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

by Algernon Charles Swinburne

  Of days more sweet than thou wast sweet to smell,

  Of flowersoft thoughts that came to flower and fell,

  Of loves that lived a lily’s life and died,

  Of dreams now dwelling where dead roses dwell.

  O white birth of the golden mountainside

  That for the sun’s love makes its bosom wide

  At sunrise, and with all its woods and flowers

  Takes in the morning to its heart of pride!

  Thou hast a word of that one land of ours,

  And of the fair town called of the Fair Towers,

  A word for me of my San Gimignan,

  A word of April’s greenestgirdled hours.

  Of the old breached walls whereon the wallflowers ran

  Called of Saint Fina, breachless now of man,

  Though time with soft feet break them stone by stone,

  Who breaks down hour by hour his own reign’s span.

  Of the old cliff overcome and overgrown

  That all that flowerage clothed as flesh clothes bone,

  That garment of acacias made for May,

  Whereof here lies one witness overblown.

  The fair brave trees with all their flowers at play,

  How kinglike they stood up into the day!

  How sweet the day was with them, and the night!

  Such words of message have dead flowers to say.

  This that the winter and the wind made bright,

  And this that lived upon Italian light,

  Before I throw them and these words away,

  Who knows but I what memories too take flight?

  AT A MONTH’S END

  The night last night was strange and shaken:

  More strange the change of you and me.

  Once more, for the old love’s love forsaken,

  We went out once more toward the sea.

  For the old love’s lovesake dead and buried,

  One last time, one more and no more,

  We watched the waves set in, the serried

  Spears of the tide storming the shore.

  Hardly we saw the high moon hanging,

  Heard hardly through the windy night

  Far waters ringing, low reefs clanging,

  Under wan skies and waste white light.

  With chafe and change of surges chiming,

  The clashing channels rocked and rang

  Large music, wave to wild wave timing,

  And all the choral water sang.

  Faint lights fell this way, that way floated,

  Quick sparks of seafire keen like eyes

  From the rolled surf that flashed, and noted

  Shores and faint cliffs and bays and skies.

  The ghost of sea that shrank up sighing

  At the sand’s edge, a short sad breath

  Trembling to touch the goal, and dying

  With weak heart heaved up once in death —

  The rustling sand and shingle shaken

  With light sweet touches and small sound —

  These could not move us, could not waken

  Hearts to look forth, eyes to look round.

  Silent we went an hour together,

  Under grey skies by waters white.

  Our hearts were full of windy weather,

  Clouds and blown stars and broken light.

  Full of cold clouds and moonbeams drifted

  And streaming storms and straying fires,

  Our souls in us were stirred and shifted

  By doubts and dreams and foiled desires.

  Across, aslant, a scudding seamew

  Swam, dipped, and dropped, and grazed the sea:

  And one with me I could not dream you;

  And one with you I could not be.

  As the white wing the white wave’s fringes

  Touched and slid over and flashed past —

  As a pale cloud a pale flame tinges

  From the moon’s lowest light and last —

  As a star feels the sun and falters,

  Touched to death by diviner eyes —

  As on the old gods’ untended altars

  The old lire of withered worship dies —

  (Once only, once the shrine relighted

  Sees the last fiery shadow shine,

  Last shadow of flame and faith benighted,

  Sees falter and flutter and fail the shrine)

  So once with fiery breath and flying

  Your winged heart touched mine and went,

  And the swift spirits kissed, and sighing,

  Sundered and smiled and were content.

  That only touch, that feeling only,

  Enough we found, we found too much;

  For the unlit shrine is hardly lonely

  As one the old fire forgets to touch.

  Slight as the sea’s sight of the seamew,

  Slight as the sun’s sight of the star:

  Enough to show one must not deem you

  For love’s sake other than you are.

  Who snares and tames with fear and danger

  A bright beast of a fiery kin,

  Only to mar, only to change her

  Sleek supple soul and splendid skin?

  Easy with blows to mar and maim her,

  Easy with bonds to bind and bruise;

  What profit, if she yield her tamer

  The limbs to mar, the soul to lose?

  Best leave or take the perfect creature,

  Take all she is or leave complete;

  Transmute you will not form or feature,

  Change feet for wings or wings for feet.

  Strange eyes, new limbs, can no man give her;

  Sweet is the sweet thing as it is.

  No soul she hath, we see, to outlive her;

  Hath she for that no lips to kiss?

  So may one read his weird, and reason,

  And with vain drugs assuage no pain.

  For each man in his loving season

  Fools and is fooled of these in vain.

  Charms that allay not any longing,

  Spells that appease not any grief,

  Time brings us all by handfuls, wronging

  All hurts with nothing of relief.

  Ah, too soon shot, the fool’s bolt misses!

  What help? the world is full of loves;

  Night after night of running kisses,

  Chirp after chirp of changing doves.

  Should Love disown or disesteem you

  For loving one man more or less?

  You could not tame your light white seamew,

  Nor I my sleek black pantheress.

  For a new soul let whoso please pray,

  We are what life made us, and shall be.

  For you the jungle and me the seaspray,

  And south for you and north for me.

  But this one broken foamwhite feather

  I throw you off the hither wing,

  Splashed stiff with seascurf and salt weather,

  This song for sleep to learn and sing —

  Sing in your ear when, daytime over,

  You, couched at long length on hot sand

  With some sleek sundiscoloured lover,

  Wince from his breach as from a brand:

  Till the acrid hour aches out and ceases,

  And the sheathed eyeball sleepier swims,

  The deep flank smoothes its dimpling creases.

