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

by Algernon Charles Swinburne

  And his peace but a truce for strife,

  Who knows if haply the shadow of death

  May be not the light of life?

  For the storm and the rain and the darkness borrow

  But an hour from the suns to be,

  But a strange swift passage, that we

  May rejoice, who have mourned not to-day, to-morrow,

  In the sun and the wind and the sea.

  BY THE WAYSIDE

  Summer’s face was rosiest, skies and woods were mellow,

  Earth had heaven to friend, and heaven had earth to fellow,

  When we met where wooded hills and meadows meet.

  Autumn’s face is pale, and all her late leaves yellow,

  Now that here again we greet.

  Wan with years whereof this eightieth nears December,

  Fair and bright with love, the kind old face I know

  Shines above the sweet small twain whose eyes remember

  Heaven, and fill with April’s light this pale November,

  Though the dark year’s glass run low.

  Like a rose whose joy of life her silence utters

  When the birds are loud, and low the lulled wind mutters,

  Grave and silent shines the boy nigh three years old.

  Wise and sweet his smile, that falters not nor flutters,

  Glows, and turns the gloom to gold.

  Like the new-born sun’s that strikes the dark and slays it,

  So that even for love of light it smiles and dies,

  Laughs the boy’s blithe face whose fair fourth year arrays it

  All with light of life and mirth that stirs and sways it

  And fulfils the deep wide eyes.

  Wide and warm with glowing laughter’s exultation,

  Full of welcome, full of sunbright jubilation,

  Flash my taller friend’s quick eyebeams, charged with glee;

  But with softer still and sweeter salutation

  Shine my smaller friend’s on me.

  Little arms flung round my bending neck, that yoke it

  Fast in tender bondage, draw my face down too

  Toward the flower-soft face whose dumb deep smiles invoke it;

  Dumb, but love can read the radiant eyes that woke it,

  Blue as June’s mid heaven is blue.

  How may men find refuge, how should hearts be shielded,

  From the weapons thus by little children wielded,

  When they lift such eyes as light this lustrous face —

  Eyes that woke love sleeping unawares, and yielded

  Love for love, a gift of grace,

  Grace beyond man’s merit, love that laughs, forgiving

  Even the sin of being no more a child, nor worth

  Trust and love that lavish gifts above man’s giving,

  Touch or glance of eyes and lips the sweetest living,

  Fair as heaven and kind as earth?

  NIGHT

  I

  FROM THE ITALIAN OF GIOVANNI STROZZI

  Night, whom in shape so sweet thou here may’st see

  Sleeping, was by an Angel sculptured thus

  In marble, and since she sleeps hath life like us:

  Thou doubt’st? Awake her: she will speak to thee.

  II

  FROM THE ITALIAN OF MICHELANGELO BUONARROTI

  Sleep likes me well, and better yet to know

  I am but stone. While shame and grief must be,

  Good hap is mine, to feel not, nor to see:

  Take heed, then, lest thou wake me: ah, speak low.

  IN TIME OF MOURNING

  “Return,” we dare not as we fain

  Would cry from hearts that yearn:

  Love dares not bid our dead again

  Return.

  O hearts that strain and burn

  As fires fast fettered burn and strain!

  Bow down, lie still, and learn.

  The heart that healed all hearts of pain

  No funeral rites inurn:

  Its echoes, while the stars remain,

  Return.

  May 1885.

  THE INTERPRETERS

  I

  Days dawn on us that make amends for many

  Sometimes,

  When heaven and earth seem sweeter even than any

  Man’s rhymes.

  Light had not all been quenched in France, or quelled

  In Greece,

  Had Homer sung not, or had Hugo held

  His peace.

  Had Sappho’s self not left her word thus long

  For token,

  The sea round Lesbos yet in waves of song

  Had spoken.

  II

  And yet these days of subtler air and finer

  Delight,

  When lovelier looks the darkness, and diviner

  The light —

  The gift they give of all these golden hours,

  Whose urn

  Pours forth reverberate rays or shadowing showers

  In turn —

  Clouds, beams, and winds that make the live day’s track

  Seem living —

  What were they did no spirit give them back

  Thanksgiving?

  III

  Dead air, dead fire, dead shapes and shadows, telling

  Time nought;

  Man gives them sense and soul by song, and dwelling

  In thought.

  In human thought their being endures, their power

  Abides:

  Else were their life a thing that each light hour

  Derides.

  The years live, work, sigh, smile, and die, with all

  They cherish;

  The soul endures, though dreams that fed it fall

  And perish.

