life not thrive as it may?", "For no man under the sky lives twice, outliving his day.", "And grief is a grievous thing, and a man hath enough of his tears:", "Why should he labour, and bring fresh grief to blacken his years?", "Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean; the world has grown grey from thy breath;", "We have drunken of things Lethean, and fed on the fullness of death.", "Laurel is green for a season, and love is sweet for a day;", "But love grows bitter with treason, and laurel outlives not May.", "Sleep, shall we sleep after all? for the world is not sweet in the end;", "For the old faiths loosen and fall, the new years ruin and rend.", "Fate is a sea without shore, and the soul is a rock that abides;", "But her ears are vexed with the roar and her face with the foam of the tides.", "O lips that the live blood faints in, the leavings of racks and rods!", "O ghastly glories of saints, dead limbs of gibbeted Gods!", "Though all men abase them before you in spirit, and all knees bend,", "I kneel not neither adore you, but standing, look to the end.", "All delicate days and pleasant, all spirits and sorrows are cast", "Far out with the foam of the present that sweeps to the surf of the past:", "Where beyond the extreme sea-wall, and between the remote sea-gates,", "Waste water washes, and tall ships founder, and deep death waits:", "Where, mighty with deepening sides, clad about with the seas as with wings,", "And impelled of invisible tides, and fulfilled of unspeakable things,", "White-eyed and poisonous-finned, shark-toothed and serpentine-curled,", "Rolls, under the whitening wind of the future, the wave of the world.", "The depths stand naked in sunder behind it, the storms flee away;", "In the hollow before it the thunder is taken and snared as a prey;", "In its sides is the north-wind bound; and its salt is of all men's tears;", "With light of ruin, and sound of changes, and pulse of years:", "With travail of day after day, and with trouble of hour upon hour;", "And bitter as blood is the spray; and the crests are as fangs that devour:", "And its vapour and storm of its steam as the sighing of spirits to be;", "And its noise as the noise in a dream; and its depth as the roots of the sea:", "And the height of its heads as the height of the utmost stars of the air:", "And the ends of the earth at the might thereof tremble, and time is made bare.", "Will ye bridle the deep sea with reins, will ye chasten the high sea with rods?", "Will ye take her to chain her with chains, who is older than all ye Gods?", "All ye as a wind shall go by, as a fire shall ye pass and be past;", "Ye are Gods, and behold, ye shall die, and the waves be upon you at last.", "In the darkness of time, in the deeps of the years, in the changes of things,", "Ye shall sleep as a slain man sleeps, and the world shall forget you for kings.", "Though the feet of thine high priests tread where thy lords and our forefathers trod,", "Though these that were Gods are dead, and thou being dead art a God,", "Though before thee the throned Cytherean be fallen, and hidden her head,", "Yet thy kingdom shall pass, Galilean, thy dead shall go down to thee dead.", "Of the maiden thy mother men sing as a goddess with grace clad around;", "Thou art throned where another was king; where another was queen she is crowned.", "Yea, once we had sight of another: but now she is queen, say these.", "Not as thine, not as thine was our mother, a blossom of flowering seas,", "Clothed round with the world's desire as with raiment, and fair as the foam,", "And fleeter than kindled fire, and a goddess, and mother of Rome.", "For thine came pale and a maiden, and sister to sorrow; but ours,", "Her deep hair heavily laden with odour and colour of flowers,", "White rose of the rose-white water, a silver splendour, a flame,", "Bent down unto us that besought her, and earth grew sweet with her name.", "For thine came weeping, a slave among slaves, and rejected; but she", "Came flushed from the full-flushed wave, and imperial, her foot on the sea.", "And the wonderful waters knew her, the winds and the viewless ways,", "And the roses grew rosier, and bluer the sea-blue stream of the bays.", "Ye are fallen, our lords, by what token? we wise that ye should not fall.", "Ye were all so fair that are broken; and one more fair than ye all.", "But I turn to her still, having seen she shall surely abide in the end;", "Goddess and maiden and queen, be near me now and befriend.", "O daughter of earth, of my mother, her crown and blossom of birth,", "I am also, I also, thy brother; I go as I came unto earth.", "In the night where thine eyes are as moons are in heaven, the night where thou art,", "Where the silence is more than all tunes, where sleep overflows from the heart,", "Where the poppies are sweet as the rose in our world, and the red rose is white,", "And the wind falls faint as it blows with the fume of the flowers of the night,", "And the murmur of spirits that sleep in the shadow of Gods from afar", "Grows dim in thine ears and deep as the deep dim soul of a star,", "In the sweet low light of thy face, under heavens untrod by the sun,", "Let my soul with their souls find place, and forget what is done and undone.", "Thou art more than the Gods who number the days of our temporal breath;", "Let these give labour and slumber; but thou, Proserpina, death.", "Therefore now at thy feet I abide for a season in silence. I know", "I shall die as my fathers died, and sleep as they sleep, even so.", "For the glass of the years is brittle wherein we gaze for a span;", "A little soul for a little bears up this corpse which is man.", "So long I endure, no longer; and laugh not again, neither weep.", "For there is no God found stronger than death; and death is a sleep." ], "linecount": "111" }, { "title": "Dedication To Joseph Mazzini", "author": "Algernon Charles Swinburne", "lines": [ "Take, since you bade it should bear,", "These, of the seed of your sowing,", "Blossom or berry or weed.", "Sweet though they be not, or fair,", "That the dew of your word kept growing,", "Sweet at least was the seed.", "", "Men bring you love-offerings of tears,", "And sorrow the kiss that assuages,", "And slaves the hate-offering of wrongs,", "And time the thanksgiving of years,", "And years the thanksgiving of ages;", "I bring you my handful of songs.", "", "If a perfume be left, if a bloom,", "Let it live till Italia be risen,", "To be strewn in the dust of her car", "When her voice shall awake from the tomb", "England, and France from her prison,", "Sisters, a star by a star.", "", "I bring you the sword of a song,", "The sword of my spirit's desire,", "Feeble; but laid at your feet,", "That which was weak shall be strong,", "That which was cold shall take fire,", "That which was bitter be sweet.", "", "It was wrought not with hands to smite,", "Nor hewn after swordsmiths' fashion,", "Nor tempered on anvil of steel;", "But with visions and dreams of the night,", "But with hope, and the patience of passion,", "And the signet of love for a seal.", "", "Be it witness, till one more strong,", "Till a loftier lyre, till a rarer", "Lute praise her better than I,", "Be it witness before you, my song,", "That I knew her, the world's banner-bearer,", "Who shall cry the republican cry.", "", "Yea, even she as at first,", "Yea, she alone and none other,", "Shall cast down, shall build up, shall bring home;", "Slake earth's hunger and thirst,", "Lighten, and lead as a mother;", "First name of the world's names, Rome." ], "linecount": "42" }, { "title": "Music: An Ode", "author": "Algernon Charles Swinburne", "lines": [ "WAS it light that spake from the darkness,", "or music that shone from the word,", "When the night was enkindled with sound", "of the sun or the first-born bird?", "Souls enthralled and entrammelled in bondage", "of seasons that fall and rise,", "Bound fast round with the fetters of flesh,", "and blinded with light that dies,", "Lived not surely till music spake,", "and the spirit of life was heard.", "", "Music, sister of sunrise, and herald of life to be,", "Smiled as dawn on the spirit of man,", "and the thrall was free.", "Slave of nature and serf of time,", "the bondman of life and death,", "Dumb with passionless patience that breathed", "but forlorn and reluctant breath,", "Heard, beheld, and his soul made answer,", "and communed aloud with the sea.", "", "Morning spake, and he heard:", "and the passionate silent noon", "Kept for him not silence:", "and soft from the mounting moon", "Fell the sound of her splendour,", "heard as dawn's in the breathless night,", "Not of men but of birds whose note", "bade man's soul quicken and leap to light:", "And the song of it spake, and the light and the darkness", "of earth were as chords in tune." ], "linecount": "29" }, { "title": "Blessed Among Women --To The Signora Cairoli", "author": "Algernon Charles Swinburne", "lines": [ "Blessed was she that bare,", "Hidden in flesh most fair,", "For all men's sake the likeness of all love;", "Holy that virgin's womb,", "The old record saith, on whom", "The glory of God alighted as a dove;", "Blessed, who brought to gracious birth", "The sweet-souled Saviour of a man-tormented earth." ], "linecount": "8" }, { "title": "Hope and Fear", "author": "Algernon Charles Swinburne", "lines": [ "Beneath the shadow of dawn's aërial cope,", "With eyes enkindled as the sun's own sphere,", "Hope from the front of youth in godlike cheer", "Looks Godward, past the shades where blind men grope", "Round the dark door that prayers nor dreams can ope,", "And makes for joy the very darkness dear", "That gives her wide wings play; nor dreams that fear", "At noon may rise and pierce the heart of hope.", "Then, when the soul leaves off to dream and yearn,", "May truth first purge her eyesight to discern", "What, once being known, leaves time no power to appall;", "Till yoiuth at last, ere yet youth be not, learn", "The kind wise word that falls from years that fall--", "\"Hope thou not much, and fear thou not at all.\"" ], "linecount": "14" }, { "title": "A Ballad of Death", "author": "Algernon Charles Swinburne", "lines": [ "Kneel down, fair Love, and fill thyself with tears,", "Girdle thyself with sighing for a girth", "Upon the sides of mirth,", "Cover thy lips and eyelids, let thine ears", "Be filled with rumour of people sorrowing;", "Make thee soft raiment out of woven sighs", "Upon the flesh to cleave,", "Set pains therein and many a grievous thing,", "And many sorrows after each his wise", "For armlet and for gorget and for sleeve.", "", "O Love's lute heard about the lands of death,", "Left hanged upon the trees that were therein;", "O Love and Time and Sin,", "Three singing mouths that mourn now underbreath,", "Three lovers, each one evil spoken of;", "O smitten lips wherethrough this voice of mine", "Came softer with her praise;", "Abide a little for our lady's love.", "The kisses of her mouth were more than wine,", "And more than peace the passage of her days.", "", "O Love, thou knowest if she were good to see.", "O Time, thou shalt not find in any land", "Till, cast out of thine hand,", "The sunlight and the moonlight fail from thee,", "Another woman fashioned like as this.", "O Sin, thou knowest that all thy shame in her", "Was made a goodly thing;", "Yea, she caught Shame and shamed him with her kiss,", "With her fair kiss, and lips much lovelier", "Than lips of amorous roses in late spring.", "", "By night there stood over against my bed", "Queen Venus with a hood striped gold and black,", "Both sides drawn fully back", "From brows wherein the sad blood failed of red,", "And temples drained of purple and full of death.", "Her curled hair had the wave of sea-water", "And the sea's gold in it.", "Her eyes were as a dove's that sickeneth.", "Strewn dust of gold she had shed over her,", "And pearl and purple and amber on her feet.", "", "Upon her raiment of dyed sendaline", "Were painted all the secret ways of love", "And covered things thereof,", "That hold delight as grape-flowers hold their wine;", "Red mouths of maidens and red feet of doves,", "And brides that kept within the bride-chamber", "Their garment of soft shame,", "And weeping faces of the wearied loves", "That swoon in sleep and awake wearier,", "With heat of lips and hair shed out like flame.", "", "The tears that through her eyelids fell on me", "Made mine own bitter where they ran between", "As blood had fallen therein,", "She saying; Arise, lift up thine eyes and see", "If any glad thing be or any good", "Now the best thing is taken forth of us;", "Even she to whom all praise", "Was as one flower in a great multitude,", "One glorious flower of many and glorious,", "One day found gracious among many days:", "", "Even she whose handmaiden was Love--to whom", "At kissing times across her stateliest bed", "Kings bowed themselves and shed", "Pale wine, and honey with the honeycomb,", "And spikenard bruised for a burnt-offering;", "Even she between whose lips the kiss became", "As fire and frankincense;", "Whose hair was as gold raiment on a king,", "Whose eyes were as the morning purged with flame,", "Whose eyelids as sweet savour issuing thence.", "", "Then I beheld, and lo on the other side", "My lady's likeness crowned and robed and dead.", "Sweet still, but now not red,", "Was the shut mouth whereby men lived and died.", "And sweet, but emptied of the blood's blue shade,", "The great curled eyelids that withheld her eyes.", "And sweet, but like spoilt gold,", "The weight of colour in her tresses weighed.", "And sweet, but as a vesture with new dyes,", "The body that was clothed with love of old.", "", "Ah! that my tears filled all her woven hair", "And all the hollow bosom of her gown--", "Ah! that my tears ran down", "Even to the place where many kisses were,", "Even where her parted breast-flowers have place,", "Even where they are cloven apart--who knows not this?", "Ah! the flowers cleave apart", "And their sweet fills the tender interspace;", "Ah! the leaves grown thereof were things to kiss", "Ere their fine gold was tarnished at the heart.", "", "Ah! in the days when God did good to me,", "Each part about her was a righteous thing;", "Her mouth an almsgiving,", "The glory of her garments charity,", "The beauty of her bosom a good deed,", "In the good days when God kept sight of us;", "Love lay upon her eyes,", "And on that hair whereof the world takes heed;", "And all her body was more virtuous", "Than souls of women fashioned otherwise.", "", "Now, ballad, gather poppies in thine hands", "And sheaves of brier and many rusted sheaves", "Rain-rotten in rank lands,", "Waste marigold and late unhappy leaves", "And grass that fades ere any of it be mown;", "And when thy bosom is filled full thereof", "Seek out Death's face ere the light altereth,", "And say \"My master that was thrall to Love", "Is become thrall to Death.