Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne (Illustrated) (Delphi Poets Series)

by Algernon Charles Swinburne

  Smooth-shapen as a maid’s, and shook with pride

  His deep warm bosom, till the heavy sun’s

  Set face of heat stopped all the songs at once.

  The ways were clean to walk and delicate;

  And when the windy white of March grew late,

  Before the trees took heart to face the sun

  With ravelled raiment of lean winter on,

  The roots were thick and hot with hollow grass.

  Some roods away a lordly house there was,

  Cool with broad courts and latticed passage wet

  From rush-flowers and lilies ripe to set,

  Sown close among the strewings of the floor;

  And either wall of the slow corridor

  Was dim with deep device of gracious things;

  Some angel’s steady mouth and weight of wings

  Shut to the side; or Peter with straight stole

  And beard cut black against the aureole

  That spanned his head from nape to crown; thereby

  Mary’s gold hair, thick to the girdle-tie

  Wherein was bound a child with tender feet;

  Or the broad cross with blood nigh brown on it.

  Within this house a righteous lord abode,

  Ser Averardo; patient of his mood,

  And just of judgment; and to child he had

  A maid so sweet that her mere sight made glad

  Men sorrowing, and unbound the brows of hate;

  And where she came, the lips that pain made strait

  Waxed warm and wide, and from untender grew

  Tender as those that sleep brings patience to.

  Such long locks had she, that with knee to chin

  She might have wrapped and warmed her feet therein.

  Right seldom fell her face on weeping wise;

  Gold hair she had, and golden-coloured eyes,

  Filled with clear light and fire and large repose

  Like a fair hound’s; no man there is but knows

  Her face was white, and thereto she was tall;

  In no wise lacked there any praise at all

  To her most perfect and pure maidenhood;

  No sin I think there was in all her blood.

  She, where a gold grate shut the roses in,

  Dwelt daily through deep summer weeks, through green

  Flushed hours of rain upon the leaves; and there

  Love made him room and space to worship her

  With tender worship of bowed knees, and wrought

  Such pleasure as the pained sense palates not

  For weariness, but at one taste undoes

  The heart of its strong sweet, is ravenous

  Of all the hidden honey; words and sense

  Fail through the tune’s imperious prevalence.

  In a poor house this lover kept apart,

  Long communing with patience next his heart

  If love of his might move that face at all,

  Tuned evenwise with colours musical;

  Then after length of days he said thus: “Love,

  For love’s own sake and for the love thereof

  Let no harsh words untune your gracious mood;

  For good it were, if anything be good,

  To comfort me in this pain’s plague of mine;

  Seeing thus, how neither sleep nor bread nor wine

  Seems pleasant to me, yea no thing that is

  Seems pleasant to me; only I know this,

  Love’s ways are sharp for palms of piteous feet

  To travel, but the end of such is sweet:

  Now do with me as seemeth you the best.”

  She mused a little, as one holds his guest

  By the hand musing, with her face borne down:

  Then said: “Yea, though such bitter seed be sown,

  Have no more care of all that you have said;

  Since if there is no sleep will bind your head,

  Lo, I am fain to help you certainly;

  Christ knoweth, sir, if I would have you die;

  There is no pleasure when a man is dead.”

  Thereat he kissed her hands and yellow head

  And clipped her fair long body many times;

  I have no wit to shape in written rhymes

  A scanted tithe of this great joy they had.

  They were too near love’s secret to be glad;

  As whoso deems the core will surely melt

  From the warm fruit his lips caress, hath felt

  Some bitter kernel where the teeth shut hard:

  Or as sweet music sharpens afterward,

  Being half disrelished both for sharp and sweet;

  As sea-water, having killed over-heat

  In a man’s body, chills it with faint ache;

  So their sense, burdened only for love’s sake,

  Failed for pure love; yet so time served their wit,

  They saved each day some gold reserves of it,

  Being wiser in love’s riddle than such be

  Whom fragments feed with his chance charity.

  All things felt sweet were felt sweet overmuch;

  The rose-thorn’s prickle dangerous to touch,

  And flecks of fire in the thin leaf-shadows;

  Too keen the breathed honey of the rose,

  Its red too harsh a weight on feasted eyes;

  They were so far gone in love’s histories,

  Beyond all shape and colour and mere breath,

  Where pleasure has for kinsfolk sleep and death,

  And strength of soul and body waxen blind

  For weariness, and flesh entailed with mind,

  When the keen edge of sense foretasteth sin.

  Even this green place the summer caught them in

  Seemed half deflowered and sick with beaten leaves

  In their strayed eyes; these gold flower-fumèd eves

  Burnt out to make the sun’s love-offering,

  The midnoon’s prayer, the rose’s thanksgiving,

  The trees’ weight burdening the strengthless air,

  The shape of her stilled eyes, her coloured hair,

  Her body’s balance from the moving feet —

  All this, found fair, lacked yet one grain of sweet

  It had some warm weeks back: so perisheth

  On May’s new lip the tender April breath:

  So those same walks the wind sowed lilies in

  All April through, and all their latter kin

  Of languid leaves whereon the Autumn blows —

  The dead red raiment of the last year’s rose —

  The last year’s laurel, and the last year’s love,

  Fade, and grow things that death grows weary of.