  IV

  In human thought have all things habitation;

  Our days

  Laugh, lower, and lighten past, and find no station

  That stays.

  But thought and faith are mightier things than time

  Can wrong,

  Made splendid once with speech, or made sublime

  By song.

  Remembrance, though the tide of change that rolls

  Wax hoary,

  Gives earth and heaven, for song’s sake and the soul’s,

  Their glory.

  July 16, 1885.

  THE RECALL

  Return, they cry, ere yet your day

  Set, and the sky grow stern:

  Return, strayed souls, while yet ye may

  Return.

  But heavens beyond us yearn;

  Yea, heights of heaven above the sway

  Of stars that eyes discern.

  The soul whose wings from shoreward stray

  Makes toward her viewless bourne

  Though trustless faith and unfaith say,

  Return.

  BY TWILIGHT

  If we dream that desire of the distance above us

  Should be fettered by fear of the shadows that seem,

  If we wake, to be nought, but to hate or to love us

  If we dream,

  Night sinks on the soul, and the stars as they gleam

  Speak menace or mourning, with tongues to reprove us

  That we deemed of them better than terror may deem.

  But if hope may not lure us, if fear may not move us,

  Thought lightens the darkness wherein the supreme

  Pure presence of death shall assure us, and prove us

  If we dream.

  A BABY’S EPITAPH

  April made me: winter laid me here away asleep.

  Bright as Maytime was my daytime; night is soft and deep:

  Though the morrow bring forth sorrow, well are ye that weep.

  Ye that held me dear beheld me not a twelvemonth long:

  All the while ye saw me smile, ye knew not whence the song

  Came that made me smile, and laid me here, and wrought you wrong.

  Angels, calling from your brawling world on
e undefiled,

  Homeward bade me, and forbade me here to rest beguiled:

  Here I sleep not: pass, and weep not here upon your child.

  ON THE DEATH OF SIR HENRY TAYLOR

  Fourscore and five times has the gradual year

  Risen and fulfilled its days of youth and eld

  Since first the child’s eyes opening first beheld

  Light, who now leaves behind to help us here

  Light shed from song as starlight from a sphere

  Serene as summer; song whose charm compelled

  The sovereign soul made flesh in Artevelde

  To stand august before us and austere,

  Half sad with mortal knowledge, all sublime

  With trust that takes no taint from change or time,

  Trust in man’s might of manhood. Strong and sage,

  Clothed round with reverence of remembering hearts,

  He, twin-born with our nigh departing age,

  Into the light of peace and fame departs.

  IN MEMORY OF JOHN WILLIAM INCHBOLD

  Farewell: how should not such as thou fare well,

  Though we fare ill that love thee, and that live,

  And know, whate’er the days wherein we dwell

  May give us, thee again they will not give?

  Peace, rest, and sleep are all we know of death,

  And all we dream of comfort: yet for thee,

  Whose breath of life was bright and strenuous breath,

  We think the change is other than we see.

  The seal of sleep set on thine eyes to-day

  Surely can seal not up the keen swift light

  That lit them once for ever. Night can slay

  None save the children of the womb of night.

  The fire that burns up dawn to bring forth noon

  Was father of thy spirit: how shouldst thou

  Die as they die for whom the sun and moon

  Are silent? Thee the darkness holds not now:

  Them, while they looked upon the light, and deemed

  That life was theirs for living in the sun,

  The darkness held in bondage: and they dreamed,

  Who knew not that such life as theirs was none.

  To thee the sun spake, and the morning sang

  Notes deep and clear as life or heaven: the sea

  That sounds for them but wild waste music rang

  Notes that were lost not when they rang for thee.

  The mountains clothed with light and night and change,

  The lakes alive with wind and cloud and sun,

  Made answer, by constraint sublime and strange,

  To the ardent hand that bade thy will be done.

  We may not bid the mountains mourn, the sea

  That lived and lightened from thine hand again

  Moan, as of old would men that mourned as we

  A man beloved, a man elect of men,

  A man that loved them. Vain, divine and vain,

  The dream that touched with thoughts or tears of ours

  The spirit of sense that lives in sun and rain,

  Sings out in birds, and breathes and fades in flowers.

  Not for our joy they live, and for our grief

  They die not. Though thine eye be closed, thine hand

  Powerless as mine to paint them, not a leaf

  In English woods or glades of Switzerland

  Falls earlier now, fades faster. All our love

  Moves not our mother’s changeless heart, who gives

  A little light to eyes and stars above,

  A little life to each man’s heart that lives.

