Old thanks, old thoughts, old aspirations,
Outlive men’s lives and lives of nations,
Dead, but for one thing which survives —
The inalienable and unpriced treasure,
The old joy of power, the old pride of pleasure,
That lives in light above men’s lives.
IN MEMORY OF BARRY CORNWALL
(October 4, 1874)
I
In the garden of death, where the singers whose names are deathless
One with another make music unheard of men,
Where the dead sweet roses fade not of lips long breathless,
And the fair eyes shine that shall weep not or change again,
Who comes now crowned with the blossom of snowwhite years?
What music is this that the world of the dead men hears?
II
Beloved of men, whose words on our lips were honey,
Whose name in our ears and our fathers’ ears was sweet,
Like summer gone forth of the land his songs made sunny,
To the beautiful veiled bright world where the glad ghosts meet,
Child, father, bridegroom and bride, and anguish and rest,
No soul shall pass of a singer than this more blest.
III
Blest for the years’ sweet sake that were filled and brightened,
As a forest with birds, with the fruit and the flower of his song;
For the souls’ sake blest that heard, and their cares were lightened,
For the hearts’ sake blest that have fostered his name so long;
By the living and dead lips blest that have loved his name,
And clothed with their praise and crowned with their love for fame.
IV
Ah, fair and fragrant his fame as flowers that close not,
That shrink not by day for heat or for cold by night,
As a thought in the heart shall increase when the heart’s self knows not,
Shall endure in our ears as a sound, in our eyes as a light;
Shall wax with the years that wane and the seasons’ chime,
As a white rose thornless that grows in the garden of time.
V
The same year calls, and one goes hence with another,
And men sit sad that were glad for their sweet songs’ sake;
The same year beckons, and elder with younger brother
Takes mutely the cup from his hand that we all shall take.1
They pass ere the leaves be past or the snows be come;
And the birds are loud, but the lips that outsang them dumb.
VI
Time takes them home that we loved, fair names and famous,
To the soft long sleep, to the broad sweet bosom of death;
But the flower of their souls he shall take not away to shame us,
Nor the lips lack song for ever that now lack breath.
For with us shall the music and perfume that die not dwell,
Though the dead to our dead bid welcome, and we farewell.
1 Sydney Dobell died August 22, 1874.
EPICEDE
(James Lorimer Graham died at Florence, April 30, 1876)
Life may give for love to death
Little; what are life’s gifts worth
To the dead wrapt round with earth?
Yet from lips of living breath
Sighs or words we are fain to give,
All that yet, while yet we live,
Life may give for love to death.
Dead so long before his day,
Passed out of the Italian sun
To the dark where all is done,
Fallen upon the verge of May;
Here at life’s and April’s end
How should song salute my friend
Dead so long before his day?
Not a kindlier life or sweeter
Time, that lights and quenches men,
Now may quench or light again,
Mingling with the mystic metre
Woven of all men’s lives with his
Not a clearer note than this,
Not a kindlier life or sweeter.
In this heavenliest part of earth
He that living loved the light,
Light and song, may rest aright,
One in death, if strange in birth,
With the deathless dead that make
Life the lovelier for their sake
In this heavenliest part of earth.
Light, and song, and sleep at last —
Struggling hands and suppliant knees
Get no goodlier gift than these.
Song that holds remembrance fast,
Light that lightens death, attend
Round their graves who have to friend
Light, and song, and sleep at last.
TO VICTOR HUGO
He had no children, who for love of men,
Being God, endured of Gods such things as thou,
Father; nor on his thunderbeaten brow
Fell such a woe as bows thine head again,
Twice bowed before, though godlike, in man’s ken,
And seen too high for any stroke to bow
Save this of some strange God’s that bends it now
The third time with such weight as bruised it then.
Fain would grief speak, fain utter for love’s sake
Some word; but comfort who might bid thee take?
What God in your own tongue shall talk with thee,
Showing how all souls that look upon the sun
Shall be for thee one spirit and thy son,
And thy soul’s child the soul of man to be?
January 3, 1876.
INFERIAE
Spring, and the light and sound of things on earth
Requickening, all within our green sea’s girth;
A time of passage or a time of birth
Fourscore years since as this year, first and last.
