ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
(1837-1909)
Contents
The Poetry Collections
ATALANTA IN CALYDON
POEMS AND BALLADS (FIRST SERIES)
SONGS OF TWO NATIONS
SONGS BEFORE SUNRISE
ERECHTHEUS
POEMS AND BALLADS (SECOND SERIES)
POEMS AND BALLADS. (THIRD SERIES)
SONGS OF THE SPRINGTIDES
STUDIES IN SONG
TRISTRAM OF LYONESSE
SONNETS
SONNETS ON ENGLISH DRAMATIC POETS (1590-1650)
A MIDSUMMER HOLIDAY AND OTHER POEMS
A CENTURY OF ROUNDELS
ASTROPHEL AND OTHER POEMS
THE HEPTALOGIA
THE TALE OF BALEN
A CHANNEL PASSAGE AND OTHER POEMS
POSTHUMOUS AND UNCOLLECTED POEMS
The Poems
LIST OF POEMS IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER
LIST OF POEMS IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER
The Verse Dramas
THE QUEEN MOTHER
ROSAMOND
CHASTELARD
BOTHWELL
MARY STUART
MARINO FALIERO
LOCRINE
THE SISTERS
ROSAMUND, QUEEN OF THE LOMBARDS
THE DUKE OF GANDIA
The Novel
LOVE’S CROSS-CURRENTS
Selected Non-Fiction
WILLIAM BLAKE: A CRITICAL ESSAY
THE AGE OF SHAKESPEARE
The Biography
THE LIFE OF ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE by Edmund Gosse
© Delphi Classics 2013
Version 1
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
By Delphi Classics, 2013
NOTE
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The Poetry Collections
7 Chester Street, Grosvenor Place, London — Swinburne’s birthplace
The poet with his sisters, 1843
Sketch of Swinburne, aged 23 by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
ATALANTA IN CALYDON
Algernon Charles Swinburne was born in London on 5 April 1837. He was the eldest of six children and the son of Captain Charles Henry Swinburne and Lady Jane Henrietta, daughter of the 3rd Earl of Ashburnham. He spent his childhood at East Dene in Bonchurch on the Isle of Wight and later attended Eton College, where he was inspired to start writing poetry. When attending Balliol College, Oxford, he was rusticated from the university for a brief spell in 1859 for having publicly supported the attempted assassination of Napoleon III by Felice Orsini. However, he returned the following year, though he was never to receive his degree.
When spending his summer holidays at Capheaton Hall in Northumberland, Swinburne was inspired in his poetry by the many classical works he read in the house of his grandfather, Sir John Swinburne, 6th Baronet, who owned a famous library and was President of the Literary and Philosophical Society in Newcastle upon Tyne. Swinburne considered Northumberland to be his native county — an attachment that can be clearly seen in some of the poet’s most evocative and memorable works, including the emotionally charged and patriotic Northumberland and Grace Darling.
In 1857 Swinburne became a member of Lady Pauline Trevelyan’s intellectual circle at Wallington Hall, meeting new literary companions interested in his poetry. Whilst studying at Oxford, he also met several Pre-Raphaelite artists, including Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Morris. After leaving college he lived in London and started an active writing career, living for a time with Rossetti, who was delighted with his ‘little Northumbrian friend’, in reference to Swinburne’s small height of five foot four.
Swinburne’s first poetic publication was Atalanta in Calydon in 1865, of which one hundred copies were privately printed. Although in essence a drama, the work is generally collected in poetry editions of Swinburne’s works. Atalanta in Calydon concerns the eponymous virgin huntress, who was unwilling to marry and beloved by the hero Meleager. The poetic drama recounts how Artemis was forgotten at a sacrifice by King Oineus. Intensely angered, Artemis sent the savage Calydonian Boar to ravage the land, men and cattle, preventing crops from being sown. Atalanta joined Meleager and many other famous heroes on a hunt for the boar. Many of the men were angry that a woman was joining them, but Meleager, though married, lusted for Atalanta, and so he persuaded them to include her. Several of the men were killed before Atalanta became the first to hit the boar and draw blood. After Meleager finally killed the boar with his spear, he awarded the skin to Atalanta. Meleager’s uncles, Plexippus and Toxeus, were angry and tried to take the skin from her. In revenge, Meleager killed his uncles. Wild with grief, Meleager’s mother Althaea threw a charmed log on the fire, which consumed Meleager’s life as it burned.
Swinburne by William Bell Scott
Pauline, Lady Trevelyan, who was an early supporter of the young Swinburne’s poetry
Wallington Hall, near Morpeth, Northumberland. After Pauline Jermyn married the naturalist Sir Walter Calverley Trevelyan, they began hosting literary and scientific figures at the Hall. As a cultural centre, Wallington visitors included the members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the budding poet Swinburne.
