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

by Algernon Charles Swinburne

Though the last shoreward blossom-fringe was near,

  A babe asleep with flower-soft face that gleamed

  To sun and seaward as it laughed and dreamed,

  Too sure of either love for either’s fear,

  Albeit so birdlike slight and light, it seemed

  Nor man nor mortal child of man, but fair

  As even its twin-born tenderer spray-flowers were,

  That the wind scatters like an Oread’s hair.

  For when July strewed fire on earth and sea

  The last time ere that year,

  Out of the flame of morn Cymothoe

  Beheld one brighter than the sunbright sphere

  Move toward her from its fieriest heart, whence trod

  The live sun’s very God,

  Across the foam-bright water-ways that are

  As heavenlier heavens with star for answering star,

  And on her eyes and hair and maiden mouth

  Felt a kiss falling fierier than the South

  And heard above afar

  A noise of songs and wind-enamoured wings

  And lutes and lyres of milder and mightier strings,

  And round the resonant radiance of his car

  Where depth is one with height,

  Light heard as music, music seen as light.

  And with that second moondawn of the spring’s

  That fosters the first rose,

  A sun-child whiter than the sunlit snows

  Was born out of the world of sunless things

  That round the round earth flows and ebbs and flows.

  But he that found the sea-flower by the sea

  And took to foster like a graft of earth

  Was born of man’s most highest and heavenliest birth,

  Free-born as winds and stars and waves are free;

  A warrior grey with glories more than years,

  Though more of years than change the quick to dead

  Had rained their light and darkness on his head;

  A singer that in time’s and memory’s ears

  Should leave such words to sing as all his peers

  Might praise with hallowing heat of rapturous tears

  Till all the days of human flight were fled.

  And at his knees his fosterling was fed

  Not with man’s wine and bread

  Nor mortal mother-milk of hopes and fears,

  But food of deep memorial days long sped;

  For bread with wisdom and with song for wine

  Clear as the full calm’s emerald hyaline.

  And from his grave glad lips the boy would gather

  Fine honey of song-notes goldener than gold,

  More sweet than bees make of the breathing heather,

  That he, as glad and bold,

  Might drink as they, and keep his spirit from cold.

  And the boy loved his laurel-laden hair

  As his own father’s risen on the eastern air,

  And that less white brow-binding bayleaf bloom

  More than all flowers his father’s eyes relume;

  And those high songs he heard,

  More than all notes of any landward bird,

  More than all sounds less free

  Than the wind’s quiring to the choral sea.

  High things the high song taught him; how the breath

  Too frail for life may be more strong than death;

  And this poor flash of sense in life, that gleams

  As a ghost’s glory in dreams,

  More stabile than the world’s own heart’s root seems,

  By that strong faith of lordliest love which gives

  To death’s own sightless-seeming eyes a light

  Clearer, to death’s bare bones a verier might,

  Than shines or strikes from any man that lives.

  How he that loves life overmuch shall die

  The dog’s death, utterly:

  And he that much less loves it than he hates

  All wrongdoing that is done

  Anywhere always underneath the sun

  Shall live a mightier life than time’s or fate’s.

  One fairer thing he shewed him, and in might

  More strong than day and night

  Whose strengths build up time’s towering period:

  Yea, one thing stronger and more high than God,

  Which if man had not, then should God not be:

  And that was Liberty.

  And gladly should man die to gain, he said,

  Freedom; and gladlier, having lost, lie dead.

  For man’s earth was not, nor the sweet sea-waves

  His, nor his own land, nor its very graves,

  Except they bred not, bore not, hid not slaves:

  But all of all that is,

  Were one man free in body and soul, were his.

  And the song softened, even as heaven by night

  Softens, from sunnier down to starrier light,

  And with its moonbright breath

  Blessed life for death’s sake, and for life’s sake death.

  Till as the moon’s own beam and breath confuse

  In one clear hueless haze of glimmering hues

  The sea’s line and the land’s line and the sky’s,

  And light for love of darkness almost dies,

  As darkness only lives for light’s dear love,

  Whose hands the web of night is woven of,

  So in that heaven of wondrous words were life

  And death brought out of strife;

  Yea, by that strong spell of serene increase

  Brought out of strife to peace.

  And the song lightened, as the wind at morn

  Flashes, and even with lightning of the wind

  Night’s thick-spun web is thinned

  And all its weft unwoven and overworn

  Shrinks, as might love from scorn.

  And as when wind and light on water and land

  Leap as twin gods from heavenward hand in hand,

  And with the sound and splendour of their leap

  Strike darkness dead, and daunt the spirit of sleep,

  And burn it up with fire;

  So with the light that lightened from the lyre

  Was all the bright heat in the child’s heart stirred

  And blown with blasts of music into flame

  Till even his sense became

  Fire, as the sense that fires the singing bird

  Whose song calls night by name.

