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

by Algernon Charles Swinburne

  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,