CONTENTS
THE PERSONS.
THE ARGUMENT.
ATALANTA IN CALYDON.
The first edition of Swinburne’s first poetry book
‘Meleager, assisted by Cupid, presents Atalanta with the head of the Calydonian Boar’ by the studio of Rubens
ATALANTA IN CALYDON
TO THE MEMORY
OF
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
I NOW DEDICATE, WITH EQUAL AFFECTION, REVERENCE, AND REGRET, A POEM INSCRIBED TO HIM WHILE YET ALIVE IN WORDS WHICH ARE NOW RETAINED BECAUSE THEY WERE LAID BEFORE HIM; AND TO WHICH, RATHER THAN CANCEL THEM, I HAVE ADDED SUCH OTHERS AS WERE EVOKED BY THE NEWS OF HIS DEATH: THAT THOUGH LOSING THE PLEASURE I MAY NOT LOSE THE HONOUR OF INSCRIBING IN FRONT OF MY WORK THE HIGHEST OF CONTEMPORARY NAMES.
THE PERSONS.
CHIEF HUNTSMAN. CHORUS. ALTHAEA. MELEAGER OENEUS. ATALANTA. TOXEUS. PLEXIPPUS. HERALD. MESSENGER. SECOND MESSENGER.
THE ARGUMENT.
Althaea, daughter of Thestius and Eurythemis, queen of Calydon, being with child of Meleager her first-born son, dreamed that she brought forth a brand burning; and upon his birth came the three Fates and prophesied of him three things, namely these; that he should have great strength of his hands, and good fortune in this life, and that he should live no longer when the brand then in the fire were consumed: wherefore his mother plucked it forth and kept it by her. And the child being a man grown sailed with Jason after the fleece of gold, and won himself great praise of all men living; and when the tribes of the north and west made war upon Aetolia, he fought against their army and scattered it. But Artemis, having at the first stirred up these tribes to war against Oeneus king of Calydon, because he had offered sacrifice to all the gods saving her alone, but her he had forgotten to honour, was yet more wroth because of the destruction of this army, and sent upon the land of Calydon a wild boar which slew many and wasted all their increase, but him could none slay, and many went against him and perished. Then were all the chief men of Greece gathered together, and among them Atalanta daughter of Iasius the Arcadian, a virgin, for whose sake Artemis let slay the boar, seeing she favoured the maiden greatly; and Meleager having des
patched it gave the spoil thereof to Atalanta, as one beyond measure enamoured of her; but the brethren of Althaea his mother, Toxeus and Plexippus, with such others as misliked that she only should bear off the praise whereas many had borne the labour, laid wait for her to take away her spoil; but Meleager fought against them and slew them: whom when Althaea their sister beheld and knew to be slain of her son, she waxed for wrath and sorrow like as one mad, and taking the brand whereby the measure of her son’s life was meted to him, she cast it upon a fire; and with the wasting thereof his life likewise wasted away, that being brought back to his father’s house he died in a brief space, and his mother also endured not long after for very sorrow; and this was his end, and the end of that hunting.
ATALANTA IN CALYDON.
CHIEF HUNTSMAN.
Maiden, and mistress of the months and stars
Now folded in the flowerless fields of heaven,
Goddess whom all gods love with threefold heart,
Being treble in thy divided deity,
A light for dead men and dark hours, a foot
Swift on the hills as morning, and a hand
To all things fierce and fleet that roar and range
Mortal, with gentler shafts than snow or sleep;
Hear now and help and lift no violent hand,
But favourable and fair as thine eye’s beam
Hidden and shown in heaven, for I all night
Amid the king’s hounds and the hunting men
Have wrought and worshipped toward thee; nor shall man
See goodlier hounds or deadlier edge of spears,
But for the end, that lies unreached at yet
Between the hands and on the knees of gods,
O fair-faced sun killing the stars and dews
And dreams and desolation of the night!
Rise up, shine, stretch thine hand out, with thy bow
Touch the most dimmest height of trembling heaven,
And burn and break the dark about thy ways,
Shot through and through with arrows; let thine hair
Lighten as flame above that nameless shell
Which was the moon, and thine eyes fill the world
And thy lips kindle with swift beams; let earth
Laugh, and the long sea fiery from thy feet
Through all the roar and ripple of streaming springs
And foam in reddening flakes and flying flowers
Shaken from hands and blown from lips of nymphs
Whose hair or breast divides the wandering wave
With salt close tresses cleaving lock to lock,
All gold, or shuddering and unfurrowed snow;
And all the winds about thee with their wings,
And fountain-heads of all the watered world;
Each horn of Acheloüs, and the green
Euenus, wedded with the straitening sea.
For in fair time thou comest; come also thou,
Twin-born with him, and virgin, Artemis,
And give our spears their spoil, the wild boar’s hide.