  And in the soul within the sense began

  The manlike passion of a godlike man,

  And in the sense within the soul again

  Thoughts that make men of gods and gods of men.

  For love the high song taught him: love that turns

  God’s heart toward man as man’s to Godward; love

  That life and death and life are fashioned of,

  From the first breath that burns

  Half kindled on the flowerlike yeanling’s lip,

  So light and faint that life seems like to slip,

  To that yet weaklier drawn

  When sunset dies of night’s devouring dawn.

  But the man dying not wholly as all men dies

  If aught be left of his in live men’s eyes

  Out of the dawnless dark of death to rise;

  If aught of deed or word

  Be seen for all time or of all time heard.

  Love, that though body and soul were overthrown

  Should live for love’s sake of itself alone,

  Though spirit and flesh were one thing doomed and dead,

  Not wholly annihilated.

  Seeing even the hoariest ash-flake that the pyre

  Drops, and forgets the thing was once afire

  And gave its heart to feed the pile’s full flame

  Till its own heart its own heat overcame,

  Outlives its own life, though by scarce a span,

  As such men dying outlive themselves in man,

  Outlive
themselves for ever; if the heat

  Outburn the heart that kindled it, the sweet

  Outlast the flower whose soul it was, and flit

  Forth of the body of it

  Into some new shape of a strange perfume

  More potent than its light live spirit of bloom,

  How shall not something of that soul relive,

  That only soul that had such gifts to give

  As lighten something even of all men’s doom

  Even from the labouring womb

  Even to the seal set on the unopening tomb?

  And these the loving light of song and love

  Shall wrap and lap round and impend above,

  Imperishable; and all springs born illume

  Their sleep with brighter thoughts than wake the dove

  To music, when the hillside winds resume

  The marriage-song of heather-flower and broom

  And all the joy thereof.

  And hate the song too taught him: hate of all

  That brings or holds in thrall

  Of spirit or flesh, free-born ere God began,

  The holy body and sacred soul of man.

  And wheresoever a curse was or a chain,

  A throne for torment or a crown for bane

  Rose, moulded out of poor men’s molten pain,

  There, said he, should man’s heaviest hate be set

  Inexorably, to faint not or forget

  Till the last warmth bled forth of the last vein

  In flesh that none should call a king’s again,

  Seeing wolves and dogs and birds that plague-strike air

  Leave the last bone of all the carrion bare.

  And hope the high song taught him: hope whose eyes

  Can sound the seas unsoundable, the skies

  Inaccessible of eyesight; that can see

  What earth beholds not, hear what wind and sea

  Hear not, and speak what all these crying in one

  Can speak not to the sun.

  For in her sovereign eyelight all things are

  Clear as the closest seen and kindlier star

  That marries morn and even and winter and spring

  With one love’s golden ring.

  For she can see the days of man, the birth

  Of good and death of evil things on earth

  Inevitable and infinite, and sure

  As present pain is, or herself is pure.

  Yea, she can hear and see, beyond all things

  That lighten from before Time’s thunderous wings

  Through the awful circle of wheel-winged periods,

  The tempest of the twilight of all Gods:

  And higher than all the circling course they ran

  The sundawn of the spirit that was man.

  And fear the song too taught him; fear to be

  Worthless the dear love of the wind and sea

  That bred him fearless, like a sea-mew reared

  In rocks of man’s foot feared,

  Where nought of wingless life may sing or shine.

  Fear to wax worthless of that heaven he had

  When all the life in all his limbs was glad

  And all the drops in all his veins were wine

  And all the pulses music; when his heart,

  Singing, bade heaven and wind and sea bear part

  In one live song’s reiterance, and they bore:

  Fear to go crownless of the flower he wore

  When the winds loved him and the waters knew,

  The blithest life that clove their blithe life through

  With living limbs exultant, or held strife

  More amorous than all dalliance aye anew

  With the bright breath and strength of their large life,

  With all strong wrath of all sheer winds that blew,

  All glories of all storms of the air that fell

  Prone, ineluctable,

  With roar from heaven of revel, and with hue

  As of a heaven turned hell.

  For when the red blast of their breath had made

  All heaven aflush with light more dire than shade,

  He felt it in his blood and eyes and hair

  Burn as if all the fires of the earth and air

  Had laid strong hold upon his flesh, and stung

  The soul behind it as with serpent’s tongue,

  Forked like the loveliest lightnings: nor could bear

  But hardly, half distraught with strong delight,

  The joy that like a garment wrapped him round

  And lapped him over and under

  With raiment of great light

  And rapture of great sound

  At every loud leap earthward of the thunder

  From heaven’s most furthest bound:

  So seemed all heaven in hearing and in sight,

  Alive and mad with glory and angry joy,

  That something of its marvellous mirth and might

  Moved even to madness, fledged as even for flight,

  The blood and spirit of one but mortal boy.