  A little life to heaven and earth and sea,

  To stars and souls revealed of night and day,

  And change, the one thing changeless: yet shall she

  Cease too, perchance, and perish. Who shall say?

  Our mother Nature, dark and sweet as sleep,

  And strange as life and strong as death, holds fast,

  Even as she holds our hearts alive, the deep

  Dumb secret of her first-born births and last.

  But this, we know, shall cease not till the strife

  Of nights and days and fears and hopes find end;

  This, through the brief eternities of life,

  Endures, and calls from death a living friend;

  The love made strong with knowledge, whence confirmed

  The whole soul takes assurance, and the past

  (So by time’s measure, not by memory’s, termed)

  Lives present life, and mingles first with last.

  I, now long since thy guest of many days,

  Who found thy hearth a brother’s, and with thee

  Tracked in and out the lines of rolling bays

  And banks and gulfs and reaches of the sea —

  Deep dens wherein the wrestling water sobs

  And pants with restless pain of refluent breath

  Till all the sunless hollow sounds and throbs

  With ebb and flow of eddies dark as death —

  I know not what more glorious world, what waves

  More bright with life, — if brighter aught may live

  Than those that filled and fled their tidal caves —

  May now give back the love thou hast to give.

  Tintagel, and the long Trebarwith sand,

  Lone Camelford, and Boscastle divine

  With dower of southern blossom, bright and bland

  Above the roar of granite-baffled brine,

  Shall hear no more by joyous night or day

  From downs or causeways good to rove and ride

  Or feet of ours or horse-hoofs urge their way

  That sped us here and there by tower and tide.

  The headlands and the hollows and the waves,

  For all our love, forget us: where I am

  Thou art not: deeper sleeps the shadow on graves

  Than in the sunless gulf that once we swam.

  Thou hast swum too soon the sea of death: for us

  Too soon, but if truth bless love’s blind belief

  Faith, born of hope and memory, says not thus:

  And joy for thee for me should mean not grief.

  And joy for thee, if ever soul of man

  Found joy in change and life of ampler birth

  Than here pens in the spirit for a span,

  Must be the life that doubt calls death on earth.

  For if, beyond the shadow and the sleep,

  A place there be for souls without a stain,

  Where peace is perfect, and delight more deep

  Than seas or skies that change and shine again,

  There none of all unsullied souls that live

  May hold a surer station: none may lend

  More light to hope’s or memory’s lamp, nor give

  More joy than thine to those that called thee friend.

  Yea, joy from sorrow’s barren womb is born

  When faith begets on grief the godlike child:

  As midnight yearns with starry sense of morn

  In Arctic summers, though the sea wax wild,

  So love, whose name is memory, thrills at heart,

  Remembering and rejoicing in thee, now

  Alive where love may dream not what thou art

  But knows that higher than hope or love art thou.

  “Whatever heaven, if heaven at all may be,

  Await the sacred souls of good men dead,

  There, now we mourn who loved him here, is he,”

  So, sweet and stern of speech, the Roman said,

  Erect in grief, in trust erect, and gave

  His deathless dead a deathless life even here

  Where day bears down on day as wave on wave

  And not man’s smile fades faster than his tear.

  Albeit this gift be given not me to give,

  Nor power be mine to break time’s silent spell,

  Not less shall love that dies not while I live

  Bid thee, be
loved in life and death, farewell.

  NEW YEAR’S DAY

  New Year, be good to England. Bid her name

  Shine sunlike as of old on all the sea:

  Make strong her soul: set all her spirit free:

  Bind fast her homeborn foes with links of shame

  More strong than iron and more keen than flame:

  Seal up their lips for shame’s sake: so shall she

  Who was the light that lightened freedom be,

  For all false tongues, in all men’s eyes the same.

  O last-born child of Time, earth’s eldest lord,

  God undiscrowned of godhead, who for man

  Begets all good and evil things that live,

  Do thou, his new-begotten son, implored

  Of hearts that hope and fear not, make thy span

  Bright with such light as history bids thee give.

  Jan. 1, 1889.

  TO SIR RICHARD F. BURTON

  (ON HIS TRANSLATION OF “THE ARABIAN NIGHTS”)

  Westward the sun sinks, grave and glad; but far

  Eastward, with laughter and tempestuous tears,

  Cloud, rain, and splendour as of orient spears,

  Keen as the sea’s thrill toward a kindling star,

  The sundawn breaks the barren twilight’s bar

  And fires the mist and slays it. Years on years

  Vanish, but he that hearkens eastward hears

  Bright music from the world where shadows are.