Il trône, et son sépulcre est bâti de lumière.
ODE (LE TOMBEAU DE THÉOPHILE GAUTIER)
Quelle fleur, ô Mort, quel joyau, quel chant,
Quel vent, quel rayon de soleil couchant,
Sur ton front penché, sur ta main avide,
Sur l’âpre pâleur de ta lèvre aride,
Vibre encore et luit?
Ton sein est sans lait, ton oreille est vide,
Ton œil plein de nuit.
Ta bouche est sans souffle et ton front sans ride;
Mais l’éclair voilé d’une flamme humide,
Flamme éclose au coeur d’un ciel pluvieux,
Rallume ta lèvre et remplit tes yeux
De lueurs d’opale;
Ta bouche est vermeille et ton front joyeux,
O toi qui fus pâle.
Comme aux jours divins la mère des dieux,
Reine au sein fécond, au corps radieux,
Tu surgis au bord de la tombe amère;
Tu nous apparais, ô Mort, vierge et mère,
Effroi des humains,
Le divin laurier sur la tête altière
Et la lyre aux mains.
Nous reconnaissons, courbés vers la terre,
Que c’est la splendeur de ta face austère
Qui dore la nuit de nos longs malheurs;
Que la vie ailée aux mille couleurs,
Dont tu n’es que l’âme,
Refait par tes mains les prés et les fleurs,
La rose et la femme.
Lune constante! astre ami des douleurs
Qui luis à travers la brume des pleurs!
Quelle flamme au fond de ta clarté molle
Éclate et rougit, nouvelle auréole,
Ton doux front voilé?
Quelle étoile, ouvrant ses ailes, s’envole
Du ciel étoilé?
Pleurant ce rayon de jour qu’on lui vole,
L’homme exècre en vain la Mort triste et folle;
Mais l’astre qui fut à nos yeux si beau,
Làhaut, loin d’ici, dans un ciel nouveau
Plein d’autres étoiles,
Se lève, et pour lui la nuit du tombeau
Entr’ouvre ses voiles.
L’âme est dans le corps comme un jeune oiseau
Dont l’aile s’agite au bord du berceau;
La mort, déliant cette aile inquiète,
Quand nous écoutons la bouche muette
Qui nous dit adieu,
Fait de l’homme infime et sombre un poëte,
Du poëte un dieu.
IN OBITUM THEOPHILI POETÆ
O lux Pieridum et laurigeri deliciæ dei,
Vox leni Zephyro lenior, ut veris amans novi
Tollit floridulis implicitum primitiis caput,
Ten’ ergo abripuit non rediturum, ut redeunt novo
Flores vere novi, te quoque mors irrevocabilem?
Cur vatem neque te Musa parens, te neque Gratiæ,
Nec servare sibi te potuit fidum animi Venus?
Quæ nunc ipsa magis vel puero te Cinyreïo,
Te desiderium et flebilibus lumen amoribus,
Amissum queritur, sanguineis fusa comam genis.
Tantis tu lacrymis digne, comes dulcis Apollini,
Carum nomen eris dîs superis atque sodalibus
Nobis, quîs eadem quæ tibi vivo patuit via
Non æquis patet, at te sequimur passibus haud tuis,
At mæsto cinerem carmine non illacrymabilem
Tristesque exuvias floribus ac fletibus integris
Unà contegimus, nec citharâ nec sine tibiâ,
Votoque unanimæ vocis Ave dicimus et Vale.
AD CATULLUM
Catulle frater, ut velim comes tibi
Remota per vireta, per cavum nemus
Sacrumque Ditis haud inhospiti specus,
Pedem referre, trans aquam Stygis ducem
Secutus unum et unicum, Catulle, te,
Ut ora vatis optimi reviserem,
Tui meique vatis ora, quem scio
Venustiorem adîsse vel tuo lacum,
Benigniora semper arva vel tuis,
Ubi serenus accipit suos deus,
Tegitque myrtus implicata laureâ,
Manuque mulcet halituque consecrat
Fovetque blanda mors amabili sinu,
Et ore fama fervido colit viros
Alitque qualis unus ille par tibi
Britannus unicusque in orbe præstitit
Amicus ille noster, ille ceteris
Poeta major, omnibusque floribus
Priore Landor inclytum rosâ caput
Revinxit extulitque, quam tuâ manu
Recepit ac refovit integram suâ.