\"", "Bow down before him, ballad, sigh and groan.", "But make no sojourn in thy outgoing;", "For haply it may be", "That when thy feet return at evening", "Death shall come in with thee." ], "linecount": "114" }, { "title": "The Year of the Rose", "author": "Algernon Charles Swinburne", "lines": [ "From the depths of the green garden-closes", "Where the summer in darkness dozes", "Till autumn pluck from his hand", "An hour-glass that holds not a sand;", "From the maze that a flower-belt encloses", "To the stones and sea-grass on the strand", "How red was the reign of the roses", "Over the rose-crowned land!", "", "The year of the rose is brief;", "From the first blade blown to the sheaf,", "From the thin green leaf to the gold,", "It has time to be sweet and grow old,", "To triumph and leave not a leaf", "For witness in winter's sight", "How lovers once in the light", "Would mix their breath with its breath,", "And its spirit was quenched not of night,", "As love is subdued not of death.", "", "In the red-rose land not a mile", "Of the meadows from stile to stile,", "Of the valleys from stream to stream,", "But the air was a long sweet dream", "And the earth was a sweet wide smile", "Red-mouthed of a goddess, returned", "From the sea which had borne her and burned,", "That with one swift smile of her mouth", "Looked full on the north as it yearned,", "And the north was more than the south.", "", "For the north, when winter was long,", "In his heart had made him a song,", "And clothed it with wings of desire,", "And shod it with shoon as of fire,", "To carry the tale of his wrong", "To the south-west wind by the sea,", "That none might bear it but he", "To the ear of the goddess unknown", "Who waits till her time shall be", "To take the world for a throne.", "", "In the earth beneath, and above", "In the heaven where her name is love,", "She warms with light from her eyes", "The seasons of life as they rise,", "And her eyes are as eyes of a dove,", "But the wings that lift her and bear", "As an eagle's, and all her hair", "As fire by the wind's breath curled,", "And her passage is song through the air,", "And her presence is spring through the world.", "", "So turned she northward and came,", "And the white-thorn land was aflame", "With the fires that were shed from her feet,", "That the north, by her love made sweet,", "Should be called by a rose-red name;", "And a murmur was heard as of doves,", "And a music beginning of loves", "In the light that the roses made,", "Such light as the music loves,", "The music of man with maid.", "", "But the days drop one upon one,", "And a chill soft wind is begun", "In the heart of the rose-red maze", "That weeps for the roseleaf days", "And the reign of the rose undone", "That ruled so long in the light,", "And by spirit, and not by sight,", "Through the darkness thrilled with its breath,", "Still ruled in the viewless night,", "As love might rule over death.", "", "The time of lovers is brief;", "From the fair first joy to the grief", "That tells when love is grown old,", "From the warm wild kiss to the cold,", "From the red to the white-rose leaf,", "They have but a season to seem", "As rose-leaves lost on a stream", "That part not and pass not apart", "As a spirit from dream to dream,", "As a sorrow from heart to heart.", "", "From the bloom and the gloom that encloses", "The death-bed of Love where he dozes", "Till a relic be left not of sand", "To the hour-glass that breaks in his hand;", "From the change in the grey garden-closes", "To the last stray grass of the strand,", "A rain and ruin of roses", "Over the red-rose land." ], "linecount": "86" }, { "title": "Hertha", "author": "Algernon Charles Swinburne", "lines": [ "I AM that which began;", " Out of me the years roll;", " Out of me God and man;", " I am equal and whole;", "God changes, and man, and the form of them bodily; I am the soul.", "", " Before ever land was,", " Before ever the sea,", " Or soft hair of the grass,", " Or fair limbs of the tree,", "Or the flesh-colour'd fruit of my branches, I was, and thy soul was in", "me.", "", " First life on my sources", " First drifted and swam;", " Out of me are the forces", " That save it or damn;", "Out of me man and woman, and wild-beast and bird: before God was, I", "am.", "", " Beside or above me", " Naught is there to go;", " Love or unlove me,", " Unknow me or know,", "I am that which unloves me and loves; I am stricken, and I am the", "blow.", "", " I the mark that is miss'd", " And the arrows that miss,", " I the mouth that is kiss'd", " And the breath in the kiss,", "The search, and the sought, and the seeker, the soul and the body that", "is.", "", " I am that thing which blesses", " My spirit elate;", " That which caresses", " With hands uncreate", "My limbs unbegotten that measure the length of the measure of fate.", "", " But what thing dost thou now,", " Looking Godward, to cry,", " 'I am I, thou art thou,", " I am low, thou art high'?", "I am thou, whom thou seekest to find him; find thou but thyself, thou", "art I.", "", " I the grain and the furrow,", " The plough-cloven clod", " And the ploughshare drawn thorough,", " The germ and the sod,", "The deed and the doer, the seed and the sower, the dust which is God.", "", " Hast thou known how I fashion'd thee,", " Child, underground?", " Fire that impassion'd thee,", " Iron that bound,", "Dim changes of water, what thing of all these hast thou known of or", "found?", "", " Canst thou say in thine heart", " Thou hast seen with thine eyes", " With what cunning of art", " Thou wast wrought in what wise,", "By what force of what stuff thou wast shapen, and shown on my breast", "to the skies?", "", " Who hath given, who hath sold it thee,", " Knowledge of me?", " Has the wilderness told it thee?", " Hast thou learnt of the sea?", "Hast thou communed in spirit with night? have the winds taken counsel", "with thee?", "", " Have I set such a star", " To show light on thy brow", " That thou sawest from afar", " What I show to thee now?", "Have ye spoken as brethren together, the sun and the mountains and", "thou?", "", " What is here, dost thou know it?", " What was, hast thou known?", " Prophet nor poet", " Nor tripod nor throne", "Nor spirit nor flesh can make answer, but only thy mother alone.", "", " Mother, not maker,", " Born, and not made;", " Though her children forsake her,", " Allured or afraid,", "Praying prayers to the God of their fashion, she stirs not for all", "that have pray'd.", "", " A creed is a rod,", " And a crown is of night;", " But this thing is God,", " To be man with thy might,", "To grow straight in the strength of thy spirit, and live out thy life", "as the light.", "", " I am in thee to save thee,", " As my soul in thee saith;", " Give thou as I gave thee,", " Thy life-blood and breath,", "Green leaves of thy labour, white flowers of thy thought, and red", "fruit of thy death.", "", " Be the ways of thy giving", " As mine were to thee;", " The free life of thy living,", " Be the gift of it free;", "Not as servant to lord, nor as master to slave, shalt thou give thee", "to me.", "", " O children of banishment,", " Souls overcast,", " Were the lights ye see vanish meant", " Alway to last,", "Ye would know not the sun overshining the shadows and stars overpast.", "", " I that saw where ye trod", " The dim paths of the night", " Set the shadow call'd God", " In your skies to give light;", "But the morning of manhood is risen, and the shadowless soul is in", "sight.", "", " The tree many-rooted", " That swells to the sky", " With frondage red-fruited,", " The life-tree am I;", "In the buds of your lives is the sap of my leaves: ye shall live and", "not die.", "", " But the Gods of your fashion", " That take and that give,", " In their pity and passion", " That scourge and forgive,", "They are worms that are bred in the bark that falls off; they shall", "die and not live.", "", " My own blood is what stanches", " The wounds in my bark;", " Stars caught in my branches", " Make day of the dark,", "And are worshipp'd as suns till the sunrise shall tread out their", "fires as a spark.", "", " Where dead ages hide under", " The live roots of the tree,", " In my darkness the thunder", " Makes utterance of me;", "In the clash of my boughs with each other ye hear the waves sound of", "the sea.", "", " That noise is of Time,", " As his feathers are spread", " And his feet set to climb", " Through the boughs overhead,", "And my foliage rings round him and rustles, and branches are bent with", "his tread.", "", " The storm-winds of ages", " Blow through me and cease,", " The war-wind that rages,", " The spring-wind of peace,", "Ere the breath of them roughen my tresses, ere one of my blossoms", "increase.", "", " All sounds of all changes,", " All shadows and lights", " On the world's mountain-ranges", " And stream-riven heights,", "Whose tongue is the wind's tongue and language of storm-clouds on", "earth-shaking nights;", "", " All forms of all faces,", " All works of all hands", " In unsearchable places", " Of time-stricken lands,", "All death and all life, and all reigns and all ruins, drop through me", "as sands.", "", " Though sore be my burden", " And more than ye know,", " And my growth have no guerdon", " But only to grow,", "Yet I fail not of growing for lightnings above me or deathworms below.", "", " These too have their part in me,", " As I too in these;", " Such fire is at heart in me,", " Such sap is this tree's,", "Which hath in it all sounds and all secrets of infinite lands and of", "seas.", "", " In the spring-colour'd hours", " When my mind was as May's", " There brake forth of me flowers", " By centuries of days,", "Strong blossoms with perfume of manhood, shot out from my spirit as", "rays.", "", " And the sound of them springing", " And smell of their shoots", " Were as warmth and sweet singing", " And strength to my roots;", "And the lives of my children made perfect with freedom of soul were my", "fruits.", "", " I bid you but be;", " I have need not of prayer;", " I have need of you free", " As your mouths of mine air;", "That my heart may be greater within me, beholding the fruits of me", "fair.", "", " More fair than strange fruit is", " Of faiths ye espouse;", " In me only the root is", " That blooms in your boughs;", "Behold now your God that ye made you, to feed him with faith of your", "vows.", "", " In the darkening and whitening", " Abysses adored,", " With dayspring and lightning", " For lamp and for sword,", "God thunders in heaven, and his angels are red with the wrath of the", "Lord.", "", " O my sons, O too dutiful", " Toward Gods not of me,", " Was not I enough beautiful?", " Was it hard to be free?", "For behold, I am with you, am in you and of you; look forth now and", "see.", "", " Lo, wing'd with world's wonders,", " With miracles shod,", " With the fires of his thunders", " For raiment and rod,", "God trembles in heaven, and his angels are white with the terror of", "God.", "", " For his twilight is come on him,", " His anguish is here;", " And his spirits gaze dumb on him,", " Grown gray from his fear;", "And his hour taketh hold on him stricken, the last of his infinite", "year.", "", " Thought made him and breaks him,", " Truth slays and forgives;", " But to you, as time takes him,", " This new thing it gives,", "Even love, the beloved Republic, that feeds upon freedom and lives.", "", " For truth only is living,", " Truth only is whole,", " And the love of his giving", " Man's polestar and pole;", "Man, pulse of my centre, and fruit of my body, and seed of my soul.", "", " One birth of my bosom;", " One beam of mine eye;", " One topmost blossom", " That scales the sky;", "Man, equal and one with me, man that is made of me, man that is I." ], "linecount": "231" }, { "title": "Time And Life", "author": "Algernon Charles Swinburne", "lines": [ "I.", "", "Time, thy name is sorrow, says the stricken", "Heart of life, laid waste with wasting flame", "Ere the change of things and thoughts requicken,", "Time, thy name.", "", "Girt about with shadow, blind and lame,", "Ghosts of things that smite and thoughts that sicken", "Hunt and hound thee down to death and shame.", "", "Eyes of hours whose paces halt or quicken", "Read in bloodred lines of loss and blame,", "Writ where cloud and darkness round it thicken,", "Time, thy name.", "", "II.", "", "Nay, but rest is born of me for healing,", "- So might haply time, with voice represt,", "Speak: is grief the last gift of my dealing?", "Nay, but rest.", "", "All the world is wearied, east and west,", "Tired with toil to watch the slow sun wheeling,", "Twelve loud hours of life's laborious quest.", "", "Eyes forspent with vigil, faint and reeling,", "Find at last my comfort, and are blest,", "Not with rapturous light of life's revealing -", "Nay, but rest." ], "linecount": "24" }, { "title": "Hymn Of Man", "author": "Algernon Charles Swinburne", "lines": [ "In the grey beginning of years, in the twilight of things that began,", "The word of the earth in the ears of the world, was it God? was it man?", "The word of the earth to the spheres her sisters, the note of her song,", "The sound of her speech in the ears of the starry and sisterly throng,", "Was it praise or passion or prayer, was it love or devotion or dread,", "When the veils of the shining air first wrapt her jubilant head?", "When her eyes new-born of the night saw yet no star out of reach;", "When her maiden mouth was alight with the flame of musical speech;", "When her virgin feet were set on the terrible heavenly way,", "And her virginal lids were wet with the dew of the birth of the day:", "Eyes that had looked not on time, and ears that had heard not of death;", "Lips that had learnt not the rhyme of change and passionate breath,", "The rhythmic anguish of growth, and the motion of mutable things,", "Of love that longs and is loth, and plume-plucked hope without wings,", "Passions and pains without number, and life that runs and is lame,", "From slumber again to slumber, the same race set for the same,", "Where the runners outwear each other, but running with lampless hands", "No man takes light from his brother till blind at the goal he stands:", "Ah, did they know, did they dream of it, counting the cost and the worth?", "The ways of her days, did they seem then good to the new-souled earth?", "Did her heart rejoice, and the might of her spirit exult in her then,", "Child yet no child of the night, and motherless mother of men?", "Was it Love brake forth flower-fashion, a bird with gold on his wings,", "Lovely, her firstborn passion, and impulse of firstborn things?", "Was Love that nestling indeed that under the plumes of the night", "Was hatched and hidden as seed in the furrow, and brought forth bright?", "Was it Love lay shut in the shell world-shaped, having over him there", "Black world-wide wings that impel the might of the night through air?", "And bursting his shell as a bird, night shook through her sail-stretched vans,", "And her heart as a water was stirred, and its heat was the firstborn man's.", "For the waste of the dead void air took form of a world at birth,", "And the waters and firmaments were, and light, and the life-giving earth.", "The beautiful bird unbegotten that night brought forth without pain", "In the fathomless years forgotten whereover the dead gods reign,", "Was it love, life, godhead, or fate? we say the spirit is one", "That moved on the dark to create out of darkness the stars and the sun.", "Before the growth was the grower, and the seed ere the plant was sown;", "But what was seed of the sower? and the grain of him, whence was it grown?", "Foot after foot ye go back and travail and make yourselves mad;", "Blind feet that feel for the track where highway is none to be had.", "Therefore the God that ye make you is grievous, and gives not aid,", "Because it is but for your sake that the God of your making is made.", "Thou and I and he are not gods made men for a span,", "But God, if a God there be, is the substance of men which is man.", "Our lives are as pulses or pores of his manifold body and breath;", "As waves of his sea on the shores where birth is the beacon of death.", "We men, the multiform features of man, whatsoever we be,", "Recreate him of whom we are creatures, and all we only are he.", "Not each man of all men is God, but God is the fruit of the whole;", "Indivisible spirit and blood, indiscernible body from soul.", "Not men's but man's is the glory of godhead, the kingdom of time,", "The mountainous ages made hoary with snows for the spirit to climb.", "A God with the world inwound whose clay to his footsole clings;", "A manifold God fast-bound as with iron of adverse things.", "A soul that labours and lives, an emotion, a strenuous breath,", "From the flame that its own mouth gives reillumed, and refreshed with death.", "In the sea whereof centuries are waves the live God plunges and swims;", "His bed is in all men's graves, but the worm hath not hold on his limbs.", "Night puts out not his eyes, nor time sheds change on his head;", "With such fire as the stars of the skies are the roots of his heart are fed.", "Men are the thoughts passing through it, the veins that fulfil it with blood,", "With spirit of sense to renew it as springs fulfilling a flood.", "Men are the heartbeats of man, the plumes that feather his wings,", "Storm-worn, since being began, with the wind and thunder of things.", "Things are cruel and blind; their strength detains and deforms:", "And the wearying wings of the mind still beat up the stream of their storms.", "Still, as one swimming up stream, they strike out blind in the blast,", "In thunders of vision and dream, and lightnings of future and past.", "We are baffled and caught in the current and bruised upon edges of shoals;", "As weeds or as reeds in the torrent of things are the wind-shaken souls.", "Spirit by spirit goes under, a foam-bell's bubble of breath,", "That blows and opens in sunder and blurs not the mirror of death.", "For a worm or a thorn in his path is a man's soul quenched as a flame;", "For his lust of an hour or his wrath shall the worm and the man be the same.", "O God sore stricken of things! they have wrought him a raiment of pain;", "Can a God shut eyelids and wings at a touch on the nerves of the brain?", "O shamed and sorrowful God, whose force goes out at a blow!", "What world shall shake at his nod? at his coming what wilderness glow?", "What help in the work of his hands? what light in the track of his feet?", "His days are snowflakes or sands, with cold to consume him and heat.", "He is servant with Change for lord, and for wages he hath to his hire", "Folly and force, and a sword that devours, and a ravening fire.", "From the bed of his birth to his grave he is driven as a wind at their will;", "Lest Change bow down as his slave, and the storm and the sword be still;", "Lest earth spread open her wings to the sunward, and sing with the spheres;", "Lest man be master of things, to prevail on their forces and fears.", "By the spirit are things overcome; they are stark, and the spirit hath breath;", "It hath speech, and their forces are dumb; it is living, and things are of death.", "But they know not the spirit for master, they feel not force from above,", "While man makes love to disaster, and woos desolation with love.", "Yea, himself too hath made himself chains, and his own hands plucked out his eyes;", "For his own soul only constrains him, his own mouth only denies.", "The herds of kings and their hosts and the flocks of the high priests bow", "To a master whose face is a ghost's; O thou that wast God, is it thou?", "Thou madest man in the garden; thou temptedst man, and he fell;", "Thou gavest him poison and pardon for blood and burnt-offering to sell.", "Thou hast sealed thine elect to salvation, fast locked with faith for the key;", "Make now for thyself expiation, and be thine atonement for thee.", "Ah, thou that darkenest heaven--ah, thou that bringest a sword -", "By the crimes of thine hands unforgiven they beseech thee to hear them, O Lord.", "By the balefires