  What man will gather in red summer-time

  The fruit of some obscure and hoary rhyme

  Heard last midwinter, taste the heart in it,

  Mould the smooth semitones afresh, refit

  The fair limbs ruined, flush the dead blood through

  With colour, make all broken beauties new

  For love’s new lesson — shall not such find pain

  When the marred music labouring in his brain

  Frets him with sweet sharp fragments, and lets slip

  One word that might leave satisfied his lip —

  One touch that might put fire in all the chords?

  This was her pain: to miss from all sweet words

  Some taste of sound, diverse and delicate —

  Some speech the old love found out to compensate

  For seasons of shut lips and drowsiness —

  Some grace, some word the old love found out to bless

  Passionless months and undelighted weeks.

  The flowers had lost their summer-scented cheeks,

  Their lips were no more sweet than daily breath:

  The year was plagued with instances of death.

  So fell it, these were sitting in cool grass

  With leaves about, and many a bird there was

  Whe
re the green shadow thickliest impleached

  Soft fruit and writhen spray and blossom bleached

  Dry in the sun or washed with rains to white:

  Her girdle was pure silk, the bosom bright

  With purple as purple water and gold wrought in.

  One branch had touched with dusk her lips and chin,

  Made violet of the throat, abashed with shade

  The breast’s bright plaited work: but nothing frayed

  The sun’s large kiss on the luxurious hair.

  Her beauty was new colour to the air

  And music to the silent many birds.

  Love was an-hungred for some perfect words

  To praise her with; but only her low name

  “Andrevuola” came thrice, and thrice put shame

  In her clear cheek, so fruitful with new red

  That for pure love straightway shame’s self was dead.

  Then with lids gathered as who late had wept

  She began saying: “I have so little slept

  My lids drowse now against the very sun;

  Yea, the brain aching with a dream begun

  Beats like a fitful blood; kiss but both brows,

  And you shall pluck my thoughts grown dangerous

  Almost away.” He said thus, kissing them:

  “O sole sweet thing that God is glad to name,

  My one gold gift, if dreams be sharp and sore

  Shall not the waking time increase much more

  With taste and sound, sweet eyesight or sweet scent?

  Has any heat too hard and insolent

  Burnt bare the tender married leaves, undone

  The maiden grass shut under from the sun?

  Where in this world is room enough for pain?”

  The feverish finger of love had touched again

  Her lips with happier blood; the pain lay meek

  In her fair face, nor altered lip nor cheek

  With pallor or with pulse; but in her mouth

  Love thirsted as a man wayfaring doth,

  Making it humble as weak hunger is.

  She lay close to him, bade do this and this,

  Say that, sing thus: then almost weeping-ripe

  Crouched, then laughed low. As one that fain would wipe

  The old record out of old things done and dead,

  She rose, she heaved her hands up, and waxed red

  For wilful heart and blameless fear of blame;

  Saying “Though my wits be weak, this is no shame

  For a poor maid whom love so punisheth

  With heats of hesitation and stopped breath

  That with my dreams I live yet heavily

  For pure sad heart and faith’s humility.

  Now be not wroth and I will show you this.

  “Methought our lips upon their second kiss

  Met in this place, and a fair day we had

  And fair soft leaves that waxed and were not sad

  With shaken rain or bitten through with drouth;

  When I, beholding ever how your mouth

  Waited for mine, the throat being fallen back,

  Saw crawl thereout a live thing flaked with black

  Specks of brute slime and leper-coloured scale,

  A devil’s hide with foul flame-writhen grail

  Fashioned where hell’s heat festers loathsomest;

  And that brief speech may ease me of the rest,

  Thus were you slain and eaten of the thing.

  My waked eyes felt the new day shuddering

  On their low lids, felt the whole east so beat,

  Pant with close pulse of such a plague-struck heat,

  As if the palpitating dawn drew breath

  For horror, breathing between life and death,

  Till the sun sprang blood-bright and violent.”

  So finishing, her soft strength wholly spent,

  She gazed each way, lest some brute-hoovèd thing,

  The timeless travail of hell’s childbearing,

  Should threat upon the sudden: whereat he,

  For relish of her tasted misery

  And tender little thornprick of her pain,

  Laughed with mere love. What lover among men

  But hath his sense fed sovereignly ‘twixt whiles

  With tears and covered eyelids and sick smiles

  And soft disaster of a painèd face?

  What pain, established in so sweet a place,

  But the plucked leaf of it smells fragrantly?