DEDICATION, 1878
Some nine years gone, as we dwelt together
In the sweet hushed heat of the south French weather
Ere autumn fell on the vinetressed hills
Or the season had shed one rosered feather,
Friend, whose fame is a flame that fills
All eyes it lightens and hearts it thrills
With joy to be born of the blood which bred
From a land that the grey sea girds and chills
The heart and spirit and hand and head
Whose might is as light on a dark day shed,
On a day now dark as a land’s decline
Where all the peers of your praise are dead,
In a land and season of corn and vine
I pledged you a health from a beaker of mine
But halfway filled to the lip’s edge yet
With hope for honey and song for wine.
Nine years have risen and eight years set
Since there by the wellspring our hands on it met:
And the pledge of my songs that were then to be,
I could wonder not, friend, though a friend should forget.
For life’s helm rocks to the windward and lee,
And time is as wind, and as waves are we;
And song is as foam that the seawinds fret,
Though the thought at its heart should be deep as the sea.
POEMS AND BALLADS. (THIRD SERIES)
CONTENTS
MARCH: AN ODE
THE COMMONWEAL
THE ARMADA
TO A SEAMEW
PAN AND THALASSIUS
A BALLAD OF BATH
IN A GARDEN
A RHYME
BABY-BIRD
OLIVE
A WORD WITH THE WIND
NEAP-TIDE
BY THE WAYSIDE
NIGHT
IN TIME OF MOURNING
THE INTERPRETERS
THE RECALL
BY TWILIGHT
A BABY’S EPITAPH
ON THE DEATH OF SIR HENRY TAYLOR
IN MEMORY OF JOHN WILLIAM INCHBOLD
NEW YEAR’S DAY
TO SIR RICHARD F. BURTON
NELL GWYN
CALIBAN ON ARIEL
THE WEARY WEDDING
THE WINDS
A LYKE-WAKE SONG
A REIVER’S NECK-VERSE
THE WITCH-MOTHER
THE BRIDE’S TRAGEDY
A JACOBITE’S FAREWELL
A JACOBITE’S EXILE
THE TYNESIDE WIDOW
DEDICATION
Swinburne, c. 1860
TO
WILLIAM BELL SCOTT
POET AND PAINTER
I DEDICATE THESE POEMS
IN MEMORY OF MANY YEARS
MARCH: AN ODE
1887
I
Ere frost-flower and snow-blossom faded and fell, and the splendour
of winter had passed out of sight,
The ways of the woodlands were fairer and stranger than dreams that
fulfil us in sleep with delight;
The breath of the mouths of the winds had hardened on tree-tops and
branches that glittered and swayed
Such wonders and glories of blossomlike snow or of frost that
outlightens
all flowers till it fade
That the sea was not lovelier than here was the land, nor the night
than the day, nor the day than the night,
Nor the winter sublimer with storm than the spring: such mirth had
the madness and might in thee made,
March, master of winds, bright minstrel and marshal of storms that
enkindle the season they smite.
II
And now that the rage of thy rapture is satiate with revel and
ravin and spoil of the snow,
And the branches it brightened are broken, and shattered the
tree-tops that only thy wrath could lay low,
How should not thy lovers rejoice in thee, leader and lord of the
year that exults to be born
So strong in thy strength and so glad of thy gladness whose
laughter puts winter and sorrow to scorn?
Thou hast shaken the snows from thy wings, and the frost on thy
forehead is molten: thy lips are aglow
As a lover’s that kindle with kissing, and earth, with her raiment
and tresses yet wasted and torn,
Takes breath as she smiles in the grasp of thy passion to feel
through her spirit the sense of thee flow.
III
Fain, fain would we see but again for an hour what the wind and the
sun have dispelled and consumed,
Those full deep swan-soft feathers of snow with whose luminous
burden the branches implumed
Hung heavily, curved as a half-bent bow, and fledged not as birds
are, but petalled as flowers,
Each tree-top and branchlet a pinnacle jewelled and carved, or a
fountain that shines as it showers,
But fixed as a fountain is fixed not, and wrought not to last till
by time or by tempest entombed,
As a pinnacle carven and gilded of men: for the date of its doom is
no more than an hour’s,
One hour of the sun’s when the warm wind wakes him to wither the
snow-flowers that froze as they bloomed.
IV
As the sunshine quenches the snowshine; as April subdues thee, and
yields up his kingdom to May;
So time overcomes the regret that is born of delight as it passes
in passion away,
And leaves but a dream for desire to rejoice in or mourn for with
tears or thanksgivings; but thou,
Bright god that art gone from us, maddest and gladdest of months,
to what goal hast thou gone from us now?
For somewhere surely the storm of thy laughter that lightens, the
beat of thy wings that play,
Must flame as a fire through the world, and the heavens that we
know not rejoice in thee: surely thy brow
Hath lost not its radiance of empire, thy spirit the joy that
impelled it on quest as for prey.
V
Are thy feet on the ways of the limitless waters, thy wings on the
winds of the waste north sea?
