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

by Algernon Charles Swinburne

  men rise?

  What is he, that the wind and sea should fear him, quelled by his

  sunbright eyes?

  What, that men should return again, and hail him Lord of the

  servile skies?

  Hell’s own flame at his heavenly name leaps higher and laughs, and

  its gulfs rejoice:

  Plague and death from his baneful breath take life and lighten, and

  praise his choice:

  Chosen are they to devour for prey the tribes that hear not and

  fear his voice.

  Ay, but we that the wind and sea gird round with shelter of storms

  and waves

  Know not him that ye worship, grim as dreams that quicken from dead

  men’s graves:

  God is one with the sea, the sun, the land that nursed us, the love

  that saves.

  Love whose heart is in ours, and part of all things noble and all

  things fair;

  Sweet and free as the circling sea, sublime and kind as the

  fostering air;

  Pure of shame as is England’s name, whose crowns to come are as

  crowns that were.

  IV

  I

  But the Lord of darkness, the God whose love is a flaming fire,

  The master whose mercy fulfils wide hell till its torturers tire,

  He shall surely have heed of his servants who serve him for love,

  not hire.

  They shall fetter the wing of the wind whose pinions are plumed

  with foam:

  For now shall thy horn be exalted, and now shall thy bolt strike

  home;

  Yea, now shall thy kingdom come, Lord God of the priests of Rome.

  They shall cast thy curb on the waters, and bridle the waves of the

  sea:

  They shall say to her, Peace, be still: and stillness and peace

  shall be:

  And the winds and the storms shall hear them, and tremble, and

  worship thee.

  Thy breath shall darken the morning, and wither the mounting sun;

  And the daysprings, frozen and fettered, shall know thee, and cease

  to run;

  The heart of the world shall feel thee, and die, and thy will be

  done.

  The spirit of man that would sound thee, and search out causes of

  things,

  Shall shrink and subside and praise thee: and wisdom, with

  plume-plucked wings,

  Shall cower at thy feet and confess thee, that none may fathom thy

  springs.

  The fountains of song that await but the wind of an April to be

  To burst the bonds of the winter, and speak with the sound of a

  sea,

  The blast of thy mouth shall quench them: and song shall be only of

  thee.

  The days that are dead shall quicken, the seasons that were shall

  return;

  And the streets and the pastures of England, the woods that burgeon

  and yearn,

  Shall be whitened with ashes of women and children and men that

  burn.

  For the mother shall burn with the babe sprung forth of her womb in

  fire,

  And bride with bridegroom, and brother with sister, and son with

  sire;

  And the noise of the flames shall be sweet in thine ears as the

  sound of a lyre.

  Yea, so shall thy kingdom be stablished, and so shall the signs of

  it be:

  And the world shall know, and the wind shall speak, and the sun

  shall see,

  That these are the works of thy servants, whose works bear witness

  to thee.

  II

  But the dusk of the day falls fruitless, whose light should have

  lit them on:

  Sails flash through the gloom to shoreward, eclipsed as the sun

  that shone:

  And the west wind wakes with dawn, and the hope that was here is

  gone.

  Around they wheel and around, two knots to the Spaniard’s one,

  The wind-swift warriors of England, who shoot as with shafts of the

  sun,

  With fourfold shots for the Spaniard’s, that spare not till day be

  done.

  And the wind with the sundown sharpens, and hurtles the ships to

  the lee,

  And Spaniard on Spaniard smites, and shatters, and yields; and we,

  Ere battle begin, stand lords of the battle, acclaimed of the sea.

  And the day sweeps round to the nightward; and heavy and hard the

  waves

  Roll in on the herd of the hurtling galleons; and masters and

  slaves

  Reel blind in the grasp of the dark strong wind that shall dig

  their graves.

  For the sepulchres hollowed and shaped of the wind in the swerve of

  the seas,

  The graves that gape for their pasture, and laugh, thrilled through

  by the breeze,

  The sweet soft merciless waters, await and are fain of these.

  As the hiss of a Python heaving in menace of doom to be

  They hear through the clear night round them, whose hours are as

  clouds that flee,

  The whisper of tempest sleeping, the heave and the hiss of the sea.

  But faith is theirs, and with faith are they girded and helmed and

  shod:

  Invincible are they, almighty, elect for a sword and a rod;

  Invincible even as their God is omnipotent, infinite, God.

  In him is their strength, who have sworn that his glory shall wax

  not dim:

  In his name are their war-ships hallowed as mightiest of all that

  swim:

  The men that shall cope with these, and conquer, shall cast out

  him.