of ages that burn for thine incense, by creed and by rood,", "By the famine and passion that yearn and that hunger to find of thee food,", "By the children that asked at thy throne of the priests that were fat with thine hire", "For bread, and thou gavest a stone; for light, and thou madest them fire;", "By the kiss of thy peace like a snake's kiss, that leaves the soul rotten at root;", "By the savours of gibbets and stakes thou hast planted to bear to thee fruit;", "By torture and terror and treason, that make to thee weapons and wings;", "By thy power upon men for a season, made out of the malice of things;", "O thou that hast built thee a shrine of the madness of man and his shame,", "And hast hung in the midst for a sign of his worship the lamp of thy name;", "That hast shown him for heaven in a vision a void world's shadow and shell,", "And hast fed thy delight and derision with fire of belief as of hell;", "That hast fleshed on the souls that believe thee the fang of the death-worm fear,", "With anguish of dreams to deceive them whose faith cries out in thine ear;", "By the face of the spirit confounded before thee and humbled in dust,", "By the dread wherewith life was astounded and shamed out of sense of its trust,", "By the scourges of doubt and repentance that fell on the soul at thy nod,", "Thou art judged, O judge, and the sentence is gone forth against thee, O God.", "Thy slave that slept is awake; thy slave but slept for a span;", "Yea, man thy slave shall unmake thee, who made thee lord over man.", "For his face is set to the east, his feet on the past and its dead;", "The sun rearisen is his priest, and the heat thereof hallows his head.", "His eyes take part in the morning; his spirit out-sounding the sea", "Asks no more witness or warning from temple or tripod or tree.", "He hath set the centuries at union; the night is afraid at his name;", "Equal with life, in communion with death, he hath found them the same.", "Past the wall unsurmounted that bars out our vision with iron and fire", "He hath sent forth his soul for the stars to comply with and suns to conspire.", "His thought takes flight for the centre wherethrough it hath part in the whole;", "The abysses forbid it not enter: the stars make room for the soul.", "Space is the soul's to inherit; the night is hers as the day;", "Lo, saith man, this is my spirit; how shall not the worlds make way?", "Space is thought's, and the wonders thereof, and the secret of space;", "Is thought not more than the thunders and lightnings? shall thought give place?", "Is the body not more than the vesture, the life not more than the meat?", "The will than the word or the gesture, the heart than the hands or the feet?", "Is the tongue not more than the speech is? the head not more than the crown?", "And if higher than is heaven be the reach of the soul, shall not heaven bow down?", "Time, father of life, and more great than the life it begat and began,", "Earth's keeper and heaven's and their fate, lives, thinks, and hath substance in man.", "Time's motion that throbs in his blood is the thought that gives heart to the skies,", "And the springs of the fire that is food to the sunbeams are light to his eyes.", "The minutes that beat with his heart are the words to which worlds keep chime,", "And the thought in his pulses is part of the blood and the spirit of time.", "He saith to the ages, Give; and his soul foregoes not her share;", "Who are ye that forbid him to live, and would feed him with heavenlier air?", "Will ye feed him with poisonous dust, and restore him with hemlock for drink,", "Till he yield you his soul up in trust, and have heart not to know or to think?", "He hath stirred him, and found out the flaw in his fetters, and cast them behind;", "His soul to his soul is a law, and his mind is a light to his mind.", "The seal of his knowledge is sure, the truth and his spirit are wed;", "Men perish, but man shall endure; lives die, but the life is not dead.", "He hath sight of the secrets of season, the roots of the years and the fruits;", "His soul is at one with the reason of things that is sap to the roots.", "He can hear in their changes a sound as the conscience of consonant spheres;", "He can see through the years flowing round him the law lying under the years.", "Who are ye that would bind him with curses and blind him with vapour of prayer?", "Your might is as night that disperses when light is alive in the air.", "The bow of your godhead is broken, the arm of your conquest is stayed;", "Though ye call down God to bear token, for fear of you none is afraid.", "Will ye turn back times, and the courses of stars, and the season of souls?", "Shall God's breath dry up the sources that feed time full as it rolls?", "Nay, cry on him then till he show you a sign, till he lift up a rod;", "Hath he made not the nations to know him of old if indeed he be God?", "Is no heat of him left in the ashes of thousands burnt up for his sake?", "Can prayer not rekindle the flashes that shone in his face from the stake?", "Cry aloud; for your God is a God and a Saviour; cry, make yourselves lean;", "Is he drunk or asleep, that the rod of his wrath is unfelt and unseen?", "Is the fire of his old loving-kindness gone out, that his pyres are acold?", "Hath he gazed on himself unto blindness, who made men blind to behold?", "Cry out, for his kingdom is shaken; cry out, for the people blaspheme;", "Cry aloud till his godhead awaken; what doth he to sleep and to dream?", "Cry, cut yourselves, gash you with knives and with scourges, heap on to you dust;", "Is his life but as other gods' lives? is not this the Lord God of your trust?", "Is not this the great God of your sires, that with souls and with bodies was fed,", "And the world was on flame with his fires? O fools, he was God, and is dead.", "He will hear not again the strong crying of earth in his ears as before,", "And the fume of his multitudes dying shall flatter his nostrils no more.", "By the spirit he ruled as his slave is he slain who was mighty to slay,", "And the stone that is sealed on his grave he shall rise not and roll not away.", "Yea, weep to him, lift up your hands; be your eyes as a fountain of tears;", "Where he stood there is nothing that stands; if he call, there is no man that hears.", "He hath doffed his king's raiment of lies now the wane of his kingdom is come;", "Ears hath he, and hears not; and eyes, and he sees not; and mouth, and is dumb.", "His red king's raiment is ripped from him naked, his staff broken down;", "And the signs of his empire are stripped from him shuddering; and where is his crown?", "And in vain by the wellsprings refrozen ye cry for the warmth of his sun -", "O God, the Lord God of thy chosen, thy will in thy kingdom be done.", "Kingdom and will hath he none in him left him, nor warmth in his breath;", "Till his corpse be cast out of the sun will ye know not the truth of his death?", "Surely, ye say, he is strong, though the times be against him and men;", "Yet a little, ye say, and how long, till he come to show judgment again?", "Shall God then die as the beasts die? who is it hath broken his rod?", "O God, Lord God of thy priests, rise up now and show thyself God.", "They cry out, thine elect, thine aspirants to heavenward, whose faith is as flame;", "O thou the Lord God of our tyrants, they call thee, their God, by thy name.", "By thy name that in hell-fire was written, and burned at the point of thy sword,", "Thou art smitten, thou God, thou art smitten; thy death is upon thee, O Lord.", "And the love-song of earth as thou diest resounds through the wind of her wings -", "Glory to Man in the highest! for Man is the master of things." ], "linecount": "200" }, { "title": "Nephelidia", "author": "Algernon Charles Swinburne", "lines": [ "From the depth of the dreamy decline of the dawn through a notable nimbus of nebulous noonshine,", "Pallid and pink as the palm of the flag-flower that flickers with fear of the flies as they float,", "Are they looks of our lovers that lustrously lean from a marvel of mystic miraculous moonshine,", "These that we feel in the blood of our blushes that thicken and threaten with throbs through the throat?", "Thicken and thrill as a theatre thronged at appeal of an actor's appalled agitation,", "Fainter with fear of the fires of the future than pale with the promise of pride in the past;", "Flushed with the famishing fullness of fever that reddens with radiance of rathe recreation,", "Gaunt as the ghastliest of glimpses that gleam through the gloom of the gloaming when ghosts go aghast?", "Nay, for the nick of the tick of the time is a tremulous touch on the temples of terror,", "Strained as the sinews yet strenuous with strife of the dead who is dumb as the dust-heaps of death:", "Surely no soul is it, sweet as the spasm of erotic emotional exquisite error,", "Bathed in the balms of beatified bliss, beatific itself by beatitude's breath.", "Surely no spirit or sense of a soul that was soft to the spirit and soul of our senses", "Sweetens the stress of suspiring suspicion that sobs in the semblance and sound of a sigh;", "Only this oracle opens Olympian, in mystical moods and triangular tenses--", "\"Life is the lust of a lamp for the light that is dark till the dawn of the day when we die.\"", "Mild is the mirk and monotonous music of memory, melodiously mute as it may be,", "While the hope in the heart of a hero is bruised by the breach of men's rapiers, resigned to the rod;", "Made meek as a mother whose bosom-beats bound with the bliss-bringing bulk of a balm-breathing baby,", "As they grope through the grave-yard of creeds, under skies growing green at a groan for the grimness of God.", "Blank is the book of his bounty beholden of old, and its binding is blacker than bluer:", "Out of blue into black is the scheme of the skies, and their dews are the wine of the bloodshed of things;", "Till the darkling desire of delight shall be free as a fawn that is freed from the fangs that pursue her,", "Till the heart-beats of hell shall be hushed by a hymn from the hunt that has harried the kennel of kings." ], "linecount": "24" }, { "title": "A Flower-Piece By Fantin", "author": "Algernon Charles Swinburne", "lines": [ "Heart's ease or pansy, pleasure or thought,", "Which would the picture give us of these?", "Surely the heart that conceived it sought", "Heart's ease.", "", "Surely by glad and divine degrees", "The heart impelling the hand that wrought", "Wrought comfort here for a soul's disease.", "", "Deep flowers, with lustre and darkness fraught,", "From glass that gleams as the chill still seas", "Lean and lend for a heart distraught", "Heart's ease." ], "linecount": "11" }, { "title": "Death And Birth", "author": "Algernon Charles Swinburne", "lines": [ "Death and birth should dwell not near together:", "Wealth keeps house not, even for shame, with dearth:", "Fate doth ill to link in one brief tether", "Death and birth.", "", "Harsh the yoke that binds them, strange the girth", "Seems that girds them each with each: yet whether", "Death be best, who knows, or life on earth?", "", "Ill the rose-red and the sable feather", "Blend in one crown's plume, as grief with mirth:", "Ill met still are warm and wintry weather,", "Death and birth." ], "linecount": "11" }, { "title": "Ave atque Vale (In memory of Charles Baudelaire)", "author": "Algernon Charles Swinburne", "lines": [ "SHALL I strew on thee rose or rue or laurel,", " Brother, on this that was the veil of thee?", " Or quiet sea-flower moulded by the sea,", "Or simplest growth of meadow-sweet or sorrel,", " Such as the summer-sleepy Dryads weave,", " Waked up by snow-soft sudden rains at eve?", "Or wilt thou rather, as on earth before,", " Half-faded fiery blossoms, pale with heat", " And full of bitter summer, but more sweet", "To thee than gleanings of a northern shore", " Trod by no tropic feet?", "", "For always thee the fervid languid glories", " Allured of heavier suns in mightier skies;", " Thine ears knew all the wandering watery sighs", "Where the sea sobs round Lesbian promontories,", " The barren kiss of piteous wave to wave", " That knows not where is that Leucadian grave", "Which hides too deep the supreme head of song.", " Ah, salt and sterile as her kisses were,", " The wild sea winds her and the green gulfs bear", "Hither and thither, and vex and work her wrong,", " Blind gods that cannot spare.", "", "Thou sawest, in thine old singing season, brother,", " Secrets and sorrows unbeheld of us:", " Fierce loves, and lovely leaf-buds poisonous,", "Bare to thy subtler eye, but for none other", " Blowing by night in some unbreathed-in clime;", " The hidden harvest of luxurious time,", "Sin without shape, and pleasure without speech;", " And where strange dreams in a tumultuous sleep", " Make the shut eyes of stricken spirits weep;", "And with each face thou sawest the shadow on each,", " Seeing as men sow men reap.", "", "O sleepless heart and sombre soul unsleeping,", " That were athirst for sleep and no more life", " And no more love, for peace and no more strife!", "Now the dim gods of death have in their keeping", " Spirit and body and all the springs of song,", " Is it well now where love can do no wrong,", "Where stingless pleasure has no foam or fang", " Behind the unopening closure of her lips?", " Is it not well where soul from body slips", "And flesh from bone divides without a pang", " As dew from flower-bell drips?", "", "It is enough; the end and the beginning", " Are one thing to thee, who art past the end.", " O hand unclasp'd of unbeholden friend,", "For thee no fruits to pluck, no palms for winning,", " No triumph and no labour and no lust,", " Only dead yew-leaves and a little dust.", "O quiet eyes wherein the light saith naught,", " Whereto the day is dumb, nor any night", " With obscure finger silences your sight,", "Nor in your speech the sudden soul speaks thought,", " Sleep, and have sleep for light.", "", "Now all strange hours and all strange loves are over,", " Dreams and desires and sombre songs and sweet,", " Hast thou found place at the great knees and feet", "Of some pale Titan-woman like a lover,", " Such as thy vision here solicited,", " Under the shadow of her fair vast head,", "The deep division of prodigious breasts,", " The solemn slope of mighty limbs asleep,", " The weight of awful tresses that still keep", "The savour and shade of old-world pine-forests", " Where the wet hill-winds weep?", "", "Hast thou found any likeness for thy vision?", " O gardener of strange flowers, what bud, what bloom,", " Hast thou found sown, what gather'd in the gloom?", "What of despair, of rapture, of derision,", " What of life is there, what of ill or good?", " Are the fruits gray like dust or bright like blood?", "Does the dim ground grow any seed of ours,", " The faint fields quicken any terrene root,", " In low lands where the sun and moon are mute", "And all the stars keep silence? Are there flowers", " At all, or any fruit?", "", "Alas, but though my flying song flies after,", " O sweet strange elder singer, thy more fleet", " Singing, and footprints of thy fleeter feet,", "Some dim derision of mysterious laughter", " From the blind tongueless warders of the dead,", " Some gainless glimpse of Proserpine's veil'd head,", "Some little sound of unregarded tears", " Wept by effaced unprofitable eyes,", " And from pale mouths some cadence of dead sighs--", "These only, these the hearkening spirit hears,", " Sees only such things rise.", "", "Thou art far too far for wings of words to follow,", " Far too far off for thought or any prayer.", " What ails us with thee, who art wind and air?", "What ails us gazing where all seen is hollow?", " Yet with some fancy, yet with some desire,", " Dreams pursue death as winds a flying fire,", "Our dreams pursue our dead and do not find.", " Still, and more swift than they, the thin flame flies,", " The low light fails us in elusive skies,", "Still the foil'd earnest ear is deaf, and blind", " Are still the eluded eyes.", "", "Not thee, O never thee, in all time's changes,", " Not thee, but this the sound of thy sad soul,", " The shadow of thy swift spirit, this shut scroll", "I lay my hand on, and not death estranges", " My spirit from communion of thy song--", " These memories and these melodies that throng", "Veil'd porches of a Muse funereal--", " These I salute, these touch, these clasp and fold", " As though a hand were in my hand to hold,", "Or through mine ears a mourning musical", " Of many mourners roll'd.", "", "I among these, I also, in such station", " As when the pyre was charr'd, and piled the sods.", " And offering to the dead made, and their gods,", "The old mourners had, standing to make libation,", " I stand, and to the Gods and to the dead", " Do reverence without prayer or praise, and shed", "Offering to these unknown, the gods of gloom,", " And what of honey and spice my seed-lands bear,", " And what I may of fruits in this chill'd air,", "And lay, Orestes-like, across the tomb", " A curl of sever'd hair.", "", "But by no hand nor any treason stricken,", " Not like the low-lying head of Him, the King,", " The flame that made of Troy a ruinous thing,", "Thou liest and on this dust no tears could quicken.", " There fall no tears like theirs that all men hear", " Fall tear by sweet imperishable tear", "Down the opening leaves of holy poets' pages.", " Thee not Orestes, not Electra mourns;", " But bending us-ward with memorial urns", "The most high Muses that fulfil