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

by Algernon Charles Swinburne

  XIII

  What of the night? The night is full, the tide

  Storms inland, the most ancient rocks divide;

  Yet some endure, and bow nor head nor knee;

  Couldst thou not watch with me?

  XIV

  Since thou art not as these are, go thy ways;

  Thou hast no part in all my nights and days.

  Lie still, sleep on, be glad — as such things be;

  Thou couldst not watch with me.

  THE COMPLAINT OF LISA

  (Double Sestina)

  Decameron, x. 7

  There is no woman living that draws breath

  So sad as I, though all things sadden her.

  There is not one upon life’s weariest way

  Who is weary as I am weary of all but death.

  Toward whom I look as looks the sunflower

  All day with all his whole soul toward the sun;

  While in the sun’s sight I make moan all day,

  And all night on my sleepless maiden bed

  Weep and call out on death, O Love, and thee,

  That thou or he would take me to the dead,

  And know not what thing evil I have done

  That life should lay such heavy hand on me.

  Alas, Love, what is this thou wouldst with me?

  What honour shall thou have to quench my breath,

  Or what shall my heart broken profit thee?

  O Love, O great god Love, what have I done,

  That thou shouldst hunger so after my death?

  My heart is harmless as my life’s first day:

  Seek out some false fair woman, and plague her

  Till her tears even as my tears fill her bed:

  I am the least flower in thy flowery way,

  But till my time be come that I be dead

  Let me live out my flowertime in the sun

  Though my leaves shut before the sunflower.

  O Love, Love, Love, the kingly sunflower!

  Shall he the sun hath looked on look on me,

  That live down here in shade, out of the sun,

  Here living in the sorrow and shadow of death?

  Shall he that feeds his heart full of the day

  Care to give mine eyes light, or my lips breath?

  Because she loves him shall my lord love her

  Who is as a worm in my lord’s kingly way?

  I shall not see him or know him alive or dead;

  But thou, I know thee, O Love, and pray to thee

  That in brief while my brief lifedays be done,

  And the worm quickly make my marriagebed.

  For underground there is no sleepless bed:

  But here since I beheld my sunflower

  These eyes have slept not, seeing all night and day

  His sunlike eyes, and face fronting the sun.

  Wherefore if anywhere be any death,

  I would fain find and fold him fast to me,

  That I may sleep with the world’s eldest dead,

  With her that died seven centuries since, and her

  That went last night down the nightwandering way.

  For this is sleep indeed, when labour is done,

  Without love, without dreams, and without breath,

  And without thought, O name unnamed! of thee.

  Ah, but, forgetting all things, shall I thee?

  Wilt thou not be as now about my bed

  There underground as here before the sun?

  Shall not thy vision vex me alive and dead,

  Thy moving vision without form or breath?

  I read long since the bitter tale of her

  Who read the tale of Launcelot on a day,

  And died, and had no quiet after death,

  But was moved ever along a weary way,

  Lost with her love in the underworld; ah me,

  O my king, O my lordly sunflower,

  Would God to me too such a thing were done!

  But if such sweet and bitter things be done,

  Then, flying from life, I shall not fly from thee.

  For in that living world without a sun

  Thy vision will lay hold upon me dead,

  And meet and mock me, and mar my peace in death.

  Yet if being wroth God had such pity on her,

  Who was a sinner and foolish in her day,

  That even in hell they twain should breathe one breath,

  Why should he not in some wise pity me?

  So if I sleep not in my soft strait bed

  I may look up and see my sunflower

  As he the sun, in some divine strange way.

  O poor my heart, well knowest thou in what way

  This sore sweet evil unto us was done.

  For on a holy and a heavy day

  I was arisen out of my still small bed

  To see the knights tilt, and one said to me

  “The king,” and seeing him, somewhat stopped my breath,

  And if the girl spake more, I heard not her,

  For only I saw what I shall see when dead,

  A kingly flower of knights, a sunflower,

  That shone against the sunlight like the sun,

  And like a fire, O heart, consuming thee,

  The fire of love that lights the pyre of death.

  Howbeit I shall not die an evil death

  Who have loved in such a sad and sinless way,

  That this my love, lord, was no shame to thee.

  So when mine eyes are shut against the sun,

  O my soul’s sun, O the world’s sunflower,

  Thou nor no man will quite despise me dead.

  And dying I pray with all my low last breath

  That thy whole life may be as was that day,

  That feastday that made trothplight death and me,

  Giving the world light of thy great deeds done;

  And that fair face brightening thy bridal bed,

  That God be good as God hath been to her.

  That all things goodly and glad remain with her,

  All things that make glad life and goodly death;

  That as a bee sucks from a sunflower

  Honey, when summer draws delighted breath,

  Her soul may drink of thy soul in like way,

  And love make life a fruitful marriagebed

  Where day may bring forth fruits of joy to day

  And night to night till days and nights be dead.

  And as she gives light of her love to thee,

  Give thou to her the old glory of days long done;

  And either give some heat of light to me,

  To warm me where I sleep without the sun.

  O sunflower made drunken with the sun,

  O knight whose lady’s heart draws thine to her,

  Great king, glad lover, I have a word to thee.