  In him is the trust of their hearts; the desire of their eyes is

  he;

  The light of their ways, made lightning for men that would fain be

  free:

  Earth’s hosts are with them, and with them is heaven: but with us

  is the sea.

  V

  I

  And a day and a night pass over;

  And the heart of their chief swells high;

  For England, the warrior, the rover,

  Whose banners on all winds fly,

  Soul-stricken, he saith, by the shadow of death, holds off him, and

  draws not nigh.

  And the wind and the dawn together

  Make in from the gleaming east:

  And fain of the wild glad weather

  As famine is fain of feast,

  And fain of the fight, forth sweeps in its might the host of the

  Lord’s high priest.

  And lightly before the breeze

  The ships of his foes take wing:

  Are they scattered, the lords of the seas?

  Are they broken, the foes of the king?

  And ever now higher as a mounting fire the hopes of the Spaniard

  spring.

  And a windless night comes down:

  And a breezeless morning, bright

  With promise of praise to crown

  The close of the crowning fight,

  Leaps up as the foe’s heart leaps, and glows with lustrous rapture

  of light.

  And stinted of gear for battle

  The ships of the sea’s folk lie,

  Unwarlike, herded as cattle,

  Six miles from the foeman’s eye

  That fastens as flame on the sight of them tame and offenceless,

  and ranged as to die.

  Surely the souls in them quail,

  They are stricken and withered at heart,

  When in on them, sail by sail,

  Fierce marvels of mo
nstrous art,

  Tower darkening on tower till the sea-winds cower crowds down as to

  hurl them apart.

  And the windless weather is kindly,

  And comforts the host in these;

  And their hearts are uplift in them blindly,

  And blindly they boast at ease

  That the next day’s fight shall exalt them, and smite with

  destruction the lords of the seas.

  II

  And lightly the proud hearts prattle,

  And lightly the dawn draws nigh,

  The dawn of the doom of the battle

  When these shall falter and fly;

  No day more great in the roll of fate filled ever with fire the

  sky.

  To fightward they go as to feastward,

  And the tempest of ships that drive

  Sets eastward ever and eastward,

  Till closer they strain and strive;

  And the shots that rain on the hulls of Spain are as thunders afire

  and alive.

  And about them the blithe sea smiles

  And flashes to windward and lee

  Round capes and headlands and isles

  That heed not if war there be;

  Round Sark, round Wight, green jewels of light in the ring of the

  golden sea.

  But the men that within them abide

  Are stout of spirit and stark

  As rocks that repel the tide,

  As day that repels the dark;

  And the light bequeathed from their swords unsheathed shines lineal

  on Wight and on Sark.

  And eastward the storm sets ever,

  The storm of the sails that strain

  And follow and close and sever

  And lose and return and gain;

  And English thunder divides in sunder the holds of the ships of

  Spain.

  Southward to Calais, appalled

  And astonished, the vast fleet veers;

  And the skies are shrouded and palled,

  But the moonless midnight hears

  And sees how swift on them drive and drift strange flames that the

  darkness fears.

  They fly through the night from shoreward,

  Heart-stricken till morning break,

  And ever to scourge them forward

  Drives down on them England’s Drake,

  And hurls them in as they hurtle and spin and stagger, with storm

  to wake.

  VI

  I

  And now is their time come on them. For eastward they drift and

  reel,

  With the shallows of Flanders ahead, with destruction and havoc

  at heel,

  With God for their comfort only, the God whom they serve; and

  here

  Their Lord, of his great loving-kindness, may revel and make

  good cheer;

  Though ever his lips wax thirstier with drinking, and hotter the

  lusts in him swell;

  For he feeds the thirst that consumes him with blood, and his

  winepress fumes with the reek of hell.

  II

  Fierce noon beats hard on the battle; the galleons that loom to

  the lee

  Bow down, heel over, uplifting their shelterless hulls from the

  sea:

  From scuppers aspirt with blood, from guns dismounted and dumb,

  The signs of the doom they looked for, the loud mute witnesses

  come.

  They press with sunset to seaward for comfort: and shall not they

  find it there?

  O servants of God most high, shall his winds not pass you by, and

  his waves not spare?

  III

  The wings of the south-west wind are widened; the breath of his

  fervent lips,

  More keen than a sword’s edge, fiercer than fire, falls full on the

  plunging ships.

  The pilot is he of their northward flight, their stay and their

  steersman he;

  A helmsman clothed with the tempest, and girdled with strength to

  constrain the sea.