all ages", " Weep, and our God's heart yearns.", "", "For, sparing of his sacred strength, not often", " Among us darkling here the lord of light", " Makes manifest his music and his might", "In hearts that open and in lips that soften", " With the soft flame and heat of songs that shine.", " Thy lips indeed he touch'd with bitter wine,", "And nourish'd them indeed with bitter bread;", " Yet surely from his hand thy soul's food came,", " The fire that scarr'd thy spirit at his flame", "Was lighted, and thine hungering heart he fed", " Who feeds our hearts with fame.", "", "Therefore he too now at thy soul's sunsetting,", " God of all suns and songs, he too bends down", " To mix his laurel with thy cypress crown,", "And save thy dust from blame and from forgetting.", " Therefore he too, seeing all thou wert and art,", " Compassionate, with sad and sacred heart,", "Mourns thee of many his children the last dead,", " And hollows with strange tears and alien sighs", " Thine unmelodious mouth and sunless eyes,", "And over thine irrevocable head", " Sheds light from the under skies.", "", "And one weeps with him in the ways Lethean,", " And stains with tears her changing bosom chill;", " That obscure Venus of the hollow hill,", "That thing transform'd which was the Cytherean,", " With lips that lost their Grecian laugh divine", " Long since, and face no more call'd Erycine--", "A ghost, a bitter and luxurious god.", " Thee also with fair flesh and singing spell", " Did she, a sad and second prey, compel", "Into the footless places once more trod,", " And shadows hot from hell.", "", "And now no sacred staff shall break in blossom,", " No choral salutation lure to light", " A spirit sick with perfume and sweet night", "And love's tired eyes and hands and barren bosom.", " There is no help for these things; none to mend,", " And none to mar; not all our songs, O friend,", "Will make death clear or make life durable.", " Howbeit with rose and ivy and wild vine", " And with wild notes about this dust of thine", "At least I fill the place where white dreams dwell", " And wreathe an unseen shrine.", "", "Sleep; and if life was bitter to thee, pardon,", " If sweet, give thanks; thou hast no more to live;", " And to give thanks is good, and to forgive.", "Out of the mystic and the mournful garden", " Where all day through thine hands in barren braid", " Wove the sick flowers of secrecy and shade,", "Green buds of sorrow and sin, and remnants gray,", " Sweet-smelling, pale with poison, sanguine-hearted,", " Passions that sprang from sleep and thoughts that started,", "Shall death not bring us all as thee one day", " Among the days departed?", "", "For thee, O now a silent soul, my brother,", " Take at my hands this garland, and farewell.", " Thin is the leaf, and chill the wintry smell,", "And chill the solemn earth, a fatal mother,", " With sadder than the Niobean womb,", " And in the hollow of her breasts a tomb.", "Content thee, howsoe'er, whose days are done;", " There lies not any troublous thing before,", " Nor sight nor sound to war against thee more,", "For whom all winds are quiet as the sun,", " All waters as the shore." ], "linecount": "198" }, { "title": "Christmas Antiphones", "author": "Algernon Charles Swinburne", "lines": [ "I -- In Church", "", "Thou whose birth on earth", "Angels sang to men,", "While thy stars made mirth,", "Saviour, at thy birth,", "This day born again;", "", "As this night was bright", "With thy cradle-ray,", "Very light of light,", "Turn the wild world's night", "To thy perfect day.", "", "God whose feet made sweet", "Those wild ways they trod,", "From thy fragrant feet", "Staining field and street", "With the blood of God;", "", "God whose breast is rest", "In the time of strife,", "In thy secret breast", "Sheltering souls opprest", "From the heat of life;", "", "God whose eyes are skies", "Love-lit as with spheres", "By the lights that rise", "To thy watching eyes,", "Orbed lights of tears;", "", "God whose heart hath part", "In all grief that is,", "Was not man's the dart", "That went through thine heart,", "And the wound not his?", "", "Where the pale souls wail,", "Held in bonds of death,", "Where all spirits quail,", "Came thy Godhead pale", "Still from human breath -", "", "Pale from life and strife,", "Wan with manhood, came", "Forth of mortal life,", "Pierced as with a knife,", "Scarred as with a flame.", "", "Thou the Word and Lord", "In all time and space", "Heard, beheld, adored,", "With all ages poured", "Forth before thy face,", "", "Lord, what worth in earth", "Drew thee down to die?", "What therein was worth,", "Lord, thy death and birth?", "What beneath thy sky?", "", "Light above all love", "By thy love was lit,", "And brought down the Dove", "Feathered from above", "With the wings of it.", "", "From the height of night,", "Was not thine the star", "That led forth with might", "By no worldly light", "Wise men from afar?", "", "Yet the wise men's eyes", "Saw thee not more clear", "Than they saw thee rise", "Who in shepherd's guise", "Drew as poor men near.", "", "Yet thy poor endure,", "And are with us yet;", "Be thy name a sure", "Refuge for thy poor", "Whom men's eyes forget.", "", "Thou whose ways we praised,", "Clear alike and dark,", "Keep our works and ways", "This and all thy days", "Safe inside thine ark.", "", "Who shall keep thy sheep,", "Lord, and lose not one?", "Who save one shall keep,", "Lest the shepherds sleep?", "Who beside the Son?", "", "From the grave-deep wave,", "From the sword and flame,", "Thou, even thou, shalt save", "Souls of king and slave", "Only by thy Name.", "", "Light not born with morn", "Or her fires above,", "Jesus virgin-born,", "Held of men in scorn,", "Turn their scorn to love.", "", "Thou whose face gives grace", "As the sun's doth heat,", "Let thy sunbright face", "Lighten time and space", "Here beneath thy feet.", "", "Bid our peace increase,", "Thou that madest morn;", "Bid oppressions cease;", "Bid the night be peace;", "Bid the day be born.", "", "II--OUTSIDE CHURCH", "", "We whose days and ways", "All the night makes dark,", "What day shall we praise", "Of these weary days", "That our life-drops mark?", "", "We whose mind is blind,", "Fed with hope of nought;", "Wastes of worn mankind,", "Without heart or mind,", "Without meat or thought;", "", "We with strife of life", "Worn till all life cease,", "Want, a whetted knife,", "Sharpening strife on strife,", "How should we love peace?", "", "Ye whose meat is sweet", "And your wine-cup red,", "Us beneath your feet", "Hunger grinds as wheat,", "Grinds to make you bread.", "", "Ye whose night is bright", "With soft rest and heat,", "Clothed like day with light,", "Us the naked night", "Slays from street to street.", "", "Hath your God no rod,", "That ye tread so light?", "Man on us as God,", "God as man hath trod,", "Trod us down with might.", "", "We that one by one", "Bleed from either's rod.", "What for us hath done", "Man beneath the sun,", "What for us hath God?", "", "We whose blood is food", "Given your wealth to feed,", "From the Christless rood", "Red with no God's blood,", "But with man's indeed;", "", "How shall we that see", "Nightlong overhead", "Life, the flowerless tree,", "Nailed whereon as we", "Were our fathers dead -", "", "We whose ear can hear,", "Not whose tongue can name,", "Famine, ignorance, fear,", "Bleeding tear by tear", "Year by year of shame,", "", "Till the dry life die", "Out of bloodless breast,", "Out of beamless eye,", "Out of mouths that cry", "Till death feed with rest -", "", "How shall we as ye,", "Though ye bid us, pray?", "Though ye call, can we", "Hear you call, or see,", "Though ye show us day?", "", "We whose name is shame,", "We whose souls walk bare,", "Shall we call the same", "God as ye by name,", "Teach our lips your prayer?", "", "God, forgive and give,", "For His sake who died?", "Nay, for ours who live,", "How shall we forgive", "Thee, then, on our side?", "", "We whose right to light", "Heaven's high noon denies,", "Whom the blind beams smite", "That for you shine bright,", "And but burn our eyes,", "", "With what dreams of beams", "Shall we build up day,", "At what sourceless streams", "Seek to drink in dreams", "Ere they pass away?", "", "In what street shall meet,", "At what market-place,", "Your feet and our feet,", "With one goal to greet,", "Having run one race?", "", "What one hope shall ope", "For us all as one", "One same horoscope,", "Where the soul sees hope", "That outburns the sun?", "", "At what shrine what wine,", "At what board what bread,", "Salt as blood or brine,", "Shall we share in sign", "How we poor were fed?", "", "In what hour what power", "Shall we pray for morn,", "If your perfect hour,", "When all day bears flower,", "Not for us is born?", "", "III--BEYOND CHURCH", "", "Ye that weep in sleep,", "Souls and bodies bound,", "Ye that all night keep", "Watch for change, and weep", "That no change is found;", "", "Ye that cry and die,", "And the world goes on", "Without ear or eye,", "And the days go by", "Till all days are gone;", "", "Man shall do for you,", "Men the sons of man,", "What no God would do", "That they sought unto", "While the blind years ran.", "", "Brotherhood of good,", "Equal laws and rights,", "Freedom, whose sweet food", "Feeds the multitude", "All their days and nights", "", "With the bread full-fed", "Of her body blest", "And the soul's wine shed", "From her table spread", "Where the world is guest,", "", "Mingling me and thee,", "When like light of eyes", "Flashed through thee and me", "Truth shall make us free,", "Liberty make wise;", "", "These are they whom day", "Follows and gives light", "Whence they see to slay", "Night, and burn away", "All the seed of night.", "", "What of thine and mine,", "What of want and wealth,", "When one faith is wine", "For my heart and thine", "And one draught is health?", "", "For no sect elect", "Is the soul's wine poured", "And her table decked;", "Whom should man reject", "From man's common board?", "", "Gods refuse and choose,", "Grudge and sell and spare;", "None shall man refuse,", "None of all men lose,", "None leave out of care.", "", "No man's might of sight", "Knows that hour before;", "No man's hand hath might", "To put back that light", "For one hour the more.", "", "Not though all men call,", "Kneeling with void hands,", "Shall they see light fall", "Till it come for all", "Tribes of men and lands.", "", "No desire brings fire", "Down from heaven by prayer,", "Though man's vain desire", "Hang faith's wind-struck lyre", "Out in tuneless air.", "", "One hath breath and saith", "What the tune shall be -", "Time, who puts his breath", "Into life and death,", "Into earth and sea.", "", "To and fro years flow,", "Fill their tides and ebb,", "As his fingers go", "Weaving to and fro", "One unfinished web.", "", "All the range of change", "Hath its bounds therein,", "All the lives that range", "All the byways strange", "Named of death or sin.", "", "Star from far to star", "Speaks, and white moons wake,", "Watchful from afar", "What the night's ways are", "For the morning's sake.", "", "Many names and flames", "Pass and flash and fall,", "Night-begotten names,", "And the night reclaims,", "As she bare them, all.", "", "But the sun is one,", "And the sun's name Right;", "And when light is none", "Saving of the sun,", "All men shall have light.", "", "All shall see and be", "Parcel of the morn;", "Ay, though blind were we,", "None shall choose but see", "When that day is born." ], "linecount": "303" }, { "title": "Siena", "author": "Algernon Charles Swinburne", "lines": [ "Inside this northern summer's fold", "The fields are full of naked gold,", "Broadcast from heaven on lands it loves;", "The green veiled air is full of doves;", "Soft leaves that sift the sunbeams let", "Light on the small warm grasses wet", "Fall in short broken kisses sweet,", "And break again like waves that beat", "Round the sun's feet.", "", "But I, for all this English mirth", "Of golden-shod and dancing days,", "And the old green-girt sweet-hearted earth,", "Desire what here no spells can raise.", "Far hence, with holier heavens above,", "The lovely city of my love", "Bathes deep in the sun-satiate air", "That flows round no fair thing more fair", "Her beauty bare.", "", "There the utter sky is holier, there", "More pure the intense white height of air,", "More clear men's eyes that mine would meet,", "And the sweet springs of things more sweet.", "There for this one warm note of doves", "A clamour of a thousand loves", "Storms the night's ear, the day's assails,", "From the tempestuous nightingales,", "And fills, and fails.", "", "O gracious city well-beloved,", "Italian, and a maiden crowned,", "Siena, my feet are no more moved", "Toward thy strange-shapen mountain-bound:", "But my heart in me turns and moves,", "O lady loveliest of my loves,", "Toward thee, to lie before thy feet", "And gaze from thy fair fountain-seat", "Up the sheer street;", "", "And the house midway hanging see", "That saw Saint Catherine bodily,", "Felt on its floors her sweet feet move,", "And the live light of fiery love", "Burn from her beautiful strange face,", "As in the sanguine sacred place", "Where in pure hands she took the head", "Severed, and with pure lips still red", "Kissed the lips dead.", "", "For years through, sweetest of the saints,", "In quiet without cease she wrought,", "Till cries of men and fierce complaints", "From outward moved her maiden thought;", "And prayers she heard and sighs toward France,", "\"God, send us back deliverance,", "Send back thy servant, lest we die!\"", "With an exceeding bitter cry", "They smote the sky.", "", "Then in her sacred saving hands", "She took the sorrows of the lands,", "With maiden palms she lifted up", "The sick time's blood-embittered cup,", "And in her virgin garment furled", "The faint limbs of a wounded world.", "Clothed with calm love and clear desire,", "She went forth in her soul's attire,", "A missive fire.", "", "Across the might of men that strove", "It shone, and over heads of kings;", "And molten in red flames of love", "Were swords and many monstrous things;", "And shields were lowered, and snapt were spears,", "And sweeter-tuned the clamorous years;", "And faith came back, and peace, that were", "Fled; for she bade, saying, \"Thou, God's heir,", "Hast thou no care?", "", "\"Lo, men lay waste thine heritage", "Still, and much heathen people rage", "Against thee, and devise vain things.", "What comfort in the face of kings,", "What counsel is there? Turn thine eyes", "And thine heart from them in like wise;", "Turn thee unto thine holy place", "To help us that of God for grace", "Require thy face.", "", "\"For who shall hear us if not thou", "In a strange land? what doest thou there?", "Thy sheep are spoiled, and the ploughers plough", "Upon us; why hast thou no care", "For all this, and beyond strange hills", "Liest unregardful what snow chills", "Thy foldless flock, or what rains beat?", "Lo, in thine ears, before thy feet,", "Thy lost sheep bleat.", "", "\"And strange men feed on faultless lives,", "And there is blood, and men put knives,", "Shepherd, unto the young lamb's throat;", "And one hath eaten, and one smote,", "And one had hunger and is fed", "Full of the flesh of these, and red", "With blood of these as who drinks wine", "And God knoweth, who hath sent thee a sign,", "If these were thine.