  There is a weed lives out of the sun’s way,

  Hid from the heat deep in the meadow’s bed,

  That swoons and whitens at the wind’s least breath,

  A flower starshaped, that all a summer day

  Will gaze her soul out on the sunflower

  For very love till twilight finds her dead.

  But the great sunflower heeds not her poor death,

  Knows not when all her loving life is done;

  And so much knows my lord the king of me.

  Aye, all day long he has no eye for me;

  With golden eye following the golden sun

  From rosecoloured to purplepillowed bed,

  From birthplace to the flamelit place of death,

  From eastern end to western of his way.

  So mine eye follows thee, my sunflower,

  So the white starflower turns and yearns to thee,

  The sick weak weed, not well alive or dead,

  Trod underfoot if any pass by her,

  Pale, without colour of summer or summer breath

  In the shrunk shuddering petals, that have done

  No work but love, and die before the d
ay.

  But thou, today, tomorrow, and every day,

  Be glad and great, O love whose love slays me.

  Thy fervent flower made fruitful from the sun

  Shall drop its golden seed in the world’s way,

  That all men thereof nourished shall praise thee

  For grain and flower and fruit of works well done;

  Till thy shed seed, O shining sunflower,

  Bring forth such growth of the world’s gardenbed

  As like the sun shall outlive age and death.

  And yet I would thine heart had heed of her

  Who loves thee alive; but not till she be dead.

  Come, Love, then, quickly, and take her utmost breath.

  Song, speak for me who am dumb as are the dead;

  From my sad bed of tears I send forth thee,

  To fly all day from sun’s birth to sun’s death

  Down the sun’s way after the flying sun,

  For love of her that gave thee wings and breath,

  Ere day be done, to seek the sunflower.

  FOR THE FEAST OF GIORDANO BRUNO, PHILOSOPHER AND MARTYR

  I

  Son of the lightning and the light that glows

  Beyond the lightning’s or the morning’s light,

  Soul splendid with allrighteous love of right,

  In whose keen fire all hopes and fears and woes

  Were clean consumed, and from their ashes rose

  Transfigured, and intolerable to sight

  Save of purged eyes whose lids had cast off night,

  In love’s and wisdom’s likeness when they close,

  Embracing, and between them truth stands fast,

  Embraced of either; thou whose feet were set

  On English earth while this was England yet,

  Our friend that art, our Sidney’s friend that wast,

  Heart hardier found and higher than all men’s past,

  Shall we not praise thee though thine own forget?

  II

  Lift up thy light on us and on thine own,

  O soul whose spirit on earth was as a rod

  To scourge off priests, a sword to pierce their God,

  A staff for man’s free thought to walk alone,

  A lamp to lead him far from shrine and throne

  On ways untrodden where his fathers trod

  Ere earth’s heart withered at a high priest’s nod

  And all men’s mouths that made not prayer made moan.

  From bonds and torments and the ravening flame

  Surely thy spirit of sense rose up to greet

  Lucretius, where such only spirits meet,

  And walk with him apart till Shelley came

  To make the heaven of heavens more heavenly sweet

  And mix with yours a third incorporate name.

  AVE ATQUE VALE

  IN MEMORY OF CHARLES BAUDELAIRE

  Nous devrions pourtant lui porter quelques fleurs;

  Les morts, les pauvres morts, ont de grandes douleurs,

  Et quand Octobre souffle, émondeur des vieux arbres,

  Son vent mélancolique à l’entour de leurs marbres,

  Certe, ils doivent trouver les vivants bien ingrats.

  Les Fleurs du Mal.

  I

  Shall I strew on thee rose or rue or laurel,

  Brother, on this that was the veil of thee?

  Or quiet seaflower moulded by the sea,

  Or simplest growth of meadowsweet or sorrel,

  Such as the summersleepy Dryads weave,

  Waked up by snowsoft sudden rains at eve?

  Or wilt thou rather, as on earth before,

  Halffaded 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?

  II

  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.

  III

  Thou sawest, in thine old singing season, brother,

  Secrets and sorrows unbeheld of us:

  Fierce loves, and lovely leafbuds poisonous,

  Bare to thy subtler eye, but for none other

  Blowing by night in some unbreathedin 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.

  IV

  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 flowerbell drips?

  V

  It is enough; the end and the beginning

  Are one thing to thee, who art past the end.

  O hand unclasped of unbeholden friend,

  For thee no fruits to pluck, no palms for winning,

  No triumph and no labour and no lust,

  Only dead yewleaves and a little dust.

  O quiet eyes wherein the light saith nought,

  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.

  VI

  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 Titanwoman 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 oldworld pineforests

  Where the wet hillwinds weep?

  VII

  Hast thou found any likeness for thy vision?

  O gardener of strange flowers, what bud, what bloom,

  Hast thou found sown, what gathered in the gloom?

  What of despair, of rapture, of derision,

  What of life is there, what of ill or good?

  Are the fruits grey 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?

  VIII

  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 veiled 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.

  IX

  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 foiled earnest ear is deaf, and blind

  Are still the eluded eyes.

  X

  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

  Veiled 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 rolled.

  XI

  I among these, I also, in such station

  As when the pyre was charred, 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 seedlands bear,

  And what I may of fruits in this chilled air,

  And lay, Oresteslike, across the tomb

  A curl of severed hair.

  XII

  But by no hand nor any treason stricken,