  What colour burning man’s wide-open eye

  But may be pleasurably seen? what sense

  Keeps in its hot sharp extreme violence

  No savour of sweet things? The bereaved blood

  And emptied flesh in their most broken mood

  Fail not so wholly, famish not when thus

  Past honey keeps the starved lip covetous.

  Therefore this speech from a glad mouth began,

  Breathed in her tender hair and temples wan

  Like one prolonged kiss while the lips had breath.

  “Sleep, that abides in vassalage of death

  And in death’s service wears out half his age,

  Hath his dreams full of deadly vassalage,

  Shadow and sound of things ungracious;

  Fair shallow faces, hooded bloodless brows,

  And mouths past kissing; yea, myself have had

  As harsh a dream as holds your eyelids sad.

  “This dream I tell you came three nights ago;

  In full mid sleep I took a whim to know

  How sweet things might be; so I turned and thought;

  But save my dream all sweet availed me not.

  First came a smell of pounded spice and scent

  Such as God ripens in some continent

  Of utmost amber in the Syrian sea;

  And breaths as though some costly rose could be

  Spoiled slowly, wasted by some bitter fire

  To burn the sweet out leaf by leaf, and tire

  The flower’s poor heart with heat and waste, to make

  Strong magic for some perfumed woman’s sake.

  Then a cool naked sense beneath my feet

  Of bud and blossom; and sound of veins that beat

  As if a lute should play of its own heart

  And fearfully, not smitten of either part;

  And all my blood it filled with sharp and sweet

  As gold swoln grain fills out the huskèd wheat;

  So I rose naked from the bed, and stood

  Counting the mobile measure in my blood

  Some pleasant while, and through each limb there came

  Swift little pleasures pungent as a flame,

  Felt in the thrilling flesh and veins as much

  As the outer curls that feel the comb’s first touch

  Thrill to the roots and shiver as from fire;

  And blind between my dream and my desire

  I seemed to stand and held my spirit still

  Lest this should cease. A child whose fingers spill

  Honey from cells forgotten of the bee

  Is less afraid to stir the hive and see

  Some wasp’s bright back inside, than I to feel

  Some finger-touch disturb the flesh like steel.

  I prayed thus; Let me catch a secret here

  So sweet, it sharpens the sweet taste of fear

  And takes the mouth with edge of wine; I would

  Have here some colour and smooth shape as good

  As those in heaven whom the chief garden hides

  With low grape-blossom veiling their white sides

  And lesser tendrils that so bind and blind

  Their eyes and feet, that if one come behind

  To touch their hair they see not, neither fly;

  This would I see in heaven and not die.

  So praying, I had nigh cried out and knelt,

  So wholly my prayer filled me: till I felt

  In the dumb night’s warm weig
ht of glowing gloom

  Somewhat that altered all my sleeping-room,

  And made it like a green low place wherein

  Maids mix to bathe: one sets her small warm chin

  Against a ripple, that the angry pearl

  May flow like flame about her: the next curl

  Dips in some eddy coloured of the sun

  To wash the dust well out; another one

  Holds a straight ankle in her hand and swings

  With lavish body sidelong, so that rings

  Of sweet fierce water, swollen and splendid, fail

  All round her fine and floated body pale,

  Swayed flower-fashion, and her balanced side

  Swerved edgeways lets the weight of water slide,

  As taken in some underflow of sea

  Swerves the banked gold of sea-flowers; but she

  Pulls down some branch to keep her perfect head

  Clear of the river: even from wall to bed,

  I tell you, was my room transfigured so.

  Sweet, green and warm it was, nor could one know

  If there were walls or leaves, or if there was

  No bed’s green curtain, but mere gentle grass.

  There were set also hard against the feet

  Gold plates with honey and green grapes to eat,

  With the cool water’s noise to hear in rhymes:

  And a wind warmed me full of furze and limes

  And all hot sweets the heavy summer fills

  To the round brim of smooth cup-shapen hills.

  Next the grave walking of a woman’s feet

  Made my veins hesitate, and gracious heat

  Made thick the lids and leaden on mine eyes:

  And I thought ever, surely it were wise

  Not yet to see her: this may last (who knows?)

  Five minutes; the poor rose is twice a rose

  Because it turns a face to her, the wind

  Sings that way; hath this woman ever sinned,

  I wonder? as a boy with apple-rind,

  I played with pleasures, made them to my mind,

  Changed each ere tasting. When she came indeed,

  First her hair touched me, then I grew to feed

  On the sense of her hand; her mouth at last

  Touched me between the cheek and lip and past

  Over my face with kisses here and there

  Sown in and out across the eyes and hair.

  Still I said nothing; till she set her face

  More close and harder on the kissing-place,

  And her mouth caught like a snake’s mouth, and stung

  So faint and tenderly, the fang scarce clung

  More than a bird’s foot: yet a wound it grew,

  A great one, let this red mark witness you

  Under the left breast; and the stroke thereof

  So clove my sense that I woke out of love

  And knew not what this dream was nor had wit;