  And passion loosens all the limbs:

  Till dreams of sharp grey northsea weather

  Fall faint upon your fiery sleep,

  As on strange sands a strayed bird’s feather

  The wind may choose to lose or keep.

  But I, who leave my queen of panthers,

  As a tired honeyheavy bee

  Gilt with sweet dust from goldgrained anthers

  Leaves the rosechalice, what for me?

  From the ardours of the chaliced centre,

  From the amorous anthers’ golden grime,

  That scorch and smutch all win
gs that enter,

  I fly forth hot from honeytime.

  But as to a bee’s gilt thighs and winglets

  The flowerdust with the flowersmell clings;

  As a snake’s mobile rampant ringlets

  Leave the sand marked with print of rings;

  So to my soul in surer fashion

  Your savage stamp and savour hangs;

  The print and perfume of old passion,

  The wildbeast mark of panther’s fangs.

  SESTINA

  I saw my soul at rest upon a day

  As a bird sleeping in the nest of night,

  Among soft leaves that give the starlight way

  To touch its wings but not its eyes with light;

  So that it knew as one in visions may,

  And knew not as men waking, of delight.

  This was the measure of my soul’s delight;

  It had no power of joy to fly by day,

  Nor part in the large lordship of the light;

  But in a secret moonbeholden way

  Had all its will of dreams and pleasant night,

  And all the love and life that sleepers may.

  But such life’s triumph as men waking may

  It might not have to feed its faint delight

  Between the stars by night and sun by day,

  Shut up with green leaves and a little light;

  Because its way was as a lost star’s way,

  A world’s not wholly known of day or night.

  All loves and dreams and sounds and gleams of night

  Made it all music that such minstrels may,

  And all they had they gave it of delight;

  But in the full face of the fire of day

  What place shall be for any starry light,

  What part of heaven in all the wide sun’s way?

  Yet the soul woke not, sleeping by the way,

  Watched as a nursling of the largeeyed night,

  And sought no strength nor knowledge of the day,

  Nor closer touch conclusive of delight,

  Nor mightier joy nor truer than dreamers may,

  Nor more of song than they, nor more of light.

  For who sleeps once and sees the secret light

  Whereby sleep shows the soul a fairer way

  Between the rise and rest of day and night,

  Shall care no more to fare as all men may,

  But be his place of pain or of delight,

  There shall he dwell, beholding night as day.

  Song, have thy day and take thy fill of light

  Before the night be fallen across thy way;

  Sing while he may, man hath no long delight.

  THE YEAR OF THE ROSE

  From the depths of the green gardencloses

  Where the summer in darkness dozes

  Till autumn pluck from his hand

  An hourglass that holds not a sand;

  From the maze that a flowerbelt encloses

  To the stones and seagrass on the strand

  How red was the reign of the roses

  Over the rosecrowned 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 redrose 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

  Redmouthed 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 southwest 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 whitethorn 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 rosered 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 rosered 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 whiterose leaf,

  They have but a season to seem

  As roseleaves 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 deathbed of Love where he dozes

  Till a relic be left not of sand

  To the hourglass that breaks in his hand;

  From the change in the grey gardencloses

  To the last stray grass of the strand,

  A rain and ruin of roses

  Over the redrose land

  A WASTED VIGIL

  I

  Couldst thou not watch with me one hour? Behold,

  Dawn skims the sea with flying feet of gold,

  With sudden feet that graze the gradual sea;

  Couldst thou not watch with me?

  II

  What, not one hour? for star by star the night

  Falls, and her thousands world by world take flight;

  They die, and day survives, and what of thee?

  Couldst thou not watch with me?

  III

  Lo, far in heaven the web of night undone,

  And on the sudden sea the gradual sun;

  Wave to wave answers, tree responds to tree;

  Couldst thou not watch with me?

  IV

  Sunbeam by sunbeam creeps from line to line,

  Foam by foam quickens on the brightening brine;

  Sail by sail passes, flower by flower gets free;

  Couldst thou not watch with me?

  V

  Last year, a brief while since, an age ago,

  A whole year past, with bud and bloom and snow,

  O moon
that wast in heaven, what friends were we!

  Couldst thou not watch with me?

  VI

  Old moons, and last year’s flowers, and last year’s snows!

  Who now saith to thee, moon? or who saith, rose?

  O dust and ashes, once found fair to see!

  Couldst thou not watch with me?

  VII

  O dust and ashes, once thought sweet to smell!

  With me it is not, is it with thee well?

  O seadrift blown from windward back to lee!

  Couldst thou not watch with me?

  VIII

  The old year’s dead hands are full of their dead flowers.

  The old days are full of dead old loves of ours,

  Born as a rose, and briefer born than she;

  Couldst thou not watch with me?

  IX

  Could two days live again of that dead year,

  One would say, seeking us and passing here,

  Where is she? and one answering, Where is he?

  Couldst thou not watch with me?

  X

  Nay, those two lovers are not anywhere;

  If we were they, none knows us what we were,

  Nor aught of all their barren grief and glee.

  Couldst thou not watch with me?

  XI

  Half false, half fair, all feeble, be my verse

  Upon thee not for blessing nor for curse;

  For some must stand, and some must fall or flee;

  Couldst thou not watch with me?

  XII

  As a new moon above spent stars thou wast;

  But stars endure after the moon is past.

  Couldst thou not watch one hour, though I watch three?

  Couldst thou not watch with me?