Love that misses
Fruit of kisses
Long will bear no thankless burden.
XV
If they care not
Though love were not,
If no breath of his burn through them,
Joy must borrow
Song from sorrow,
Fear teach hope the way to woo them.
XVI
Grief has measures
Soft as pleasure’s,
Fear has moods that hope lies deep in,
Songs to sing him,
Dreams to bring him,
And a redrose bed to sleep in.
XVII
Hope with fearless
Looks and tearless
Lies and laughs too near the thunder;
Fear hath sweeter
Speech and meeter
For heart’s love to hide him under.
XVIII
Joy by daytime
Fills his playtime
Full of songs loud mirth takes pride in;
Night and morrow
Weave round sorrow
Thoughts as soft as sleep to hide in.
XIX
Graceless faces,
Loveless graces,
Are but motes in light that quicken,
Sands that run down
Ere the sundown,
Roseleaves dead ere autumn sicken.
XX
Fair and fruitless
Charms are bootless
Spells to ward off age’s peril;
Lips that give not
Love shall live not,
Eyes that meet not eyes are sterile.
XXI
But the beauty
Bound in duty
Fast to love that falls off never
Love shall cherish
Lest it perish,
And its root bears fruit for ever.
TWO LEADERS
I
O great and wise, clearsouled and high of heart,
One the last flower of Catholic love, that grows
Amid bare thorns their only thornless rose,
From the fierce juggling of the priests’ loud mart
Yet alien, yet unspotted and apart
From the blind hard foul rout whose shameless shows
Mock the sweet heaven whose secret no man knows
With prayers and curses and the soothsayer’s art;
One like a stormgod of the northern foam
Strong, wrought of rock that breasts and breaks the sea
And thunders back its thunder, rhyme for rhyme
Answering, as though to outroar the tides of time
And bid the world’s wave back — what song should be
Theirs that with praise would bring and sing you home?
II
With all our hearts we praise you whom ye hate,
High souls that hate us; for our hopes are higher,
And higher than yours the goal of our desire,
Though high your ends be as your hearts are great.
Your world of Gods and kings, of shrine and state,
Was of the night when hope and fear stood nigher,
Wherein men walked by light of stars and fire
Till man by day stood equal with his fate.
Honour not hate we give you, love not fear,
Last prophets of past kind, who fill the dome
Of great dead Gods with wrath and wail, nor hear
Time’s word and man’s: “Go honoured hence, go home,
Night’s childless children; here your hour is done;
Pass with the stars, and leave us with the sun.”
VICTOR HUGO IN 1877
“Dazzle mine eyes, or do I see three suns?”
Above the springtide sundawn of the year,
A sunlike star, not born of day or night,
Filled the fair heaven of spring with heavenlier light,
Made of all ages orbed in one sole sphere
Whose light was as a Titan’s smile or tear;
Then rose a ray more flowerlike, starry white,
Like a child’s eye grown lovelier with delight,
Sweet as a child’s heartlightening laugh to hear;
And last a fire from heaven, a fiery rain
As of God’s wrath on the unclean cities, fell
And lit the shuddering shades of halfseen hell
That shrank before it and were cloven in twain;
A beacon fired by lightning, whence all time
Sees red the bare black ruins of a crime.
CHILD’S SONG
What is gold worth, say,
Worth for work or play,
Worth to keep or pay,
Hide or throw away,
Hope about or fear?
What is love worth, pray?
Worth a tear?
Golden on the mould
Lie the dead leaves rolled
Of the wet woods old,
Yellow leaves and cold,
Woods without a dove;
Gold is worth but gold;
Love’s worth love.
TRIADS
I
I
The word of the sun to the sky,
The word of the wind to the sea,
The word of the moon to the night,
What may it be?
II
The sense to the flower of the fly,
The sense of the bird to the tree,
The sense to the cloud of the light,
Who can tell me?
III
The song of the fields to the kye,
The song of the lime to the bee,
The song of the depth to the height,
Who knows all three?