The sun is all about the world we see,
The breath and strength of very spring; and we
Live, love, and feed on our own hearts; but he
Whose heart fed mine has passed into the past.
Past, all things born with sense and blood and breath;
The flesh hears nought that now the spirit saith.
If death be like as birth and birth as death,
The first was fair — more fair should be the last.
Fourscore years since, and come but one month more
The count were perfect of his mortal score
Whose sail went seaward yesterday from shore
To cross the last of many an unsailed sea.
Light, love and labour up to life’s last height,
These three were stars unsetting in his sight;
Even as the sun is life and heat and light
And sets not nor is dark when dark are we.
The life, the spirit, and the work were one
That here — ah, who shall say, that here are done?
Not I, that know not; father, not thy son,
For all the darkness of the night and sea.
March 5, 1877
A BIRTHSONG
(For Olivia Frances Madox Rossetti, born September 20, 1875)
Out of the dark sweet sleep
Where no dreams laugh or weep
Borne through bright gates of birth
Into the dim sweet light
Where day still dreams of night
While heaven takes form on earth,
White rose of spirit and flesh, red lily of love,
What note of song have we
Fit for the birds and thee,
Fair nestling couched beneath the motherdove?
Nay, in some more divine
Small speechless song of thine
Some news too good for words,
Hearthushed and smiling, we
Might hope to have of thee,
The youngest of God’s birds,
If thy sweet sense might mix itself with ours,
If ours might understand
The language of thy land,
Ere thine become the tongue of mortal hours:
Ere thy lips learn too soon
Their soft first human tune,
Sweet, but less sweet than now,
And thy raised eyes to read
Glad and good things indeed,
But none so sweet as thou:
Ere thought lift up their flowersoft lids to see
What life and love on earth
Bring thee for gifts at birth,
But none so good as thine who hast given us thee:
Now, ere thy sense forget
The heaven that fills it yet,
Now, sleeping or awake,
If thou couldst tell, or we
Ask and be heard of thee,
For love’s undying sake,
From thy dumb lips divine and bright mute speech
Such news might touch our ear
That then would burn to hear
Too high a message now for man’s to reach.
Ere the gold hair of corn
Had withered wast thou born,
To make the good time glad;
The time that but last year
Fell colder than a tear
On hearts and hopes turned sad,
High hopes and hearts requickening in thy dawn,
Even theirs whose lifesprings, child,
Filled thine with life and smiled,
But then wept blood for half their own withdrawn.1
If death and birth be one,
And set with rise of sun,
And truth with dreams divine,
Some word might come with thee
From over the still sea
Deep hid in shade or shine,
Crossed by the crossing sails of death and birth,
Word of some sweet new thing
Fit for such lips to bring,
Some word of love, some afterthought of earth.
If love be strong as death,
By what so natural breath
As thine could this be said?
By what so lovely way
Could love send word to say
He lives and is not dead?
Such word alone were fit for only thee,
If his and thine have met
Where spirits rise and set,
His whom we see not, thine whom scarce we see:
His there newborn, as thou
Newborn among us now;
His, here so fruitfulsouled,
Now veiled and silent here,
Now dumb as thou last year,
A ghost of one year old:
If lights that change their sphere in changing meet,
Some ray might his not give
To thine who wast to live,
And make thy present with his past life sweet?
Let dreams that laugh or weep,
All glad and sad dreams, sleep;
Truth more than dreams is dear.
Let thoughts that change and fly,
Sweet thoughts and swift, go by;
More than all thought is here.
More than all hope can forge or memory feign
The life that in our eyes,
Made out of love’s life, lies,
And flowerlike fed with love for sun and rain.
Twice royal in its root
The sweet small oliveshoot
Here set in sacred earth;
Twice dowered with glorious grace
From either heavenborn race
First blended in its birth;
Fair God or Genius of so fair an hour,
For love of either name
Twice crowned, with love and fame,
Guard and be gracious to the fairnamed flower.
October 19, 1875.