  So, clothed with love and fear that love makes great,

  And armed with hope and hate,

  He set first foot upon the spring-flowered ways

  That all feet pass and praise.

  And one dim dawn between the winter and spring,

  In the sharp harsh wind harrying heaven and earth

  To put back April that had borne his birth

  From sunward on her sunniest shower-struck wing,

  With tears and laughter for the dew-dropt thing,

  Slight as indeed a dew-drop, by the sea

  One met him lovelier than all men may be,

  God-featured, with god’s eyes; and in their might

  Somewhat that drew men’s own to mar their sight,

  Even of all eyes drawn toward him: and his mouth

  Was as the very rose of all men’s youth,

  One rose of all the rose-beds in the world:

  But round his brows the curls were snakes that curled,

  And like his tongue a serpent’s; and his voice

  Speaks death, and bids rejoice.

  Yet then he spake no word, seeming as dumb,

  A dumb thing mild and hurtless; nor at first

  From his bowed eyes seemed any light to come,

  Nor his meek lips for blood or tears to thirst:

  But as one blind and mute in mild sweet wise

  Pleading for pity of piteous lips and eyes,

  He strayed with faint bare lily-lovely feet

  Helpless, and flowerlike sweet:

  Nor might man see, not having word hereof,

  That this of all gods was the great god Love.

  And seeing him lovely and like a little child

  That wellnigh wept for wonder that it smiled

  And was so feeble and fearful, with soft speech

  The youth bespake him softly; but there fell

  From the sweet lips no sweet word audible

  That ear or thought might reach:

  No sound to make the dim cold silence glad,

  No breath to thaw the hard harsh air with heat;

  Only the saddest smile of all things sweet,

  Only the sweetest smile of all things sad.

  And so they went together one green way

  Till April dying made free the world for May;

  And on his guide suddenly Love’s face turned,

  And in his blind eyes burned

  Hard light and heat of laughter; and like flame

  That opens in a mountain’s ravening mouth

  To blear and sear the sunlight from the south,

  His mute mouth opened, and his first word came:

  ‘Knowest thou me now by name?’

  And all his stature waxed immeasurable,

  As of one shadowing heaven and lightening hell;

  And statelier stood he than a tower that stands

  And darkens with its darkness far-off sands

  Wh
ereon the sky leans red;

  And with a voice that stilled the winds he said:

  ‘I am he that was thy lord before thy birth,

  I am he that is thy lord till thou turn earth:

  I make the night more dark, and all the morrow

  Dark as the night whose darkness was my breath:

  O fool, my name is sorrow;

  Thou fool, my name is death.’

  And he that heard spake not, and looked right on

  Again, and Love was gone.

  Through many a night toward many a wearier day

  His spirit bore his body down its way.

  Through many a day toward many a wearier night

  His soul sustained his sorrows in her sight.

  And earth was bitter, and heaven, and even the sea

  Sorrowful even as he.

  And the wind helped not, and the sun was dumb;

  And with too long strong stress of grief to be

  His heart grew sere and numb.

  And one bright eve ere summer in autumn sank

  At stardawn standing on a grey sea-bank

  He felt the wind fitfully shift and heave

  As toward a stormier eve;

  And all the wan wide sea shuddered; and earth

  Shook underfoot as toward some timeless birth,

  Intolerable and inevitable; and all

  Heaven, darkling, trembled like a stricken thrall.

  And far out of the quivering east, and far

  From past the moonrise and its guiding star,

  Began a noise of tempest and a light

  That was not of the lightning; and a sound

  Rang with it round and round

  That was not of the thunder; and a flight

  As of blown clouds by night,

  That was not of them; and with songs and cries

  That sang and shrieked their soul out at the skies

  A shapeless earthly storm of shapes began

  From all ways round to move in on the man,

  Clamorous against him silent; and their feet

  Were as the wind’s are fleet,

  And their shrill songs were as wild birds’ are sweet.

  And as when all the world of earth was wronged

  And all the host of all men driven afoam

  By the red hand of Rome,

  Round some fierce amphitheatre overthronged

  With fair clear faces full of bloodier lust

  Than swells and stings the tiger when his mood

  Is fieriest after blood

  And drunk with trampling of the murderous must

  That soaks and stains the tortuous close-coiled wood

  Made monstrous with its myriad-mustering brood,

  Face by fair face panted and gleamed and pressed,