II
I
The message of April to May
That May sends on into June
And June gives out to July
For birthday boon;
II
The delight of the dawn in the day,
The delight of the day in the noon,
The delight of a song in a sigh
That breaks the tune;
III
The secret of passing away,
The cost of the change of the moon,
None knows it with ear or with eye,
But all will soon.
III
I
The live wave’s love for the shore,
The shore’s for the wave as it dies,
The love of the thunderfire
That sears the skies,
II
We shall know not though life wax hoar,
Till all life, spent into sighs,
Burn out as consumed with desire
Of death’s strange eyes;
III
Till the secret be secret no more
In the light of one hour as it flies,
Be the hour as of suns that expire
Or suns that rise.
FOUR SONGS OF FOUR SEASONS
I
WINTER IN NORTHUMBERLAND
I
Outside the garden
The wet skies harden;
The gates are barred on
The summer side:
“Shut out the flowertime,
Sunbeam and showertime;
Make way for our time,”
Wild winds have cried.
Green once and cheery,
The woods, worn weary,
Sigh as the dreary
Weak sun goes home:
A great wind grapples
The wave, and dapples
The dead green floor of the sea with foam.
II
Through fell and moorland,
And saltsea foreland,
Our noisy norland
Resounds and rings;
Waste waves thereunder
Are blown in sunder,
And winds make thunder
With cloudwide wings;
Seadrift makes dimmer
The beacon’s glim
mer;
Nor sail nor swimmer
Can try the tides;
And snowdrifts thicken
Where, when leaves quicken,
Under the heather the sundew hides.
III
Green land and red land,
Moorside and headland,
Are white as dead land,
Are all as one;
Nor honied heather,
Nor bells to gather,
Fair with fair weather
And faithful sun:
Fierce frost has eaten
All flowers that sweeten
The fells rainbeaten;
And winds their foes
Have made the snow’s bed
Down in the rosebed;
Deep in the snow’s bed bury the rose.
IV
Bury her deeper
Than any sleeper;
Sweet dreams will keep her
All day, all night;
Though sleep benumb her
And time o’ercome her,
She dreams of summer,
And takes delight,
Dreaming and sleeping
In love’s good keeping,
While rain is weeping
And no leaves cling;
Winds will come bringing her
Comfort, and singing her
Stories and songs and good news of the spring.
V
Draw the white curtain
Close, and be certain
She takes no hurt in
Her soft low bed;
She feels no colder,
And grows not older,
Though snows enfold her
From foot to head;
She turns not chilly
Like weed and lily
In marsh or hilly
High watershed,
Or green soft island
In lakes of highland;
She sleeps awhile, and she is not dead.
VI
For all the hours,
Come sun, come showers,
Are friends of flowers,
And fairies all;
When frost entrapped her,
They came and lapped her
In leaves, and wrapped her
With shroud and pall;
In red leaves wound her,
With dead leaves bound her
Dead brows, and round her
A deathknell rang;
Rang the deathbell for her,
Sang, “is it well for her,
Well, is it well with you, rose?” they sang.
VII
O what and where is
The rose now, fairies,
So shrill the air is,
So wild the sky?
Poor last of roses,
Her worst of woes is
The noise she knows is
The winter’s cry;
His hunting hollo
Has scared the swallow;
Fain would she follow
And fain would fly:
But wind unsettles
Her poor last petals;
Had she but wings, and she would not die.
VIII
Come, as you love her,
Come close and cover
Her white face over,
And forth again
Ere sunset glances
On foam that dances,
Through lowering lances
Of bright white rain;
And make your playtime
Of winter’s daytime,
As if the Maytime
Were here to sing;
As if the snowballs
Were soft like blowballs,
Blown in a mist from the stalk in the spring.
IX
Each reed that grows in
Our stream is frozen,
The fields it flows in
Are hard and black;
The waterfairy
Waits wise and wary
Till time shall vary
And thaws come back.