\"", "", "But the Pope's heart within him burned,", "So that he rose up, seeing the sign,", "And came among them; but she turned", "Back to her daily way divine,", "And fed her faith with silent things,", "And lived her life with curbed white wings,", "And mixed herself with heaven and died:", "And now on the sheer city-side", "Smiles like a bride.", "", "You see her in the fresh clear gloom,", "Where walls shut out the flame and bloom", "Of full-breathed summer, and the roof", "Keeps the keen ardent air aloof", "And sweet weight of the violent sky:", "There bodily beheld on high,", "She seems as one hearing in tune", "Heaven within heaven, at heaven's full noon,", "In sacred swoon:", "", "A solemn swoon of sense that aches", "With imminent blind heat of heaven,", "While all the wide-eyed spirit wakes,", "Vigilant of the supreme Seven,", "Whose choral flames in God's sight move,", "Made unendurable with love,", "That without wind or blast of breath", "Compels all things through life and death", "Whither God saith.", "", "There on the dim side-chapel wall", "Thy mighty touch memorial,", "Razzi, raised up, for ages dead,", "And fixed for us her heavenly head:", "And, rent with plaited thorn and rod,", "Bared the live likeness of her God", "To men's eyes turning from strange lands,", "Where, pale from thine immortal hands,", "Christ wounded stands;", "", "And the blood blots his holy hair", "And white brows over hungering eyes", "That plead against us, and the fair", "Mute lips forlorn of words or sighs", "In the great torment that bends down", "His bruised head with the bloomless crown,", "White as the unfruitful thorn-flower,", "A God beheld in dreams that were", "Beheld of her.", "", "In vain on all these sins and years", "Falls the sad blood, fall the slow tears;", "In vain poured forth as watersprings,", "Priests, on your altars, and ye, kings,", "About your seats of sanguine gold;", "Still your God, spat upon and sold,", "Bleeds at your hands; but now is gone", "All his flock from him saving one;", "Judas alone.", "", "Surely your race it was that he,", "O men signed backward with his name,", "Beholding in Gethsemane", "Bled the red bitter sweat of shame,", "Knowing how the word of Christian should", "Mean to men evil and not good,", "Seem to men shameful for your sake,", "Whose lips, for all the prayers they make,", "Man's blood must slake.", "", "But blood nor tears ye love not, you", "That my love leads my longing to,", "Fair as the world's old faith of flowers,", "O golden goddesses of ours!", "From what Idalian rose-pleasance", "Hath Aphrodite bidden glance", "The lovelier lightnings of your feet?", "From what sweet Paphian sward or seat", "Led you more sweet?", "", "O white three sisters, three as one,", "With flowerlike arms for flowery bands", "Your linked limbs glitter like the sun,", "And time lies beaten at your hands.", "Time and wild years and wars and men", "Pass, and ye care not whence or when;", "With calm lips over sweet for scorn,", "Ye watch night pass, O children born", "Of the old-world morn.", "", "Ah, in this strange and shrineless place,", "What doth a goddess, what a Grace,", "Where no Greek worships her shrined limbs", "With wreaths and Cytherean hymns?", "Where no lute makes luxurious", "The adoring airs in Amathus,", "Till the maid, knowing her mother near,", "Sobs with love, aching with sweet fear?", "What do ye here?", "", "For the outer land is sad, and wears", "A raiment of a flaming fire;", "And the fierce fruitless mountain stairs", "Climb, yet seem wroth and loth to aspire,", "Climb, and break, and are broken down,", "And through their clefts and crests the town", "Looks west and sees the dead sun lie,", "In sanguine death that stains the sky", "With angry dye.", "", "And from the war-worn wastes without", "In twilight, in the time of doubt,", "One sound comes of one whisper, where", "Moved with low motions of slow air", "The great trees nigh the castle swing", "In the sad coloured evening;", "\"Ricorditi di me, che son", "La Pia\"--that small sweet word alone", "Is not yet gone.", "", "\"Ricorditi di me\"--the sound", "Sole out of deep dumb days remote", "Across the fiery and fatal ground", "Comes tender as a hurt bird's note", "To where, a ghost with empty hands,", "A woe-worn ghost, her palace stands", "In the mid city, where the strong", "Bells turn the sunset air to song,", "And the towers throng.", "", "With other face, with speech the same,", "A mightier maiden's likeness came", "Late among mourning men that slept,", "A sacred ghost that went and wept,", "White as the passion-wounded Lamb,", "Saying, \"Ah, remember me, that am", "Italia.\" (From deep sea to sea", "Earth heard, earth knew her, that this was she.)", "\"Ricorditi.", "", "\"Love made me of all things fairest thing,", "And Hate unmade me; this knows he", "Who with God's sacerdotal ring", "Enringed mine hand, espousing me.\"", "Yea, in thy myriad-mooded woe,", "Yea, Mother, hast thou not said so?", "Have not our hearts within us stirred,", "O thou most holiest, at thy word?", "Have we not heard?", "", "As this dead tragic land that she", "Found deadly, such was time to thee;", "Years passed thee withering in the red", "Maremma, years that deemed thee dead,", "Ages that sorrowed or that scorned;", "And all this while though all they mourned", "Thou sawest the end of things unclean,", "And the unborn that should see thee a queen.", "Have we not seen?", "", "The weary poet, thy sad son,", "Upon thy soil, under thy skies,", "Saw all Italian things save one -", "Italia; this thing missed his eyes;", "The old mother-might, the breast, the face,", "That reared, that lit the Roman race;", "This not Leopardi saw; but we,", "What is it, Mother, that we see,", "What if not thee?", "", "Look thou from Siena southward home,", "Where the priest's pall hangs rent on Rome,", "And through the red rent swaddling-bands", "Towards thine she strains her labouring hands.", "Look thou and listen, and let be", "All the dead quick, all the bond free;", "In the blind eyes let there be sight;", "In the eighteen centuries of the night", "Let there be light.", "", "Bow down the beauty of thine head,", "Sweet, and with lips of living breath", "Kiss thy sons sleeping and thy dead,", "That there be no more sleep or death.", "Give us thy light, thy might, thy love,", "Whom thy face seen afar above", "Drew to thy feet; and when, being free,", "Thou hast blest thy children born to thee,", "Bless also me.", "", "Me that when others played or slept", "Sat still under thy cross and wept;", "Me who so early and unaware", "Felt fall on bent bared brows and hair", "(Thin drops of the overflowing flood!)", "The bitter blessing of thy blood;", "The sacred shadow of thy pain,", "Thine, the true maiden-mother, slain", "And raised again.", "", "Me consecrated, if I might,", "To praise thee, or to love at least,", "O mother of all men's dear delight,", "Thou madest a choral-souled boy-priest,", "Before my lips had leave to sing,", "Or my hands hardly strength to cling", "About the intolerable tree", "Whereto they had nailed my heart and thee", "And said, \"Let be.\"", "", "For to thee too the high Fates gave", "Grace to be sacrificed and save,", "That being arisen, in the equal sun,", "God and the People should be one;", "By those red roads thy footprints trod,", "Man more divine, more human God,", "Saviour; that where no light was known", "But darkness, and a daytime flown,", "Light should be shown.", "", "Let there be light, O Italy!", "For our feet falter in the night.", "O lamp of living years to be,", "O light of God, let there be light!", "Fill with a love keener than flame", "Men sealed in spirit with thy name,", "The cities and the Roman skies,", "Where men with other than man's eyes", "Saw thy sun rise.", "", "For theirs thou wast and thine were they", "Whose names outshine thy very day;", "For they are thine and theirs thou art", "Whose blood beats living in man's heart,", "Remembering ages fled and dead", "Wherein for thy sake these men bled;", "They that saw Trebia, they that see", "Mentana, they in years to be", "That shall see thee.", "", "For thine are all of us, and ours", "Thou; till the seasons bring to birth", "A perfect people, and all the powers", "Be with them that bear fruit on earth;", "Till the inner heart of man be one", "With freedom, and the sovereign sun;", "And Time, in likeness of a guide,", "Lead the Republic as a bride", "Up to God's side." ], "linecount": "324" }, { "title": "The Halt Before Rome--September 1867", "author": "Algernon Charles Swinburne", "lines": [ "Is it so, that the sword is broken,", "Our sword, that was halfway drawn?", "Is it so, that the light was a spark,", "That the bird we hailed as the lark", "Sang in her sleep in the dark,", "And the song we took for a token", "Bore false witness of dawn?", "", "Spread in the sight of the lion,", "Surely, we said, is the net", "Spread but in vain, and the snare", "Vain; for the light is aware,", "And the common, the chainless air,", "Of his coming whom all we cry on;", "Surely in vain is it set.", "", "Surely the day is on our side,", "And heaven, and the sacred sun;", "Surely the stars, and the bright", "Immemorial inscrutable night:", "Yea, the darkness, because of our light,", "Is no darkness, but blooms as a bower-side", "When the winter is over and done;", "", "Blooms underfoot with young grasses", "Green, and with leaves overhead,", "Windflowers white, and the low", "New-dropped blossoms of snow;", "And or ever the May winds blow,", "And or ever the March wind passes,", "Flames with anemones red.", "", "We are here in the world's bower-garden,", "We that have watched out the snow.", "Surely the fruitfuller showers,", "The splendider sunbeams are ours;", "Shall winter return on the flowers,", "And the frost after April harden,", "And the fountains in May not flow?", "", "We have in our hands the shining", "And the fire in our hearts of a star.", "Who are we that our tongues should palter,", "Hearts bow down, hands falter,", "Who are clothed as with flame from the altar,", "That the kings of the earth, repining,", "Far off, watch from afar?", "", "Woe is ours if we doubt or dissemble,", "Woe, if our hearts not abide.", "Are our chiefs not among us, we said,", "Great chiefs, living and dead,", "To lead us glad to be led?", "For whose sake, if a man of us tremble,", "He shall not be on our side.", "", "What matter if these lands tarry,", "That tarried (we said) not of old?", "France, made drunken by fate,", "England, that bore up the weight", "Once of men's freedom, a freight", "Holy, but heavy to carry", "For hands overflowing with gold.", "", "Though this be lame, and the other", "Fleet, but blind from the sun,", "And the race be no more to these,", "Alas! nor the palm to seize,", "Who are weary and hungry of ease,", "Yet, O Freedom, we said, O our mother,", "Is there not left to thee one?", "", "Is there not left of thy daughters,", "Is there not one to thine hand?", "Fairer than these, and of fame", "Higher from of old by her name;", "Washed in her tears, and in flame", "Bathed as in baptism of waters,", "Unto all men a chosen land.", "", "Her hope in her heart was broken,", "Fire was upon her, and clomb,", "Hiding her, high as her head;", "And the world went past her, and said", "(We heard it say) she was dead;", "And now, behold, she bath spoken,", "She that was dead, saying, \"Rome.\"", "", "O mother of all men's nations,", "Thou knowest if the deaf world heard!", "Heard not now to her lowest", "Depths, where the strong blood slowest", "Beats at her bosom, thou knowest,", "In her toils, in her dim tribulations,", "Rejoiced not, hearing the word.", "", "The sorrowful, bound unto sorrow,", "The woe-worn people, and all", "That of old were discomforted,", "And men that famish for bread,", "And men that mourn for their dead,", "She bade them be glad on the morrow,", "Who endured in the day of her thrall.", "", "The blind, and the people in prison,", "Souls without hope, without home,", "How glad were they all that heard!", "When the winged white flame of the word", "Passed over men's dust, and stirred", "Death; for Italia was risen,", "And risen her light upon Rome.", "", "The light of her sword in the gateway", "Shone, an unquenchable flame,", "Bloodless, a sword to release,", "A light from the eyes of peace,", "To bid grief utterly cease,", "And the wrong of the old world straightway", "Pass from the face of her fame:", "", "Hers, whom we turn to and cry on,", "Italy, mother of men:", "From the light of the face of her glory,", "At the sound of the storm of her story,", "That the sanguine shadows and hoary", "Should flee from the foot of the lion,", "Lion-like, forth of his den.", "", "As the answering of thunder to thunder", "Is the storm-beaten sound of her past;", "As the calling of sea unto sea", "Is the noise of her years yet to be;", "For this ye knew not is she,", "Whose bonds are broken in sunder;", "This is she at the last.", "", "So spake we aloud, high-minded,", "Full of our will; and behold,", "The speech that was halfway spoken", "Breaks, as a pledge that is broken,", "As a king's pledge, leaving in token", "Grief only for high hopes blinded,", "New grief grafted on old.", "", "We halt by the walls of the city,", "Within sound of the clash of her chain.", "Hearing, we know that in there", "The lioness chafes in her lair,", "Shakes the storm of her hair,", "Struggles in hands without pity,", "Roars to the lion in vain.", "", "Whose hand is stretched forth upon her?", "Whose curb is white with her foam?", "Clothed with the cloud of his deeds,", "Swathed in the shroud of his creeds,", "Who is this that has trapped her and leads,", "Who turns to despair and dishonour", "Her name, her name that was Rome?", "", "Over fields without harvest or culture,", "Over hordes without honour or love,", "Over nations that groan with their kings,", "As an imminent pestilence flings", "Swift death from her shadowing wings,", "So he, who hath claws as a vulture,", "Plumage and beak as a dove.", "", "He saith, \"I am pilot and haven,", "Light and redemption I am", "Unto souls overlaboured,\" he saith;", "And to all men the blast of his breath", "Is a savour of death unto death;", "And the Dove of his worship a raven,", "And a wolf-cub the life-giving Lamb.", "", "He calls his sheep as a shepherd,", "Calls from the wilderness home,", "\"Come unto me and be fed,\"", "To feed them with ashes for bread", "And grass from the graves of the dead,", "Leaps on the fold as a leopard,", "Slays, and says, \"I am Rome,\"", "", "Rome, having rent her in sunder,", "With the clasp of an adder he clasps;", "Swift to shed blood are his feet,", "And his lips, that have man for their meat,", "Smoother than oil, and more sweet", "Than honey, but hidden thereunder", "Festers the poison of asps.", "", "As swords are his tender mercies,", "His kisses as mortal stings;", "Under his hallowing hands", "Life dies down in all lands;", "Kings pray to him, prone where he stands,", "And his blessings, as other men's curses,", "Disanoint where they consecrate kings.", "", "With an oil of unclean consecration,", "With effusion of blood and of tears,", "With uplifting of cross and of keys,", "Priest, though thou hallow us these,", "Yet even as they cling to thy knees", "Nation awakens by nation,", "King by king disappears.", "", "How shall the spirit be loyal", "To the shell of a spiritless thing?", "Erred once, in only a word,", "The sweet great song that we heard", "Poured upon Tuscany, erred,", "Calling a crowned man royal", "That was no more than a king.", "", "Sea-eagle of English feather,", "A song-bird beautiful-souled,", "She knew not them that she sang;", "The golden trumpet that rang", "From Florence, in vain for them, sprang", "As a note in the nightingales' weather", "Far over Fiesole rolled.", "", "She saw not--happy, not seeing -", "Saw not as we with her eyes", "Aspromonte; she felt", "Never the heart in her melt", "As in us when the news was dealt", "Melted all hope out of being,", "Dropped all dawn from the skies.", "", "In that weary funereal season,", "In that heart-stricken grief-ridden time,", "The weight of a king and the worth,", "With anger and sorrowful mirth,", "We weighed in the balance of earth,", "And light was his word as a treason,", "And heavy his crown as a crime.", "", "Banners of kings shall ye follow", "None, and have thrones on your side", "None; ye shall gather and grow", "Silently, row upon row,", "Chosen of Freedom to go", "Gladly where darkness may swallow,", "Gladly where death may divide.", "", "Have we not men with us royal,", "Men the masters of things?", "In the days when our life is made new,", "All souls perfect and true", "Shall adore whom their forefathers slew;", "And these indeed shall be loyal,", "And those indeed shall be kings.", "", "Yet for a space they abide with us,", "Yet for a little they stand,", "Bearing the heat of the day.", "When their presence is taken away,", "We shall wonder and worship, and say,", "\"Was not a star on our side with us?", "Was not a God at our hand?\"", "", "These, O men, shall ye honour,", "Liberty only, and these.", "For thy sake and for all men's and mine,", "Brother, the crowns of them shine", "Lighting the way to her shrine,", "That our eyes may be fastened upon her,", "That our hands may encompass her knees.", "", "In this day is the sign of her shown to you;", "Choose ye, to live or to die,", "Now is her harvest in hand;", "Now is her light in the land;", "Choose ye, to sink or to stand,", "For the might of her strength is made known to you", "Now, and her arm is on high.", "", "Serve not for any man's wages,", "Pleasure nor glory nor gold;", "Not by her side are they won", "Who saith unto each of you, \"Son,", "Silver and gold have I none;", "I give but the love of all ages,", "And the life of my people of old.