Sent in thine anger against us for sin done
And bloodless altars without wine or fire.
Him now consume thou; for thy sacrifice
With sanguine-shining steam divides the dawn,
And one, the maiden rose of all thy maids,
Arcadian Atalanta, snowy-souled,
Fair as the snow and footed as the wind,
From Ladon and well-wooded Maenalus
Over the firm hills and the fleeting sea
Hast thou drawn hither, and many an armèd king,
Heroes, the crown of men, like gods in fight.
Moreover out of all the Aetolian land,
From the full-flowered Lelantian pasturage
To what of fruitful field the son of Zeus
Won from the roaring river and labouring sea
When the wild god shrank in his horn and fled
And foamed and lessened through his wrathful fords,
Leaving clear lands that steamed with sudden sun,
These virgins with the lightening of the day
Bring thee fresh wreaths and their own sweeter hair,
Luxurious locks and flower-like mixed with flowers,
Clean offering, and chaste hymns; but me the time
Divides from these things; whom do thou not less
Help and give honour, and to mine hounds good speed,
And edge to spears, and luck to each man’s hand.
CHORUS.
When the hounds of spring are on winter’s traces,
The mother of months in meadow or plain
Fills the shadows and windy places
With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain;
And the brown bright nightingale amorous
Is half assuaged for Itylus,
For the Thracian ships and the foreign faces,
The tongueless vigil, and all the pain.
Come with bows bent and with emptying of quivers.
Maiden most perfect, lady of light,
With a noise of winds and many rivers,
With a clamour of waters, and with might;
Bind on thy sandals, O thou most fleet,
Over the splendour and speed of thy feet;
For the faint east quickens, the wan west shivers,
Round the feet of the day and the feet of the night.
Where shall we find her, how shall we sing to her,
Fold our hands round her knees, and cling?
O that man’s heart were as fire and could spring to her,
Fire, or the strength of the streams that spring!
For the stars and the winds are unto her
As raiment, as songs of the harp-player;
For the risen stars and the fallen cling to her,
And the southwest-wind and the west-wind sing.
For winter’s rains and ruins are over,
And all the season of snows, and sins;
The days dividing lover and lover,
The light that loses, the night that wins;
And time remembered is grief forgotten,
And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,
And in green underwood and cover
Blossom by blossom the spring begins.
The full streams feed on flower of rushes,
Ripe grasses trammel a travelling foot,
The faint fresh flame of the young year flushes
From leaf to flower and flower to fruit,
And fruit and leaf are as gold and fire,
And the oat is heard above the lyre,
And the hoofèd heel of a satyr crushes
The chestnut-husk at the chestnut-root.
And Pan by noon and Bacchus by night,
Fleeter of foot than the fleet-foot kid,
Follows with dancing and fills with delight
The Maenad and the Bassarid;
And soft as lips that laugh and hide
The laughing leaves of the trees divide,
And screen from seeing and leave in sight
The god pursuing, the maiden hid.
The ivy falls with the Bacchanal’s hair
Over her eyebrows hiding her eyes;
The wild vine slipping down leaves bare
Her bright breast shortening into sighs;
The wild vine slips with the weight of its leaves.
But the berried ivy catches and cleaves
To the limbs that glitter, the feet that scare
The wolf that follows, the fawn that flies.
ALTHAEA.
What do ye singing? what is this ye sing?
CHORUS.
Flowers bring we, and pure lips that please the gods,
And raiment meet for service: lest the day
Turn sharp with all its honey in our lips.
ALTHAEA.
Night, a black hound, follows the white fawn day,
Swifter than dreams the white flown feet of sleep;
Will ye pray back the nig
ht with any prayers?
And though the spring put back a little while
Winter, and snows that plague all men for sin,
And the iron time of cursing, yet I know
Spring shall be ruined with the rain, and storm
Eat up like fire the ashen autumn days.
I marvel what men do with prayers awake
Who dream and die with dreaming; any god,
Yea the least god of all things called divine,
Is more than sleep and waking; yet we say,
Perchance by praying a man shall match his god.
For if sleep have no mercy, and man’s dreams
Bite to the blood and burn into the bone,
What shall this man do waking? By the gods,
He shall not pray to dream sweet things to-night,
Having dreamt once more bitter things than death.
CHORUS.
Queen, but what is it that hath burnt thine heart?
For thy speech flickers like a brown-out flame.
ALTHAEA.
Look, ye say well, and know not what ye say,
For all my sleep is turned into a fire,
And all my dreams to stuff that kindles it.
CHORUS.
Yet one doth well being patient of the gods.
ALTHAEA.
Yea, lest they smite us with some four-foot plague.
CHORUS.
But when time spreads find out some herb for it.
Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne (Illustrated) (Delphi Poets Series) Page 1