Are the fires of the false north dawn over heavens where summer is
stormful and strong like thee
Now bright in the sight of thine eyes? are the bastions of icebergs
assailed by the blast of thy breath?
Is it March with the wild north world when April is waning? the
word that the changed year saith,
Is it echoed to northward with rapture of passion reiterate from
spirits triumphant as we
Whose hearts were uplift at the blast of thy clarions as men’s
rearisen from a sleep that was death
And kindled to life that was one with the world’s and with thine?
hast thou set not the whole world free?
VI
For the breath of thy lips is freedom, and freedom’s the sense of
thy spirit, the sound of thy song,
Glad god of the north-east wind, whose heart is as high as the
hands of thy kingdom are strong,
Thy kingdom whose empire is terror and joy, twin-featured and
fruitful of births divine,
Days lit with the flame of the lamps of the flowers, and nights
that are drunken with dew for wine,
And sleep not for joy of the stars that deepen and quicken, a
denser and fierier throng,
And the world that thy breath bade whiten and tremble rejoices at
heart as they strengthen and shine,
And earth gives thanks for the glory bequeathed her, and knows of
thy reign that it wrought not wrong.
VII
Thy spirit is quenched not, albeit we behold not thy face in the
crown of the steep sky’s arch,
And the bold first buds of the whin wax golden, and witness arise
of the thorn and the larch:
Wild April, enkindled to laughter and storm by the kiss of the
wildest of winds that blow,
Calls loud on his brother for witness; his hands that were laden
with blossom are sprinkled with snow,
And his lips breathe winter, and laugh, and relent; and the live
woods feel not the frost’s flame parch;
For the flame of the spring that consumes not but quickens is felt
at the heart of the forest aglow,
And the sparks that enkindled and fed it were strewn from the hands
of the gods of the winds of March.
THE COMMONWEAL
1887
I
Eight hundred years and twenty-one
Have shone and sunken since the land
Whose name is freedom bore such brand
As marks a captive, and the sun
Beheld her fettered hand.
II
But ere dark time had shed as rain
Or sown on sterile earth as seed
That bears no fruit save tare and weed
An age and half an age again,
She rose on Runnymede.
III
Out of the shadow, starlike still,
She rose up radiant in her right,
And spake, and put to fear and flight
The lawless rule of awless will
That pleads no right save might.
IV
Nor since hath England ever borne
The burden laid on subject lands,
The rule that curbs and binds all hands
Save one, and marks for servile scorn
The heads it bows and brands.
V
A commonweal arrayed and crowned
With gold and purple, girt with steel
At need, that foes must fear or feel,
We find her, as our fathers found,
Earth’s lordliest commonweal.
VI
And now that fifty years are flown
Since in a maiden’s hand the sign
Of empire that no seas confine
First as a star to seaward shone,
We see their record shine.
VII
A troubled record, foul and fair,
A simple record and serene,
Inscribes for praise a blameless queen,
For praise and blame an age of care
And change and ends unseen.
VIII
Hope, wide of eye and wild of wing,
Rose with the sundawn of a reign
Whose grace should make the rough ways plain,
And fill the worn old world with spring,
And heal its heart of pain.
IX
Peace was to be on earth; men’s hope
Was holier than their fathers had,
Their wisdom not more wise than glad:
They saw the gates of promise ope,
And heard what love’s lips bade.
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X
Love armed with knowledge, winged and wise,
Should hush the wind of war, and see,
They said, the sun of days to be
Bring round beneath serener skies
A stormless jubilee.
XI
Time, in the darkness unbeholden
That hides him from the sight of fear
And lets but dreaming hope draw near,
Smiled and was sad to hear such golden
Strains hail the all-golden year.
XII
Strange clouds have risen between, and wild
Red stars of storm that lit the abyss
Wherein fierce fraud and violence kiss
And mock such promise as beguiled
The fiftieth year from this.
XIII
War upon war, change after change,
Hath shaken thrones and towers to dust,
And hopes austere and faiths august
Have watched in patience stern and strange
Men’s works unjust and just.
XIV
As from some Alpine watch-tower’s portal
Night, living yet, looks forth for dawn,
So from time’s mistier mountain lawn
The spirit of man, in trust immortal,
Yearns toward a hope withdrawn.
XV
The morning comes not, yet the night
Wanes, and men’s eyes win strength to see
Where twilight is, where light shall be
When conquered wrong and conquering right
Acclaim a world set free.
XVI
Calm as our mother-land, the mother
Of faith and freedom, pure and wise,
Keeps watch beneath unchangeful skies,
When hath she watched the woes of other
Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne (Illustrated) (Delphi Poets Series) Page 69