\"", "", "Fear not for any man's terrors;", "Wait not for any man's word;", "Patiently, each in his place,", "Gird up your loins to the race;", "Following the print of her pace,", "Purged of desires and of errors,", "March to the tune ye have heard.", "", "March to the tune of the voice of her,", "Breathing the balm of her breath,", "Loving the light of her skies.", "Blessed is he on whose eyes", "Dawns but her light as he dies;", "Blessed are ye that make choice of her,", "Equal to life and to death.", "", "Ye that when faith is nigh frozen,", "Ye that when hope is nigh gone,", "Still, over wastes, over waves,", "Still, among wrecks, among graves,", "Follow the splendour that saves,", "Happy, her children, her chosen,", "Loyally led of her on.", "", "The sheep of the priests, and the cattle", "That feed in the penfolds of kings,", "Sleek is their flock and well-fed;", "Hardly she giveth you bread,", "Hardly a rest for the head,", "Till the day of the blast of the battle", "And the storm of the wind of her wings.", "", "Ye that have joy in your living,", "Ye that are careful to live,", "You her thunders go by:", "Live, let men be, let them lie,", "Serve your season, and die;", "Gifts have your masters for giving,", "Gifts hath not Freedom to give;", "", "She, without shelter or station,", "She, beyond limit or bar,", "Urges to slumberless speed", "Armies that famish, that bleed,", "Sowing their lives for her seed,", "That their dust may rebuild her a nation,", "That their souls may relight her a star.", "", "Happy are all they that follow her;", "Them shall no trouble cast down;", "Though she slay them, yet shall they trust in her,", "For unsure there is nought nor unjust in her,", "Blemish is none, neither rust in her;", "Though it threaten, the night shall not swallow her,", "Tempest and storm shall not drown.", "", "Hither, O strangers, that cry for her,", "Holding your lives in your hands,", "Hither, for here is your light,", "Where Italy is, and her might;", "Strength shall be given you to fight,", "Grace shall be given you to die for her,", "For the flower, for the lady of lands;", "", "Turn ye, whose anguish oppressing you", "Crushes, asleep and awake,", "For the wrong which is wrought as of yore;", "That Italia may give of her store,", "Having these things to give and no more;", "Only her hands on you, blessing you;", "Only a pang for her sake;", "", "Only her bosom to die on;", "Only her heart for a home,", "And a name with her children to be", "From Calabrian to Adrian sea", "Famous in cities made free", "That ring to the roar of the lion", "Proclaiming republican Rome." ], "linecount": "322" }, { "title": "A Baby's Death", "author": "Algernon Charles Swinburne", "lines": [ "A little soul scarce fledged for earth", "Takes wing with heaven again for goal", "Even while we hailed as fresh from birth", "A little soul.", "", "Our thoughts ring sad as bells that toll,", "Not knowing beyond this blind world's girth", "What things are writ in heaven's full scroll.", "", "Our fruitfulness is there but dearth,", "And all things held in time's control", "Seem there, perchance, ill dreams, not worth", "A little soul.", "", "", "", "The little feet that never trod", "Earth, never strayed in field or street,", "What hand leads upward back to God", "The little feet?", "", "A rose in June's most honied heat,", "When life makes keen the kindling sod,", "Was not so soft and warm and sweet.", "", "Their pilgrimage's period", "A few swift moons have seen complete", "Since mother's hands first clasped and shod", "The little feet.", "", "", "", "The little hands that never sought", "Earth's prizes, worthless all as sands,", "What gift has death, God's servant, brought", "The little hands?", "", "We ask: but love's self silent stands,", "Love, that lends eyes and wings to thought", "To search where death's dim heaven expands.", "", "Ere this, perchance, though love know nought,", "Flowers fill them, grown in lovelier lands,", "Where hands of guiding angels caught", "The little hands.", "", "", "", "The little eyes that never knew", "Light other than of dawning skies,", "What new life now lights up anew", "The little eyes?", "", "Who knows but on their sleep may rise", "Such light as never heaven let through", "To lighten earth from Paradise?", "", "No storm, we know, may change the blue", "Soft heaven that haply death descries", "No tears, like these in ours, bedew", "The little eyes.", "", "", "", "Was life so strange, so sad the sky,", "So strait the wide world's range,", "He would not stay to wonder why", "Was life so strange?", "", "Was earth's fair house a joyless grange", "Beside that house on high", "Whence Time that bore him failed to estrange?", "", "That here at once his soul put by", "All gifts of time and change,", "And left us heavier hearts to sigh", "'Was life so strange?'", "", "", "", "Angel by name love called him, seeing so fair", "The sweet small frame;", "Meet to be called, if ever man's child were,", "Angel by name.", "", "Rose-bright and warm from heaven's own heart he came,", "And might not bear", "The cloud that covers earth's wan face with shame.", "", "His little light of life was all too rare", "And soft a flame:", "Heaven yearned for him till angels hailed him there", "Angel by name.", "", "", "", "The song that smiled upon his birthday here", "Weeps on the grave that holds him undefiled", "Whose loss makes bitterer than a soundless tear", "The song that smiled.", "", "His name crowned once the mightiest ever styled", "Sovereign of arts, and angel: fate and fear", "Knew then their master, and were reconciled.", "", "But we saw born beneath some tenderer sphere", "Michael, an angel and a little child,", "Whose loss bows down to weep upon his bier", "The song that smiled." ], "linecount": "77" }, { "title": "The Last Oracle", "author": "Algernon Charles Swinburne", "lines": [ "eipate toi basilei, xamai pese daidalos aula.", "ouketi PHoibos exei kaluban, ou mantida daphnen,", "ou pagan laleousan . apesbeto kai lalon udor.", "", "Years have risen and fallen in darkness or in twilight,", "Ages waxed and waned that knew not thee nor thine,", "While the world sought light by night and sought not thy light,", "Since the sad last pilgrim left thy dark mid shrine.", "Dark the shrine and dumb the fount of song thence welling,", "Save for words more sad than tears of blood, that said:", "Tell the king, on earth has fallen the glorious dwelling,", "And the watersprings that spake are quenched and dead.", "Not a cell is left the God, no roof, no cover", "In his hand the prophet laurel flowers no more.", "And the great king's high sad heart, thy true last lover,", "Felt thine answer pierce and cleave it to the core.", "And he bowed down his hopeless head", "In the drift of the wild world's tide,", "And dying, Thou hast conquered, he said,", "Galilean; he said it, and died.", "And the world that was thine and was ours", "When the Graces took hands with the Hours", "Grew cold as a winter wave", "In the wind from a wide-mouthed grave,", "As a gulf wide open to swallow", "The light that the world held dear.", "O father of all of us, Paian, Apollo,", "Destroyer and healer, hear!", "", "Age on age thy mouth was mute, thy face was hidden,", "And the lips and eyes that loved thee blind and dumb;", "Song forsook their tongues that held thy name forbidden,", "Light their eyes that saw the strange God's kingdom come.", "Fire for light and hell for heaven and psalms for pæans", "Filled the clearest eyes and lips most sweet of song,", "When for chant of Greeks the wail of Galileans", "Made the whole world moan with hymns of wrath and wrong.", "Yea, not yet we see thee, father, as they saw thee,", "They that worshipped when the world was theirs and thine,", "They whose words had power by thine own power to draw thee", "Down from heaven till earth seemed more than heaven divine.", "For the shades are about us that hover", "When darkness is half withdrawn", "And the skirts of the dead night cover", "The face of the live new dawn.", "For the past is not utterly past", "Though the word on its lips be the last,", "And the time be gone by with its creed", "When men were as beasts that bleed,", "As sheep or as swine that wallow,", "In the shambles of faith and of fear.", "O father of all of us, Paian, Apollo,", "Destroyer and healer, hear!", "", "Yet it may be, lord and father, could we know it,", "We that love thee for our darkness shall have light", "More than ever prophet hailed of old or poet", "Standing crowned and robed and sovereign in thy sight.", "To the likeness of one God their dreams enthralled thee,", "Who wast greater than all Gods that waned and grew;", "Son of God the shining son of Time they called thee,", "Who wast older, O our father, than they knew.", "For no thought of man made Gods to love or honour", "Ere the song within the silent soul began,", "Nor might earth in dream or deed take heaven upon her", "Till the word was clothed with speech by lips of man.", "And the word and the life wast thou,", "The spirit of man and the breath;", "And before thee the Gods that bow", "Take life at thine hands and death.", "For these are as ghosts that wane,", "That are gone in an age or twain;", "Harsh, merciful, passionate, pure,", "They perish, but thou shalt endure;", "Be their flight with the swan or the swallow,", "They pass as the flight of a year.", "O father of all of us, Paian, Apollo,", "Destroyer and healer, hear!", "", "Thou the word, the light, the life, the breath, the glory,", "Strong to help and heal, to lighten and to slay,", "Thine is all the song of man, the world's whole story;", "Not of morning and of evening is thy day.", "Old and younger Gods are buried or begotten", "From uprising to downsetting of thy sun,", "Risen from eastward, fallen to westward and forgotten,", "And their springs are many, but their end is one.", "Divers births of godheads find one death appointed,", "As the soul whence each was born makes room for each;", "God by God goes out, discrowned and disanointed,", "But the soul stands fast that gave them shape and speech.", "Is the sun yet cast out of heaven?", "Is the song yet cast out of man?", "Life that had song for its leaven", "To quicken the blood that ran", "Through the veins of the songless years", "More bitter and cold than tears,", "Heaven that had thee for its one", "Light, life, word, witness, O sun,", "Are they soundless and sightless and hollow,", "Without eye, without speech, without ear?", "O father of all of us, Paian, Apollo,", "Destroyer and healer, hear!", "", "Time arose and smote thee silent at his warning,", "Change and darkness fell on men that fell from thee;", "Dark thou satest, veiled with light, behind the morning,", "Till the soul of man should lift up eyes and see.", "Till the blind mute soul get speech again and eyesight,", "Man may worship not the light of life within;", "In his sight the stars whose fires grow dark in thy sight", "Shine as sunbeams on the night of death and sin.", "Time again is risen with mightier word of warning,", "Change hath blown again a blast of louder breath;", "Clothed with clouds and stars and dreams that melt in morning,", "Lo, the Gods that ruled by grace of sin and death!", "They are conquered, they break, they are stricken,", "Whose might made the whole world pale;", "They are dust that shall rise not or quicken", "Though the world for their death's sake wail.", "As a hound on a wild beast's trace,", "So time has their godhead in chase;", "As wolves when the hunt makes head,", "They are scattered, they fly, they are fled;", "They are fled beyond hail, beyond hollo,", "And the cry of the chase, and the cheer.", "O father of all of us, Paian, Apollo,", "Destroyer and healer, hear!", "", "Day by day thy shadow shines in heaven beholden,", "Even the sun, the shining shadow of thy face:", "King, the ways of heaven before thy feet grow golden;", "God, the soul of earth is kindled with thy grace.", "In thy lips the speech of man whence Gods were fashioned,", "In thy soul the thought that makes them and unmakes;", "By thy light and heat incarnate and impassioned,", "Soul to soul of man gives light for light and takes.", "As they knew thy name of old time could we know it,", "Healer called of sickness, slayer invoked of wrong,", "Light of eyes that saw thy light, God, king, priest, poet,", "Song should bring thee back to heal us with thy song.", "For thy kingdom is past not away,", "Nor thy power from the place thereof hurled;", "Out of heaven they shall cast not the day,", "They shall cast not out song from the world.", "By the song and the light they give", "We know thy works that they live;", "With the gift thou hast given us of speech", "We praise, we adore, we beseech,", "We arise at thy bidding and follow,", "We cry to thee, answer, appear,", "O father of all of us, Paian, Apollo,", "Destroyer and healer, hear!" ], "linecount": "147" }, { "title": "A Ninth Birthday", "author": "Algernon Charles Swinburne", "lines": [ "Three times thrice hath winter's rough white wing", "Crossed and curdled wells and streams with ice", "Since his birth whose praises love would sing", "Three times thrice.", "", "Earth nor sea bears flower nor pearl of price", "Fit to crown the forehead of my king,", "Honey meet to please him, balm, nor spice.", "", "Love can think of nought but love to bring", "Fit to serve or do him sacrifice", "Ere his eyes have looked upon the spring", "Three times thrice.", "", "II.", "", "Three times thrice the world has fallen on slumber,", "Shone and waned and withered in a trice,", "Frost has fettered Thames and Tyne and Humber", "Three times thrice,", "", "Fogs have swoln too thick for steel to slice,", "Cloud and mud have soiled with grime and umber", "Earth and heaven, defaced as souls with vice,", "", "Winds have risen to wreck, snows fallen to cumber,", "Ships and chariots, trapped like rats or mice,", "Since my king first smiled, whose years now number", "Three times thrice.", "", "III.", "", "Three times thrice, in wine of song full-flowing,", "Pledge, my heart, the child whose eyes suffice,", "Once beheld, to set thy joy-bells going", "Three times thrice.", "", "Not the lands of palm and date and rice", "Glow more bright when summer leaves them glowing,", "Laugh more light when suns and winds entice.", "", "Noon and eve and midnight and cock-crowing,", "Child whose love makes life as paradise,", "Love should sound your praise with clarions blowing", "Three times thrice." ], "linecount": "35" }, { "title": "The Garden of Proserpine", "author": "Algernon Charles Swinburne", "lines": [ "Here, where the world is quiet;", "Here, where all trouble seems", "Dead winds' and spent waves' riot", "In doubtful dreams of dreams;", "I watch the green field growing", "For reaping folk and sowing,", "For harvest-time and mowing,", "A sleepy world of streams.", "I am tired of tears and laughter,", "And men that laugh and weep;", "Of what may come hereafter", "For men that sow to reap:", "I am weary of days and hours,", "Blown buds of barren flowers,", "Desires and dreams and powers", "And everything but sleep.", "", "Here life has death for neighbour", "And far from eye or ear", "Wan waves and wet winds labour,", "Weak ships and spirits steer;", "They drive adrift, and whither", "They wot not who make thither;", "But no such winds blow hither,", "And no such things grow here.", "", "No growth of moor or coppice,", "No heather-flower or vine,", "But bloomless buds of poppies,", "Green grapes of Proserpine,", "Pale beds of blowing rushes", "Where no leaf blooms or blushes", "Save this whereout she crushes", "For dead men deadly wine.", "", "Pale, without name or number,", "In fruitless fields of corn,", "They bow themselves and slumber", "All night till light is born;", "And like a soul belated,", "In hell and heaven unmated,", "By cloud and mist abated", "Comes out of darkness morn.", "", "Though one were strong as seven,", "He too with death shall dwell,", "Nor wake with wings in heaven,", "Nor weep for pains in hell;", "Though one were fair as roses,", "His beauty clouds and closes;", "And well though love reposes,", "In the end it is not well.", "", "Pale, beyond porch and portal,", "Crowned with calm leaves, she stands", "Who gathers all things mortal", "With cold immortal hands;", "Her languid lips are sweeter", "Than love's who fears to greet her", "To men that mix and meet her", "From many times and lands.", "", "She waits for each and other,", "She waits for all men born;", "Forgets the earth her mother,", "The life of fruits and corn;", "And spring and seed and swallow", "Take wing for her and follow", "Where summer song rings hollow", "And flowers are put to scorn.", "", "There go the loves that wither,", "The old loves with wearier wings;", "And all dead years draw thither,", "And all disastrous things;", "Dead dreams of days forsaken,", "Blind buds that snows have shaken,", "Wild leaves that winds have taken,", "Red strays of ruined springs.", "", "We are not sure of sorrow,", "And joy was never sure;", "To-day will die to-morrow;", "Time stoops to no man's lure;", "And love, grown faint and fretful,", "With lips but half regretful", "Sighs, and with eyes forgetful", "Weeps that no loves endure.", "", "From too much love of living,", "From hope and fear set free,", "We thank with brief thanksgiving", "Whatever gods may be", "That no life lives for ever;", "That dead men rise up never;", "That even the weariest river", "Winds somewhere safe to sea.", "", "Then star nor sun shall waken,", "Nor any change of light:", "Nor sound of waters shaken,", "Nor any sound or sight:", "Nor wintry leaves nor vernal,", "Nor days nor things diurnal;", "Only the sleep eternal", "In an eternal night." ], "linecount": "96" }, { "title": "Birth And Death", "author": "Algernon Charles Swinburne", "lines": [ "Birth and death, twin-sister and twin-brother,", "Night and day, on all things that draw breath,", "Reign, while time keeps friends with one another", "Birth and death.", "", "Each brow-bound with flowers diverse of wreath,", "Heaven they hail as father, earth as mother,", "Faithful found above them and beneath.", "", "Smiles may lighten tears, and tears may smother", "Smiles, for all that joy or sorrow saith:", "Joy nor sorrow knows not from each other", "Birth and death." ], "linecount": "11" }, { "title": "A Swimmer's Dream", "author": "Algernon Charles Swinburne", "lines": [ "Somno mollior unda", "", "I", "Dawn is dim on the dark soft water,", "Soft and passionate, dark and sweet.", "Love's own self was the deep sea's daughter,", "Fair and flawless from face to feet,", "Hailed of all when the world was golden,", "Loved of lovers whose names beholden", "Thrill men's eyes as with light of olden", "Days more glad than their flight was fleet.", "", "So they sang: but for men that love her,", "Souls that hear not her word in vain,", "Earth beside her and heaven above her", "Seem but shadows that wax and wane.", "Softer than sleep's are the sea's caresses,", "Kinder than love's that betrays and blesses,", "Blither than spring's when her flowerful tresses", "Shake forth sunlight and shine with rain.", "", "All the strength of the waves that perish", "Swells beneath me and laughs and sighs,", "Sighs for love of the life they cherish,", "Laughs to know