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

by Algernon Charles Swinburne

Whose worship wist not of me

  And gat but sorrows for wages,

  And hardly for tears could see

  Light.

  Call

  No more on the starry presence

  Whose light through the long dark swam:

  Hold fast to the green world’s pleasance:

  For I that am lord of it am

  All.

  THALASSIUS

  God,

  God Pan, from the glad wood’s portal

  The breaths of thy song blow sweet:

  But woods may be walked in of mortal

  Man’s thought, where never thy feet

  Trod.

  Thine

  All secrets of growth and of birth are,

  All glories of flower and of tree,

  Wheresoever the wonders of earth are;

  The words of the spell of the sea

  Mine.

  A BALLAD OF BATH

  Like a queen enchanted who may not laugh or weep,

  Glad at heart and guarded from change and care like ours,

  Girt about with beauty by days and nights that creep

  Soft as breathless ripples that softly shoreward sweep,

  Lies the lovely city whose grace no grief deflowers.

  Age and grey forgetfulness, time that shifts and veers,

  Touch not thee, our fairest, whose charm no rival nears,

  Hailed as England’s Florence of one whose praise gives grace,

  Landor, once thy lover, a name that love reveres:

  Dawn and noon and sunset are one before thy face.

  Dawn whereof we know not, and noon whose fruit we reap,

  Garnered up in record of years that fell like flowers,

  Sunset liker sunrise along the shining steep

  Whence thy fair face lightens, and where thy soft springs leap,

  Crown at once and gird thee with grace of guardian powers

  Loved of men beloved of us, souls that fame inspheres,

  All thine air hath music for him who dreams and hears;

  Voices mixed of multitudes, feet of friends that pace,

  Witness why for ever, if heaven’s face clouds or clears,

  Dawn and noon and sunset are one before thy face.

  Peace hath here found harbourage mild as very sleep:

  Not the hills and waters, the fields and wildwood bowers,

  Smile or speak more tenderly, clothed with peace more deep,

  Here than memory whispers of days our memories keep

  Fast with love and laughter and dreams of withered hours.

  Bright were these as blossom of old, and thought endears

  Still the fair soft phantoms that pass with smiles or tears,

  Sweet as roseleaves hoarded and dried wherein we trace

  Still the soul and spirit of sense that lives and cheers:

  Dawn and noon and sunset are one before thy face.

  City lulled asleep by the chime of passing years,

  Sweeter smiles thy rest than the radiance round thy peers;

  Only love and lovely remembrance here have place.

  Time on thee lies lighter than music on men’s ears;

  Dawn and noon and sunset are one before thy face.

  IN A GARDEN

  Baby, see the flowers!

  — Baby sees

  Fairer things than these,

  Fairer though they be than dreams of ours.

  Baby, hear the birds!

  — Baby knows

  Better songs than those,

  Sweeter though they sound than sweetest words.

  Baby, see the moon!

  — Baby’s eyes

  Laugh to watch it rise,

  Answering light with love and night with noon.

  Baby, hear the sea!

  — Baby’s face

  Takes a graver grace,

  Touched with wonder what the sound may be.

  Baby, see the star!

  — Baby’s hand

  Opens, warm and bland,

  Calm in claim of all things fair that are.

  Baby, hear the bells!

  — Baby’s head

  Bows, as ripe for bed,

  Now the flowers curl round and close their cells.

  Baby, flower of light,

  Sleep, and see

  Brighter dreams than we,

  Till good day shall smile away good night.

  A RHYME

  Babe, if rhyme be none

  For that sweet small word

  Babe, the sweetest one

  Ever heard,

  Right it is and meet

  Rhyme should keep not true

  Time with such a sweet

  Thing as you.

  Meet it is that rhyme

  Should not gain such grace:

  What is April’s prime

  To your face?

  What to yours is May’s

  Rosiest smile? what sound

  Like your laughter sways

  All hearts round?

  None can tell in metre

  Fit for ears on earth

  What sweet star grew sweeter

  At your birth.

  Wisdom doubts what may be:

  Hope, with smile sublime,

  Trusts: but neither, baby,

  Knows the rhyme.

  Wisdom lies down lonely;

  Hope keeps watch from far;

  None but one seer only

  Sees the star.

  Love alone, with yearning

  Heart for astrolabe,

  Takes the star’s height, burning

  O’er the babe.

  BABY-BIRD

  Baby-bird, baby-bird,

  Ne’er a song on earth

  May be heard, may be heard,

  Rich as yours in mirth.

  All your flickering fingers,

  All your twinkling toes,

  Play like light that lingers

  Till the clear song close.

  Baby-bird, baby-bird,

  Your grave majestic eyes

  Like a bird’s warbled words

  Speak, and sorrow dies.