“O sister, water,”
The wind besought her,
“O twinborn daughter
Of spring with me,
Stay with me, play with me,
Take the warm way with me,
Straight for the summer and oversea.”
X
But winds will vary,
And wise and wary
The patient fairy
Of water waits;
All shrunk and wizen,
In iron prison,
Till spring rerisen
Unbar the gates;
Till, as with clamour
Of axe and hammer,
Chained streams that stammer
And struggle in straits
Burst bonds that shiver,
And thaws deliver
The roaring river in stormy spates.
XI
In fierce March weather
White waves break tether,
And whirled together
At either hand,
Like weeds uplifted,
The treetrunks rifted
In spars are drifted,
Like foam or sand,
Past swamp and sallow
And reedbeds callow,
Through pool and shallow,
To wind and lee,
Till, no more tonguetied,
Full flood and young tide
Roar down the rapids and storm the sea.
XII
As men’s cheeks faded
On shores invaded,
When shorewards waded
The lords of fight;
When churl and craven
Saw hard on haven
The widewinged raven
At mainmast height;
When monks affrighted
To windward sighted
The birds fullflighted
Of swift seakings;
So earth turns paler
When Storm the sailor
Steers in with a roar in the race of his wings.
XIII
O strong seasailor,
Whose cheek turns paler
For wind or hail or
For fear of thee?
O far seafarer,
O thunderbearer,
Thy songs are rarer
Than soft songs be.
O fleetfoot stranger,
O northsea ranger
Through days of danger
And ways of fear,
Blow thy horn here for us,
Blow the sky clear for us,
Send us the song of the sea to hear.
XIV
Roll the strong stream of it
Up, till the scream of it
Wake from a dream of it
Children that sleep,
Seamen that fare for them
Forth, with a prayer for them;
Shall not God care for them,
Angels not keep?
Spare not the surges
Thy stormy scourges;
Spare us the dirges
Of wives that weep.
Turn back the waves for us:
Dig no fresh graves for us,
Wind, in the manifold gulfs of the deep.
XV
O stout northeaster,
Seaking, landwaster,
For all thine haste, or
Thy stormy skill,
Yet hadst thou never,
For all endeavour,
Strength to dissever
Or strength to spill,
Save of his giving
Who gave our living,
Whose hands are weaving
What ours fulfil;
Whose feet tread under
The storms and thunder;
Who made our wonder to work his will.
XVI
His years and hours,
His world’s blind powers,
His stars and flowers,
His nights and days,
Seatide and river,
And waves that shiver,
Praise God, the giver
Of tongues to praise.
Winds in their blowing,
And fruits in growing;
Time in its going,
While time shall be;
In death and living,
With one thanksgiving,
Praise him whose hand is the strength of the sea.
II
SPRING IN TUSCANY
Rosered lilies that bloom on the banner;
Rosecheeked gardens that revel in spring;
Rosemouthed acacias that laugh as they climb,
Like plumes for a queen’s hand fashioned to fan her
With wind more soft than a wild dove’s wing,
What do they sing in the spring of their time?
If this be the rose that the world hears singing,
Soft in the soft night, loud in the day,
Songs for the fireflies to dance as they hear;
If that be the song of the nightingale, springing
Forth in the form of a rose in May,
What do they say of the way of the year?
What of the way of the world gone Maying,
What of the work of the buds in the bowers,
What of the will of the wind on the wall,
Fluttering the wallflowers, sighing and playing,
Shrinking again as a bird that cowers,
Thinking of hours when the flowers have to fall?
Out of the throats of the loud birds showering,
Out of the folds where the flaglilies leap,
Out of the mouths of the roses stirred,
Out of the herbs on the walls reflowering,
Out of the heights where the sheer snows sleep,
Out of the deep and the steep, one word.
One from the lips of the lilyflames leaping,
The glad red lilies that burn in our sight,
The great live lilies for standard and crown;
One from the steeps where the pines stand sleeping,
Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne (Illustrated) (Delphi Poets Series) Page 66