that it lives and dies,", "Dies for joy of its life, and lives", "Thrilled with joy that its brief death gives --", "Death whose laugh or whose breath forgives", "Change that bids it subside and rise.", "", "II", "Hard and heavy, remote but nearing,", "Sunless hangs the severe sky's weight,", "Cloud on cloud, though the wind be veering", "Heaped on high to the sundawn's gate.", "Dawn and even and noon are one,", "Veiled with vapour and void of sun;", "Nought in sight or in fancied hearing", "Now less mighty than time or fate.", "", "The grey sky gleams and the grey seas glimmer,", "Pale and sweet as a dream's delight,", "As a dream's where darkness and light seem dimmer,", "Touched by dawn or subdued by night.", "The dark wind, stern and sublime and sad,", "Swings the rollers to westward, clad", "With lustrous shadow that lures the swimmer,", "Lures and lulls him with dreams of light.", "", "Light, and sleep, and delight, and wonder,", "Change, and rest, and a charm of cloud,", "Fill the world of the skies whereunder", "Heaves and quivers and pants aloud", "All the world of the waters, hoary", "Now, but clothed with its own live glory,", "That mates the lightning and mocks the thunder", "With light more living and word more proud.", "", "III", "Far off westward, whither sets the sounding strife,", "Strife more sweet than peace, of shoreless waves whose glee", "Scorns the shore and loves the wind that leaves them free,", "Strange as sleep and pale as death and fair as life,", "Shifts the moonlight-coloured sunshine on the sea.", "", "Toward the sunset's goal the sunless waters crowd,", "Fast as autumn days toward winter: yet it seems", "Here that autumn wanes not, here that woods and streams", "Lose not heart and change not likeness, chilled and bowed,", "Warped and wrinkled: here the days are fair as dreams.", "", "IV", "O russet-robed November,", "What ails thee so to smile?", "Chill August, pale September,", "Endured a woful while,", "And fell as falls an ember", "From forth a flameless pile:", "But golden-girt November", "Bids all she looks on smile.", "", "The lustrous foliage, waning", "As wanes the morning moon,", "Here falling, here refraining,", "Outbraves the pride of June", "With statelier semblance, feigning", "No fear lest death be soon:", "As though the woods thus waning", "Should wax to meet the moon.", "", "As though, when fields lie stricken", "By grey December's breath,", "These lordlier growths that sicken", "And die for fear of death", "Should feel the sense requicken", "That hears what springtide saith", "And thrills for love, spring-stricken", "And pierced with April's breath.", "", "The keen white-winged north-easter", "That stings and spurs thy sea", "Doth yet but feed and feast her", "With glowing sense of glee:", "Calm chained her, storm released her,", "And storm's glad voice was he:", "South-wester or north-easter,", "Thy winds rejoice the sea.", "", "V", "A dream, a dream is it all -- the season,", "The sky, the water, the wind, the shore?", "A day-born dream of divine unreason,", "A marvel moulded of sleep -- no more?", "For the cloudlike wave that my limbs while cleaving", "Feel as in slumber beneath them heaving", "Soothes the sense as to slumber, leaving", "Sense of nought that was known of yore.", "", "A purer passion, a lordlier leisure,", "A peace more happy than lives on land,", "Fulfils with pulse of diviner pleasure", "The dreaming head and the steering hand.", "I lean my cheek to the cold grey pillow,", "The deep soft swell of the full broad billow,", "And close mine eyes for delight past measure,", "And wish the wheel of the world would stand.", "", "The wild-winged hour that we fain would capture", "Falls as from heaven that its light feet clomb,", "So brief, so soft, and so full the rapture", "Was felt that soothed me with sense of home.", "To sleep, to swim, and to dream, for ever --", "Such joy the vision of man saw never;", "For here too soon will a dark day sever", "The sea-bird's wing from the sea-wave's foam.", "", "A dream, and more than a dream, and dimmer", "At once and brighter than dreams that flee,", "The moment's joy of the seaward swimmer", "Abides, remembered as truth may be.", "Not all the joy and not all the glory", "Must fade as leaves when the woods wax hoary;", "For there the downs and the sea-banks glimmer,", "And here to south of them swells the sea." ], "linecount": "128" }, { "title": "A Child's Laughter", "author": "Algernon Charles Swinburne", "lines": [ "ALL the bells of heaven may ring,", "All the birds of heaven may sing,", "All the wells on earth may spring,", "All the winds on earth may bring", "All sweet sounds together---", "Sweeter far than all things heard,", "Hand of harper, tone of bird,", "Sound of woods at sundawn stirred,", "Welling water's winsome word,", "Wind in warm wan weather,", "", "One thing yet there is, that none", "Hearing ere its chime be done", "Knows not well the sweetest one", "Heard of man beneath the sun,", "Hoped in heaven hereafter;", "Soft and strong and loud and light,", "Very sound of very light", "Heard from morning's rosiest height,", "When the soul of all delight", "Fills a child's clear laughter.", "", "Golden bells of welcome rolled", "Never forth such notes, nor told", "Hours so blithe in tones so bold,", "As the radiant mouth of gold", "Here that rings forth heaven.", "If the golden-crested wren", "Were a nightingale---why, then,", "Something seen and heard of men", "Might be half as sweet as when", "Laughs a child of seven." ], "linecount": "30" }, { "title": "A Ballad of Dreamland", "author": "Algernon Charles Swinburne", "lines": [ "I hid my heart in a nest of roses,", "Out of the sun's way, hidden apart;", "In a softer bed then the soft white snow's is,", "Under the roses I hid my heart.", "Why would it sleep not? why should it start,", "When never a leaf of the rose-tree stirred?", "What made sleep flutter his wings and part?", "Only the song of a secret bird.", "", "Lie still, I said, for the wind's wing closes,", "And mild leaves muffle the keen sun's dart;", "Lie still, for the wind on the warm seas dozes,", "And the wind is unquieter yet than thou art.", "Does a thought in thee still as a thorn's wound smart?", "Does the fang still fret thee of hope deferred?", "What bids the lips of thy sleep dispart?", "Only the song of a secret bird.", "", "The green land's name that a charm encloses,", "It never was writ in the traveller's chart,", "And sweet on its trees as the fruit that grows is,", "It never was sold in the merchant's mart.", "The swallows of dreams through its dim fields dart,", "And sleep's are the tunes in its tree-tops heard;", "No hound's note wakens the wildwood hart,", "Only the song of a secret bird.", "", "", "ENVOI", "", "In the world of dreams I have chosen my part,", "To sleep for a season and hear no word", "Of true love's truth or of light love's art,", "Only the song of a secret bird." ], "linecount": "29" }, { "title": "The Death Of Richard Wagner", "author": "Algernon Charles Swinburne", "lines": [ "Mourning on earth, as when dark hours descend,", "Wide-winged with plagues, from heaven; when hope and mirth", "Wane, and no lips rebuke or reprehend", "Mourning on earth.", "", "The soul wherein her songs of death and birth,", "Darkness and light, were wont to sound and blend,", "Now silent, leaves the whole world less in worth.", "", "Winds that make moan and triumph, skies that bend,", "Thunders, and sound of tides in gulf and firth,", "Spake through his spirit of speech, whose death should send", "Mourning on earth.", "", "", "", "The world's great heart, whence all things strange and rare", "Take form and sound, that each inseparate part", "May bear its burden in all tuned thoughts that share", "The world's great heart -", "", "The fountain forces, whence like steeds that start", "Leap forth the powers of earth and fire and air,", "Seas that revolve and rivers that depart -", "", "Spake, and were turned to song: yea, all they were,", "With all their works, found in his mastering art", "Speech as of powers whose uttered word laid bare", "The world's great heart.", "", "", "", "From the depths of the sea, from the wellsprings of earth, from the wastes of the midmost night,", "From the fountains of darkness and tempest and thunder, from heights where the soul would be,", "The spell of the mage of music evoked their sense, as an unknown light", "From the depths of the sea.", "", "As a vision of heaven from the hollows of ocean, that none but a god might see,", "Rose out of the silence of things unknown of a presence, a form, a might,", "And we heard as a prophet that hears God's message against him, and may not flee.", "", "Eye might not endure it, but ear and heart with a rapture of dark delight,", "With a terror and wonder whose core was joy, and a passion of thought set free,", "Felt inly the rising of doom divine as a sundawn risen to sight", "From the depths of the sea." ], "linecount": "33" }, { "title": "Not A Child", "author": "Algernon Charles Swinburne", "lines": [ "'Not a child: I call myself a boy,'", "Says my king, with accent stern yet mild,", "Now nine years have brought him change of joy;", "'Not a child.'", "", "How could reason be so far beguiled,", "Err so far from sense's safe employ,", "Stray so wide of truth, or run so wild?", "", "Seeing his face bent over book or toy,", "Child I called him, smiling: but he smiled", "Back, as one too high for vain annoy -", "Not a child.", "", "II.", "", "Not a child? alack the year!", "What should ail an undefiled", "Heart, that he would fain appear", "Not a child?", "", "Men, with years and memories piled", "Each on other, far and near,", "Fain again would so be styled:", "", "Fain would cast off hope and fear,", "Rest, forget, be reconciled:", "Why would you so fain be, dear,", "Not a child?", "", "III.", "", "", "Child or boy, my darling, which you will,", "Still your praise finds heart and song employ,", "Heart and song both yearning toward you still,", "Child or boy.", "", "All joys else might sooner pall or cloy", "Love than this which inly takes its fill,", "Dear, of sight of your more perfect joy.", "", "Nay, be aught you please, let all fulfil", "All your pleasure; be your world your toy:", "Mild or wild we love you, loud or still,", "Child or boy." ], "linecount": "35" }, { "title": "Epilogue", "author": "Algernon Charles Swinburne", "lines": [ "Between the wave-ridge and the strand", "I let you forth in sight of land,", "Songs that with storm-crossed wings and eyes", "Strain eastward till the darkness dies;", "Let signs and beacons fall or stand,", "And stars and balefires set and rise;", "Ye, till some lordlier lyric hand", "Weave the beloved brows their crown,", "At the beloved feet lie down.", "", "O, whatsoever of life or light", "Love hath to give you, what of might", "Or heart or hope is yours to live,", "I charge you take in trust to give", "For very love's sake, in whose sight,", "Through poise of hours alternative", "And seasons plumed with light or night,", "Ye live and move and have your breath", "To sing with on the ridge of death.", "", "I charge you faint not all night through", "For love's sake that was breathed on you", "To be to you as wings and feet", "For travel, and as blood to heat", "And sense of spirit to renew", "And bloom of fragrance to keep sweet", "And fire of purpose to keep true", "The life, if life in such things be,", "That I would give you forth of me.", "", "Out where the breath of war may bear,", "Out in the rank moist reddened air", "That sounds and smells of death, and hath", "No light but death's upon its path", "Seen through the black wind's tangled hair,", "I send you past the wild time's wrath", "To find his face who bade you bear", "Fruit of his seed to faith and love,", "That he may take the heart thereof.", "", "By day or night, by sea or street,", "Fly till ye find and clasp his feet", "And kiss as worshippers who bring", "Too much love on their lips to sing,", "But with hushed heads accept and greet", "The presence of some heavenlier thing", "In the near air; so may ye meet", "His eyes, and droop not utterly", "For shame's sake at the light you see.", "", "Not utterly struck spiritless", "For shame's sake and unworthiness", "Of these poor forceless hands that come", "Empty, these lips that should be dumb,", "This love whose seal can but impress", "These weak word-offerings wearisome", "Whose blessings have not strength to bless", "Nor lightnings fire to burn up aught", "Nor smite with thunders of their thought.", "", "One thought they have, even love; one light,", "Truth, that keeps clear the sun by night;", "One chord, of faith as of a lyre;", "One heat, of hope as of a fire;", "One heart, one music, and one might,", "One flame, one altar, and one choir;", "And one man's living head in sight", "Who said, when all time's sea was foam,", "\"Let there be Rome\"--and there was Rome.", "", "As a star set in space for token", "Like a live word of God's mouth spoken,", "Visible sound, light audible,", "In the great darkness thick as hell", "A stanchless flame of love unsloken,", "A sign to conquer and compel,", "A law to stand in heaven unbroken", "Whereby the sun shines, and wherethrough", "Time's eldest empires are made new;", "", "So rose up on our generations", "That light of the most ancient nations,", "Law, life, and light, on the world's way,", "The very God of very day,", "The sun-god; from their star-like stations", "Far down the night in disarray", "Fled, crowned with fires of tribulations,", "The suns of sunless years, whose light", "And life and law were of the night.", "", "The naked kingdoms quenched and stark", "Drave with their dead things down the dark,", "Helmless; their whole world, throne by throne,", "Fell, and its whole heart turned to stone,", "Hopeless; their hands that touched our ark", "Withered; and lo, aloft, alone,", "On time's white waters man's one bark,", "Where the red sundawn's open eye", "Lit the soft gulf of low green sky.", "", "So for a season piloted", "It sailed the sunlight, and struck red", "With fire of dawn reverberate", "The wan face of incumbent fate", "That paused half pitying overhead", "And almost had foregone the freight", "Of those dark hours the next day bred", "For shame, and almost had forsworn", "Service of night for love of morn.", "", "Then broke the whole night in one blow,", "Thundering; then all hell with one throe", "Heaved, and brought forth beneath the stroke", "Death; and all dead things moved and woke", "That the dawn's arrows had brought low,", "At the great sound of night that broke", "Thundering, and all the old world-wide woe;", "And under night's loud-sounding dome", "Men sought her, and she was not Rome.", "", "Still with blind hands and robes blood-wet", "Night hangs on heaven, reluctant yet,", "With black blood dripping from her eyes", "On the soiled lintels of the skies,", "With brows and lips that thirst and threat,", "Heart-sick with fear lest the sun rise,", "And aching with her fires that set,", "And shuddering ere dawn bursts her bars,", "Burns out with all her beaten stars.", "", "In this black wind of war they fly", "Now, ere that hour be in the sky", "That brings back hope, and memory back,", "And light and law to lands that lack;", "That spiritual sweet hour whereby", "The bloody-handed night and black", "Shall be cast out of heaven to die;", "Kingdom by kingdom, crown by crown,", "The fires of darkness are blown down.", "", "Yet heavy, grievous yet the weight", "Sits on us of imperfect fate.", "From wounds of other days and deeds", "Still this day's breathing body bleeds;", "Still kings for fear and slaves for hate", "Sow lives of men on earth like seeds", "In the red soil they saturate;", "And we, with faces eastward set,", "Stand sightless of the morning yet.", "", "And many for pure sorrow's sake", "Look back and stretch back hands to take", "Gifts of night's giving, ease and sleep,", "Flowers of night's grafting, strong to steep", "The soul in dreams it will not break,", "Songs of soft hours that sigh and sweep", "Its lifted eyelids nigh to wake", "With subtle plumes and lulling breath", "That soothe its weariness to death.", "", "And many, called of hope and pride,", "Fall ere the sunrise from our side.", "Fresh lights and rumours of fresh fames", "That shift and veer by night like flames,", "Shouts and blown trumpets, ghosts that glide", "Calling, and hail them by dead names,", "Fears, angers, memories, dreams divide", "Spirit from spirit, and wear out", "Strong hearts of men with hope and doubt.", "", "Till time beget and sorrow bear", "The soul-sick eyeless child despair,", "That comes among us, mad and blind,", "With counsels of a broken mind,", "Tales of times dead and woes that were,", "And, prophesying against mankind,", "Shakes out the horror of her hair", "To take the sunlight with its coils", "And hold the living soul in toils.", "", "By many ways of death and moods", "Souls pass into their servitudes.", "Their young wings weaken, plume by plume", "Drops, and their eyelids gather gloom", "And close against man's frauds and feuds,", "And their tongues call they know not whom", "To help in their vicissitudes;", "For many slaveries are, but one", "Liberty, single as the sun.", "", "One light, one law, that burns up strife,", "And one sufficiency of life.", "Self-stablished, the sufficing soul", "Hears the loud wheels of changes roll,", "Sees against man man bare the knife,", "Sees the world severed, and is whole;", "Sees force take dowerless