  Sorrow dies for love’s sake,

  Love grows one with mirth,

  Even for one white dove’s sake,

  Born a babe on earth.

  Baby-bird, baby-bird,

  Chirping loud and long,

  Other birds hush their words,

  Hearkening toward your song.

  Sweet as spring though it ring,

  Full of love’s own lures,

  Weak and wrong sounds their song,

  Singing after yours.

  Baby-bird, baby-bird,

  The happy heart that hears

  Seems to win back within

  Heaven, and cast out fears.

  Earth and sun seem as one

  Sweet light and one sweet word

  Known of none here but one,

  Known of one sweet bird.

  OLIVE

  I

  Who may praise her?

  Eyes where midnight shames the sun,

  Hair of night and sunshine spun,

  Woven of dawn’s or twilight’s loom,

  Radiant darkness, lustrous gloom,

  Godlike childhood’s flowerlike bloom,

  None may praise aright, nor sing

  Half the grace wherewith like spring

  Love arrays her.

  II

  Love untold

  Sings in silence, speaks in light

  Shed from each fair feature, bright

  Still from heaven, whence toward us, now

  Nine years since, she deigned to bow

  Down the brightness of her brow,

  Deigned to pass through mortal birth:

  Reverence calls her, here on earth,

  Nine years old.

  III

  Love’s deep duty,

  Even when love transfigured grows

  Worship, all too surely knows

  How, though love may cast out fear,
r />   Yet the debt divine and dear

  Due to childhood’s godhead here

  May by love of man be paid

  Never; never song be made

  Worth its beauty.

  IV

  Nought is all

  Sung or said or dreamed or thought

  Ever, set beside it; nought

  All the love that man may give —

  Love whose prayer should be, “Forgive!”

  Heaven, we see, on earth may live;

  Earth can thank not heaven, we know,

  Save with songs that ebb and flow,

  Rise and fall.

  V

  No man living,

  No man dead, save haply one

  Now gone homeward past the sun,

  Ever found such grace as might

  Tune his tongue to praise aright

  Children, flowers of love and light,

  Whom our praise dispraises: we

  Sing, in sooth, but not as he

  Sang thanksgiving.

  VI

  Hope that smiled,

  Seeing her new-born beauty, made

  Out of heaven’s own light and shade,

  Smiled not half so sweetly: love,

  Seeing the sun, afar above,

  Warm the nest that rears the dove,

  Sees, more bright than moon or sun,

  All the heaven of heavens in one

  Little child.

  VII

  Who may sing her?

  Wings of angels when they stir

  Make no music worthy her:

  Sweeter sound her shy soft words

  Here than songs of God’s own birds

  Whom the fire of rapture girds

  Round with light from love’s face lit;

  Hands of angels find no fit

  Gifts to bring her.

  VIII

  Babes at birth

  Wear as raiment round them cast,

  Keep as witness toward their past,

  Tokens left of heaven; and each,

  Ere its lips learn mortal speech,

  Ere sweet heaven pass on pass reach,

  Bears in undiverted eyes

  Proof of unforgotten skies

  Here on earth.

  IX

  Quenched as embers

  Quenched with flakes of rain or snow

  Till the last faint flame burns low,

  All those lustrous memories lie

  Dead with babyhood gone by:

  Yet in her they dare not die:

  Others, fair as heaven is, yet,

  Now they share not heaven, forget:

  She remembers.

  A WORD WITH THE WIND

  Lord of days and nights that hear thy word of wintry warning,

  Wind, whose feet are set on ways that none may tread,

  Change the nest wherein thy wings are fledged for flight by

  morning,

  Change the harbour whence at dawn thy sails are spread.

  Not the dawn, ere yet the imprisoning night has half released her,

  More desires the sun’s full face of cheer, than we,

  Well as yet we love the strength of the iron-tongued north-easter,

  Yearn for wind to meet us as we front the sea.

  All thy ways are good, O wind, and all the world should fester,

  Were thy fourfold godhead quenched, or stilled thy strife:

  Yet the waves and we desire too long the deep south-wester,

  Whence the waters quicken shoreward, clothed with life.

  Yet the field not made for ploughing save of keels nor harrowing

  Save of storm-winds lies unbrightened by thy breath:

  Banded broad with ruddy samphire glow the sea-banks narrowing

  Westward, while the sea gleams chill and still as death.

  Sharp and strange from inland sounds thy bitter note of battle,

  Blown between grim skies and waters sullen-souled,

  Till the baffled seas bear back, rocks roar and shingles rattle,

  Vexed and angered and anhungered and acold.

  Change thy note, and give the waves their will, and all the

  measure,

  Full and perfect, of the music of their might,

  Let it fill the bays with thunderous notes and throbs of pleasure,

  Shake the shores with passion, sound at once and smite.