1 Oliver Madox Brown died November 5, 1874, in his twentieth year.
EXVOTO
When their last hour shall rise
Pale on these mortal eyes,
Herself like one that dies,
And kiss me dying
The cold last kiss, and fold
Close round my limbs her cold
Soft shade as raiment rolled
And leave them lying,
If aught my soul would say
Might move to hear me pray
The birthgod of my day
That he might hearken,
This grace my heart should crave,
To find no landward grave
That worldly springs make brave,
World’s winters darken,
Nor grow through gradual hours
The cold blind seed of flowers
Made by new beams and showers
From limbs that moulder,
Nor take my part with earth,
But find for death’s new birth
A bed of larger girth,
More chaste and colder.
Not earth’s for spring and fall,
Not earth’s at heart, not all
Earth’s making, though men call
Earth only mother,
Not hers at heart she bare
Me, but thy child, O fair
Sea, and thy brother’s care,
The wind thy brother.
Yours was I born, and ye,
The seawind and the sea,
Made all my soul in me
A song for ever,
A harp to string and smite
For love’s sake of the bright
Wind and the sea’s delight,
To fail them never:
Not while on this side death
I hear what either saith
And drink of either’s breath
With heart’s thanksgiving
That in my veins like wine
Some sharp salt blood of thine,
Some springtide pulse of brine,
Yet leaps up living.
When thy salt lips wellnigh
Sucked in my mouth’s last sigh,
Grudged I so much to die
This death as others?
Was it no ease to think
The chalice from whose brink
Fate gave me death to drink
Was thine — my mother’s?
Thee too, the allfostering earth,
Fair as thy fairest birth,
More than thy worthiest worth,
We call, we know thee,
More sweet and just and dread
Than live men highest of head
Or even thy holiest dead
Laid low below thee.
The sunbeam on the sheaf,
The dewfall on the leaf,
All joy, all grace, all grief,
Are thine for giving;
Of thee our loves are born,
Our lives and loves, that mourn
And triumph; tares with corn,
Dead seed with living:
All good and ill things done
In eyeshot of the sun
At last in thee made one
Rest well contented;
All words of all man’s breath
And works he doth or saith,
All wholly done to death,
None long lamented.
A slave to sons of thee,
Thou, seeming, yet art free;
But who shall make the sea
Serve even in seeming?
What plough shall bid it bear
Seed to the sun and the air,
Fruit for thy strong sons’ fare,
Fresh wine’s foam streaming?
What oldworld son of thine,
Made drunk with death as wine,
Hath drunk the bright sea’s brine
With lips of laughter?
Thy blood they drink; but he
Who hath drunken of the sea
Once deeplier than of thee
Shall drink not after.
Of thee thy sons of men
Drink deep, and thirst again;
&nb
sp; For wine in feasts, and then
In fields for slaughter;
But thirst shall touch not him
Who hath felt with sense grown dim
Rise, covering lip and limb,
The wan sea’s water.
All fire of thirst that aches
The salt sea cools and slakes
More than all springs or lakes,
Freshets or shallows;
Wells where no beam can burn
Through frondage of the fern
That hides from hart and hern
The haunt it hallows.
Peace with all graves on earth
For death or sleep or birth
Be alway, one in worth
One with another;
But when my time shall be,
O mother, O my sea,
Alive or dead, take me,
Me too, my mother.
A BALLAD OF DREAMLAND
I hid my heart in a nest of roses,
Out of the sun’s way, hidden apart;
In a softer bed than the soft white snow’s is,
Under the roses I hid my heart.
Why would it sleep not? why should it start,
When never a leaf of the rosetree stirred?
What made sleep flutter his wings and part?
Only the song of a secret bird.
Lie still, I said, for the wind’s wing closes,
And mild leaves muffle the keen sun’s dart;
Lie still, for the wind on the warm sea dozes,
And the wind is unquieter yet than thou art.
Does a thought in thee still as a thorn’s wound smart?
Does the fang still fret thee of hope deferred?
What bids the lids of thy sleep dispart?
Only the song of a secret bird.
The green land’s name that a charm encloses,
It never was writ in the traveller’s chart,
And sweet on its trees as the fruit that grows is,
It never was sold in the merchant’s mart.
The swallows of dreams through its dim fields dart,
Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne (Illustrated) (Delphi Poets Series) Page 64