fraud to wife,", "And fear from fraud's incestuous bed", "Crawl forth and smite his father dead:", "", "Sees death made drunk with war, sees time", "Weave many-coloured crime with crime,", "State overthrown on ruining state,", "And dares not be disconsolate.", "Only the soul hath feet to climb,", "Only the soul hath room to wait,", "Hath brows and eyes to hold sublime", "Above all evil and all good,", "All strength and all decrepitude.", "", "She only, she since earth began,", "The many-minded soul of man,", "From one incognizable root", "That bears such divers-coloured fruit,", "Hath ruled for blessing or for ban", "The flight of seasons and pursuit;", "She regent, she republican,", "With wide and equal eyes and wings", "Broods on things born and dying things.", "", "Even now for love or doubt of us", "The hour intense and hazardous", "Hangs high with pinions vibrating", "Whereto the light and darkness cling,", "Dividing the dim season thus,", "And shakes from one ambiguous wing", "Shadow, and one is luminous,", "And day falls from it; so the past", "Torments the future to the last.", "", "And we that cannot hear or see", "The sounds and lights of liberty,", "The witness of the naked God", "That treads on burning hours unshod", "With instant feet unwounded; we", "That can trace only where he trod", "By fire in heaven or storm at sea,", "Not know the very present whole", "And naked nature of the soul;", "", "We that see wars and woes and kings,", "And portents of enormous things,", "Empires, and agonies, and slaves,", "And whole flame of town-swallowing graves;", "That hear the harsh hours clap sharp wings", "Above the roar of ranks like waves,", "From wreck to wreck as the world swings;", "Know but that men there are who see", "And hear things other far than we.", "", "By the light sitting on their brows,", "The fire wherewith their presence glows,", "The music falling with their feet,", "The sweet sense of a spirit sweet", "That with their speech or motion grows", "And breathes and burns men's hearts with heat;", "By these signs there is none but knows", "Men who have life and grace to give,", "Men who have seen the soul and live.", "", "By the strength sleeping in their eyes,", "The lips whereon their sorrow lies", "Smiling, the lines of tears unshed,", "The large divine look of one dead", "That speaks out of the breathless skies", "In silence, when the light is shed", "Upon man's soul of memories;", "The supreme look that sets love free,", "The look of stars and of the sea;", "", "By the strong patient godhead seen", "Implicit in their mortal mien,", "The conscience of a God held still", "And thunders ruled by their own will", "And fast-bound fires that might burn clean", "This worldly air that foul things fill,", "And the afterglow of what has been,", "That, passing, shows us without word", "What they have seen, what they have heard,", "", "By all these keen and burning signs", "The spirit knows them and divines.", "In bonds, in banishment, in grief,", "Scoffed at and scourged with unbelief,", "Foiled with false trusts and thwart designs,", "Stripped of green days and hopes in leaf,", "Their mere bare body of glory shines", "Higher, and man gazing surelier sees", "What light, what comfort is of these.", "", "So I now gazing; till the sense", "Being set on fire of confidence", "Strains itself sunward, feels out far", "Beyond the bright and morning star,", "Beyond the extreme wave's refluence,", "To where the fierce first sunbeams are", "Whose fire intolerant and intense", "As birthpangs whence day burns to be", "Parts breathless heaven from breathing sea.", "", "I see not, know not, and am blest,", "Master, who know that thou knowest,", "Dear lord and leader, at whose hand", "The first days and the last days stand,", "With scars and crowns on head and breast,", "That fought for love of the sweet land", "Or shall fight in her latter quest;", "All the days armed and girt and crowned", "Whose glories ring thy glory round.", "", "Thou sawest, when all the world was blind,", "The light that should be of mankind,", "The very day that was to be;", "And how shalt thou not sometime see", "Thy city perfect to thy mind", "Stand face to living face with thee,", "And no miscrowned man's head behind;", "The hearth of man, the human home,", "The central flame that shall be Rome?", "", "As one that ere a June day rise", "Makes seaward for the dawn, and tries", "The water with delighted limbs", "That taste the sweet dark sea, and swims", "Right eastward under strengthening skies,", "And sees the gradual rippling rims", "Of waves whence day breaks blossom-wise", "Take fire ere light peer well above,", "And laughs from all his heart with love;", "", "And softlier swimming with raised head", "Feels the full flower of morning shed", "And fluent sunrise round him rolled", "That laps and laves his body bold", "With fluctuant heaven in water's stead,", "And urgent through the growing gold", "Strikes, and sees all the spray flash red,", "And his soul takes the sun, and yearns", "For joy wherewith the sea's heart burns;", "", "So the soul seeking through the dark", "Heavenward, a dove without an ark,", "Transcends the unnavigable sea", "Of years that wear out memory;", "So calls, a sunward-singing lark,", "In the ear of souls that should be free;", "So points them toward the sun for mark", "Who steer not for the stress of waves,", "And seek strange helmsmen, and are slaves.", "", "For if the swimmer's eastward eye", "Must see no sunrise--must put by", "The hope that lifted him and led", "Once, to have light about his head,", "To see beneath the clear low sky", "The green foam-whitened wave wax red", "And all the morning's banner fly -", "Then, as earth's helpless hopes go down,", "Let earth's self in the dark tides drown.", "", "Yea, if no morning must behold", "Man, other than were they now cold,", "And other deeds than past deeds done,", "Nor any near or far-off sun", "Salute him risen and sunlike-souled,", "Free, boundless, fearless, perfect, one,", "Let man's world die like worlds of old,", "And here in heaven's sight only be", "The sole sun on the worldless sea." ], "linecount": "333" }, { "title": "To Walt Whitman In America", "author": "Algernon Charles Swinburne", "lines": [ "Send but a song oversea for us,", "Heart of their hearts who are free,", "Heart of their singer, to be for us", "More than our singing can be;", "Ours, in the tempest at error,", "With no light but the twilight of terror;", "Send us a song oversea!", "", "Sweet-smelling of pine-leaves and grasses,", "And blown as a tree through and through", "With the winds of the keen mountain-passes,", "And tender as sun-smitten dew;", "Sharp-tongued as the winter that shakes", "The wastes of your limitless lakes,", "Wide-eyed as the sea-line's blue.", "", "O strong-winged soul with prophetic", "Lips hot with the bloodheats of song,", "With tremor of heartstrings magnetic,", "With thoughts as thunders in throng,", "With consonant ardours of chords", "That pierce men's souls as with swords", "And hale them hearing along,", "", "Make us too music, to be with us", "As a word from a world's heart warm,", "To sail the dark as a sea with us,", "Full-sailed, outsinging the storm,", "A song to put fire in our ears", "Whose burning shall burn up tears,", "Whose sign bid battle reform;", "", "A note in the ranks of a clarion,", "A word in the wind of cheer,", "To consume as with lightning the carrion", "That makes time foul for us here;", "In the air that our dead things infest", "A blast of the breath of the west,", "Till east way as west way is clear.", "", "Out of the sun beyond sunset,", "From the evening whence morning shall be,", "With the rollers in measureless onset,", "With the van of the storming sea,", "With the world-wide wind, with the breath", "That breaks ships driven upon death,", "With the passion of all things free,", "", "With the sea-steeds footless and frantic,", "White myriads for death to bestride", "In the charge of the ruining Atlantic", "Where deaths by regiments ride,", "With clouds and clamours of waters,", "With a long note shriller than slaughter's", "On the furrowless fields world-wide,", "", "With terror, with ardour and wonder,", "With the soul of the season that wakes", "When the weight of a whole year's thunder", "In the tidestream of autumn breaks,", "Let the flight of the wide-winged word", "Come over, come in and be heard,", "Take form and fire for our sakes.", "", "For a continent bloodless with travail", "Here toils and brawls as it can,", "And the web of it who shall unravel", "Of all that peer on the plan;", "Would fain grow men, but they grow not,", "And fain be free, but they know not", "One name for freedom and man?", "", "One name, not twain for division;", "One thing, not twain, from the birth;", "Spirit and substance and vision,", "Worth more than worship is worth;", "Unbeheld, unadored, undivined,", "The cause, the centre, the mind,", "The secret and sense of the earth.", "", "Here as a weakling in irons,", "Here as a weanling in bands,", "As a prey that the stake-net environs,", "Our life that we looked for stands;", "And the man-child naked and dear,", "Democracy, turns on us here", "Eyes trembling with tremulous hands", "", "It sees not what season shall bring to it", "Sweet fruit of its bitter desire;", "Few voices it hears yet sing to it,", "Few pulses of hearts reaspire;", "Foresees not time, nor forehears", "The noises of imminent years,", "Earthquake, and thunder, and fire:", "", "When crowned and weaponed and curbless", "It shall walk without helm or shield", "The bare burnt furrows and herbless", "Of war's last flame-stricken field,", "Till godlike, equal with time,", "It stand in the sun sublime,", "In the godhead of man revealed.", "", "Round your people and over them", "Light like raiment is drawn,", "Close as a garment to cover them", "Wrought not of mail nor of lawn;", "Here, with hope hardly to wear,", "Naked nations and bare", "Swim, sink, strike out for the dawn.", "", "Chains are here, and a prison,", "Kings, and subjects, and shame;", "If the God upon you be arisen,", "How should our songs be the same?", "How, in confusion of change,", "How shall we sing, in a strange", "Land, songs praising his name?", "", "God is buried and dead to us,", "Even the spirit of earth,", "Freedom; so have they said to us,", "Some with mocking and mirth,", "Some with heartbreak and tears;", "And a God without eyes, without ears,", "Who shall sing of him, dead in the birth?", "", "The earth-god Freedom, the lonely", "Face lightening, the footprint unshod,", "Not as one man crucified only", "Nor scourged with but one life's rod;", "The soul that is substance of nations,", "Reincarnate with fresh generations;", "The great god Man, which is God.", "", "But in weariest of years and obscurest", "Doth it live not at heart of all things,", "The one God and one spirit, a purest", "Life, fed from unstanchable springs?", "Within love, within hatred it is,", "And its seed in the stripe as the kiss,", "And in slaves is the germ, and in kings.", "", "Freedom we call it, for holier", "Name of the soul's there is none;", "Surelier it labours if slowlier,", "Than the metres of star or of sun;", "Slowlier than life into breath,", "Surelier than time into death,", "It moves till its labour be done.", "", "Till the motion be done and the measure", "Circling through season and clime,", "Slumber and sorrow and pleasure,", "Vision of virtue and crime;", "Till consummate with conquering eyes,", "A soul disembodied, it rise", "From the body transfigured of time.", "", "Till it rise and remain and take station", "With the stars of the worlds that rejoice;", "Till the voice of its heart's exultation", "Be as theirs an invariable voice;", "By no discord of evil estranged,", "By no pause, by no breach in it changed,", "By no clash in the chord of its choice.", "", "It is one with the world's generations,", "With the spirit, the star, and the sod;", "With the kingless and king-stricken nations,", "With the cross, and the chain, and the rod;", "The most high, the most secret, most lonely,", "The earth-soul Freedom, that only", "Lives, and that only is God." ], "linecount": "154" }, { "title": "Super Flumina Babylonis", "author": "Algernon Charles Swinburne", "lines": [ "By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept,", "Remembering thee,", "That for ages of agony hast endured, and slept,", "And wouldst not see.", "", "By the waters of Babylon we stood up and sang,", "Considering thee,", "That a blast of deliverance in the darkness rang,", "To set thee free.", "", "And with trumpets and thunderings and with morning song", "Came up the light;", "And thy spirit uplifted thee to forget thy wrong", "As day doth night.", "", "And thy sons were dejected not any more, as then", "When thou wast shamed;", "When thy lovers went heavily without heart, as men", "Whose life was maimed.", "", "In the desolate distances, with a great desire,", "For thy love's sake,", "With our hearts going back to thee, they were filled with fire,", "Were nigh to break.", "", "It was said to us: \"Verily ye are great of heart,", "But ye shall bend;", "Ye are bondmen and bondwomen, to be scourged and smart,", "To toil and tend.\"", "", "And with harrows men harrowed us, and subdued with spears,", "And crushed with shame;", "And the summer and winter was, and the length of years,", "And no change came.", "", "By the rivers of Italy, by the sacred streams,", "By town, by tower,", "There was feasting with revelling, there was sleep with dreams,", "Until thine hour.", "", "And they slept and they rioted on their rose-hung beds,", "With mouths on flame,", "And with love-locks vine-chapleted, and with rose-crowned heads", "And robes of shame.", "", "And they knew not their forefathers, nor the hills and streams", "And words of power,", "Nor the gods that were good to them, but with songs and dreams", "Filled up their hour.", "", "By the rivers of Italy, by the dry streams' beds,", "When thy time came,", "There was casting of crowns from them, from their young men's heads,", "The crowns of shame.", "", "By the horn of Eridanus, by the Tiber mouth,", "As thy day rose,", "They arose up and girded them to the north and south,", "By seas, by snows.", "", "As a water in January the frost confines,", "Thy kings bound thee;", "As a water in April is, in the new-blown vines,", "Thy sons made free.", "", "And thy lovers that looked for thee, and that mourned from far,", "For thy sake dead,", "We rejoiced in the light of thee, in the signal star", "Above thine head.", "", "In thy grief had we followed thee, in thy passion loved,", "Loved in thy loss;", "In thy shame we stood fast to thee, with thy pangs were moved,", "Clung to thy cross.", "", "By the hillside of Calvary we beheld thy blood,", "Thy bloodred tears,", "As a mother's in bitterness, an unebbing flood,", "Years upon years.", "", "And the north was Gethsemane, without leaf or bloom,", "A garden sealed;", "And the south was Aceldama, for a sanguine fume", "Hid all the field.", "", "By the stone of the sepulchre we returned to weep,", "From far, from prison;", "And the guards by it keeping it we beheld asleep,", "But thou wast risen.", "", "And an angel's similitude by the unsealed grave,", "And by the stone:", "And the voice was angelical, to whose words God gave", "Strength like his own.", "", "\"Lo, the graveclothes of Italy that are folded up", "In the grave's gloom!", "And the guards as men wrought upon with a charmed cup,", "By the open tomb.", "", "\"And her body most beautiful, and her shining head,", "These are not here;", "For your mother, for Italy, is not surely dead:", "Have ye no fear.", "", "\"As of old time she spake to you, and you hardly heard,", "Hardly took heed,", "So now also she saith to you, yet another word,", "Who is risen indeed.", "", "\"By my saying she saith to you, in your ears she saith,", "Who hear these things,", "Put no trust in men's royalties, nor in great men's breath,", "Nor words of kings.", "", "\"For the life of them vanishes and is no more seen,", "Nor no more known;", "Nor shall any remember him if a crown hath been,", "Or where a throne.", "", "\"Unto each man his handiwork, unto each his crown,", "The just Fate gives;", "Whoso takes the world's life on him and his own lays down,", "He, dying so, lives.", "", "\"Whoso bears the whole heaviness of the wronged world's weight", "And puts it by,", "It is well with him suffering, though he face man's fate;", "How should he die?", "", "\"Seeing death has no part in him any more, no power", "Upon his head;", "He has bought his eternity with a little hour,", "And is not dead.", "", "\"For an hour, if ye look for him, he is no more found,", "For one hour's space;", "Then ye lift up your eyes to him and behold him crowned,", "A deathless face.", "", "\"On the mountains of memory, by the world's wellsprings,", "In all men's eyes,", "Where the light of the life of him is on all past things,", "Death only dies.", "", "\"Not the light that was quenched for us, nor the deeds that were,", "Nor the ancient days,", "Nor the sorrows not sorrowful, nor the face most fair", "Of perfect praise.\"", "", "So the angel of Italy's resurrection said,", "So yet he saith;", "So the son of her suffering, that from breasts nigh dead", "Drew life, not death.", "", "That the pavement of Golgotha should be white as snow,", "Not red, but white;", "That the waters of Babylon should no longer flow,", "And men see light." ], "linecount": "128" } ]