  Sweet are even the mild low notes of wind and sea, but sweeter

  Sounds the song whose choral wrath of raging rhyme

  Bids the shelving shoals keep tune with storm’s imperious metre,

  Bids the rocks and reefs respond in rapturous chime.

  Sweet the lisp and lulling whisper and luxurious laughter,

  Soft as love or sleep, of waves whereon the sun

  Dreams, and dreams not of the darkling hours before nor after,

  Winged with cloud whose wrath shall bid love’s day be done.

  Yet shall darkness bring the awakening sea a lordlier lover,

  Clothed with strength more amorous and more strenuous will,

  Whence her heart of hearts shall kindle and her soul recover

  Sense of love too keen to lie for love’s sake still.

  Let thy strong south-western music sound, and bid the billows

  Brighten, proud and glad to feel thy scourge and kiss

  Sting and soothe and sway them, bowed as aspens bend or willows,

  Yet resurgent still in breathless rage of bliss.

  All to-day the slow sleek ripples hardly bear up shoreward,

  Charged with sighs more light than laughter, faint and fair,

  Like a woodland lake’s weak wavelets lightly lingering forward,

  Soft and listless as the slumber-stricken air.

  Be the sunshine bared or veiled, the sky superb or shrouded,

  Still the waters, lax and languid, chafed and foiled,

  Keen and thwarted, pale and patient, clothed with fire or clouded,

  Vex their heart in vain, or sleep like serpents coiled.

  Thee they look for, blind and baffled, wan with wrath and weary,

  Blown for ever back by winds that rock the bird:

  Winds that seamews breast subdue the sea, and bid the dreary

  Waves be weak as hearts made sick with hope deferred.

  Let thy clarion sound from westward, let the south bear token

  How the glories of thy godhead sound and shine:

  Bid the land rejoice to see the land-wind’s broad wings broken,

  Bid the sea take comfort, bid the world be thine.

  Half the world abhors thee beating back the sea, and blackening

  Heaven with fierce and woful change of fluctuant form:

  All the world acclaims thee shifting sail again, and slackening

  Cloud by cloud the close-reefed cordage of the storm.

  Sweeter fields and brighter woods and lordlier hills than waken

  Here at sunrise never hailed the sun and thee:

  Turn thee then, and give them comfort, shed like rain and shaken

  Far as foam that laughs and leaps along the sea.

  NEAP-TIDE

  Far off is the sea, and the land is afar:

  The low banks reach at the sky,

  Seen hence, and are heavenward high;

  Though light for the leap of a boy they are,

  And the far sea late was nigh.

  The fair wild fields and the circling downs,

  The bright sweet marshes and meads

  All glorious with flowerlike weeds,

  The great grey churches, the sea-washed towns,

  Recede as a dream recedes.

  The world draws back, and the world’s light wanes,

  As a dream dies down and is dead;

  And the clouds and the gleams overhead

  Change, and change; and the sea remains,

  A shadow of dreamlike dread.

  Wild, and woful, and pale, and grey,

  A shadow of sleepless fear,

/>   A corpse with the night for bier,

  The fairest thing that beholds the day

  Lies haggard and hopeless here.

  And the wind’s wings, broken and spent, subside;

  And the dumb waste world is hoar,

  And strange as the sea the shore;

  And shadows of shapeless dreams abide

  Where life may abide no more.

  A sail to seaward, a sound from shoreward,

  And the spell were broken that seems

  To reign in a world of dreams

  Where vainly the dreamer’s feet make forward

  And vainly the low sky gleams.

  The sea-forsaken forlorn deep-wrinkled

  Salt slanting stretches of sand

  That slope to the seaward hand,

  Were they fain of the ripples that flashed and twinkled

  And laughed as they struck the strand?

  As bells on the reins of the fairies ring

  The ripples that kissed them rang,

  The light from the sundawn sprang,

  And the sweetest of songs that the world may sing

  Was theirs when the full sea sang.

  Now no light is in heaven; and now

  Not a note of the sea-wind’s tune

  Rings hither: the bleak sky’s boon

  Grants hardly sight of a grey sun’s brow —

  A sun more sad than the moon.

  More sad than a moon that clouds beleaguer

  And storm is a scourge to smite,

  The sick sun’s shadowlike light

  Grows faint as the clouds and the waves wax eager,

  And withers away from sight.

  The day’s heart cowers, and the night’s heart quickens:

  Full fain would the day be dead

  And the stark night reign in his stead:

  The sea falls dumb as the sea-fog thickens

  And the sunset dies for dread.

  Outside of the range of time, whose breath

  Is keen as the manslayer’s knife