  And the host of them trembles and quails, caught fast in his hand

  as a bird in the toils;

  For the wrath and the joy that fulfil him are mightier than man’s,

  whom he slays and spoils.

  And vainly, with heart divided in sunder, and labour of wavering

  will,

  The lord of their host takes counsel with hope if haply their star

  shine still,

  If haply some light be left them of chance to renew and redeem the

  fray;

  But the will of the black south-wester is lord of the councils of

  war to-day.

  One only spirit it quells not, a splendour undarkened of chance or

  time;

  Be the praise of his foes with Oquendo for ever, a name as a star

  sublime.

  But here what aid in a hero’s heart, what help in his hand may be?

  For ever the dark wind whitens and blackens the hollows and heights

  of the sea,

  And galley by galley, divided and desolate, founders; and none

  takes heed,

  Nor foe nor friend, if they perish; forlorn, cast off in their

  uttermost need,

  They sink in the whelm of the waters, as pebbles by children from

  shoreward hurled,

  In the North Sea’s waters that end not, nor know they a bourn but

  the bourn of the world.

  Past many a secure unavailable harbour, and many a loud stream’s

  mouth,

  Past Humber and Tees and Tyne and Tweed, they fly, scourged on from

  the south,

  And torn by the scourge of the storm-wind that smites as a harper

  smites on a lyre,

  And consumed of the storm as the sacrifice loved of their God is

  consumed with fire,

  And devoured of the darkness as men that are slain in the fires of

  his love are devoured,

  And deflowered of their lives by the storms, as by priests is the

  spirit of life deflowered.

  For the wind, of its godlike mercy, relents not, and hounds them

  ahead to the north,

  With English hunters at heel, till now is the herd of them past the

  Forth,

  All huddled and hurtled seaward; and now need none wage war upon

  these,

  Nor huntsmen follow the quarry whose fall is the pastime sought of

  the seas.

  Day upon day upon day confounds them, with measureless mists that

  swell,

  With drift of rains everlasting and dense as the fumes of ascending

  hell.

  The visions of priest and of prophet beholding his enemies bruised

  of his rod

  Beheld but the likeness of this that is fallen on the faithful, the

  friends of God.

  Northward, and northward, and northward they stagger and shudder

  and swerve and flit,

  Dismantled of masts and of yards, with sails by the fangs of the

  storm-wind split.

  But north of the headland whose name is Wrath, by the wrath or the

  ruth of the sea,

  They are swept or sustained to the westward, and drive through the

  rollers aloof to the lee.

  Some strive yet northward for Iceland, and perish: but some through

  the storm-hewn straits

  That sunder the Shetlands and Orkneys are borne of the breath which

  is God’s or fate’s:

  And some, by the dawn of September, at last give thanks as for

  stars that smile,

  For the winds have swept them to shelter and sight of the cliffs of

  a Cat
holic isle.

  Though many the fierce rocks feed on, and many the merciless

  heretic slays,

  Yet some that have laboured to land with their treasure are

  trustful, and give God praise.

  And the kernes of murderous Ireland, athirst with a greed

  everlasting of blood,

  Unslakable ever with slaughter and spoil, rage down as a ravening

  flood,

  To slay and to flay of their shining apparel their brethren whom

  shipwreck spares;

  Such faith and such mercy, such love and such manhood, such hands

  and such hearts are theirs.

  Short shrift to her foes gives England, but shorter doth Ireland to

  friends; and worse

  Fare they that came with a blessing on treason than they that come

  with a curse.

  Hacked, harried, and mangled of axes and skenes, three thousand

  naked and dead

  Bear witness of Catholic Ireland, what sons of what sires at her

  breasts are bred.

  Winds are pitiful, waves are merciful, tempest and storm are kind:

  The waters that smite may spare, and the thunder is deaf, and the

  lightning is blind:

  Of these perchance at his need may a man, though they know it not,

  yet find grace;

  But grace, if another be hardened against him, he gets not at this

  man’s face.

  For his ear that hears and his eye that sees the wreck and the wail

  of men,

  And his heart that relents not within him, but hungers, are like as

  the wolf’s in his den.

  Worthy are these to worship their master, the murderous Lord of

  lies,

  Who hath given to the pontiff his servant the keys of the pit and

  the keys of the skies.

  Wild famine and red-shod rapine are cruel, and bitter with blood

  are their feasts;

  But fiercer than famine and redder than rapine the hands and the

  hearts of priests.

  God, God bade these to the battle; and here, on a land by his

  servants trod,

  They perish, a lordly blood-offering, subdued by the hands of the

  servants of God.

  These also were fed of his priests with faith, with the milk of his