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

by Algernon Charles Swinburne

  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.

  COR CORDIUM

  O heart of hearts, the chalice of love’s fire,

  Hid round with flowers and all the bounty of bloom;

  O wonderful and perfect heart, for whom

  The lyrist liberty made life a lyre;

  O heavenly heart, at whose most dear desire

  Dead love, living and singing, cleft his tomb,

  And with him risen and regent in death’s room

  All day thy choral pulses rang full choir;

  O heart whose beating blood was running song,

  O sole thing sweeter than thine own songs were,

  Help us for thy free love’s sake to be free,

  True for thy truth’s sake, for thy strength’s sake strong,

  Till very liberty make clean and fair

  The nursing earth as the sepulchral sea.

  IN SAN LORENZO

  Is thine hour come to wake, O slumbering Night?

  Hath not the Dawn a message in thine ear?

  Though thou be stone and sleep, yet shalt thou hear

  When the word falls from heaven — Let there be light.

  Thou knowest we would not do thee the despite

  To wake thee while the old sorrow and shame were near;

  We spake not loud for thy sake, and for fear

  Lest thou shouldst lose the rest that was thy right,

  The blessing given thee that was thine alone,

  The happiness to sleep and to be stone:

  Nay, we kept silence of thee for thy sake

  Albeit we knew thee alive, and left with thee

  The great good gift to feel not nor to see;

  But will not yet thine Angel bid thee wake?

  TIRESIAS

  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.r />
  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 o
f 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