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

by Algernon Charles Swinburne

  And breast by passionate breast

  Heaved hot with ravenous rapture, as they quaffed

  The red ripe full fume of the deep live draught,

  The sharp quick reek of keen fresh bloodshed, blown

  Through the dense deep drift up to the emperor’s throne

  From the under steaming sands

  With clamour of all-applausive throats and hands,

  Mingling in mirthful time

  With shrill blithe mockeries of the lithe-limbed mime:

  So from somewhence far forth of the unbeholden,

  Dreadfully driven from over and after and under,

  Fierce, blown through fifes of brazen blast and golden,

  With sound of chiming waves that drown the thunder

  Or thunder that strikes dumb the sea’s own chimes,

  Began the bellowing of the bull-voiced mimes,

  Terrible; firs bowed down as briars or palms

  Even at the breathless blast as of a breeze

  Fulfilled with clamour and clangour and storms of psalms;

  Red hands rent up the roots of old-world trees,

  Thick flames of torches tossed as tumbling seas

  Made mad the moonless and infuriate air

  That, ravening, revelled in the riotous hair

  And raiment of the furred Bassarides.

  So came all those in on him; and his heart,

  As out of sleep suddenly struck astart,

  Danced, and his flesh took fire of theirs, and grief

  Was as a last year’s leaf

  Blown dead far down the wind’s way; and he set

  His pale mouth to the brightest mouth it met

  That laughed for love against his lips, and bade

  Follow; and in following all his blood grew glad

  And as again a sea-bird’s; for the wind

  Took him to bathe him deep round breast and brow

  Not as it takes a dead leaf drained and thinned,

  But as the brightest bay-flower blown on bough,

  Set springing toward it singing: and they rode

  By many a vine-leafed, many a rose-hung road,

  Exalt with exultation; many a night

  Set all its stars upon them as for spies

  On many a moon-bewildering mountain-height

  Where he rode only by the fierier light

  Of his dread lady’s hot sweet hungering eyes.

  For the moon wandered witless of her way,

  Spell-stricken by strong magic in such wise

  As wizards use to set the stars astray.

  And in his ears the music that makes mad

  Beat always; and what way the music bade,

  That alway rode he; nor was any sleep

  His, nor from height nor deep.

  But heaven was as red iron, slumberless,

  And had no heart to bless;

  And earth lay sere and darkling as distraught,

  And help in her was nought.

  Then many a midnight, many a morn and even,

  His mother, passing forth of her fair heaven,

  With goodlier gifts than all save gods can give

  From earth or from the heaven where sea-things live,

  With shine of sea-flowers through the bay-leaf braid

  Woven for a crown her foam-white hands had made

  To crown him with land’s laurel and sea-dew,

  Sought the sea-bird that was her boy: but he

  Sat panther-throned beside Erigone,

  Riding the red ways of the revel through

  Midmost of pale-mouthed passion’s crownless crew.

  Till on some winter’s dawn of some dim year

  He let the vine-bit on the panther’s lip

  Slide, and the green rein slip,

  And set his eyes to seaward, nor gave ear

  If sound from landward hailed him, dire or dear;

  And passing forth of all those fair fierce ranks

  Back to the grey sea-banks,

  Against a sea-rock lying, aslant the steep,

  Fell after many sleepless dreams on sleep.

  And in his sleep the dun green light was shed

  Heavily round his head

  That through the veil of sea falls fathom-deep,

  Blurred like a lamp’s that when the night drops dead

  Dies; and his eyes gat grace of sleep to see

  The deep divine dark dayshine of the sea,

  Dense water-walls and clear dusk water-ways,

  Broad-based, or branching as a sea-flower sprays

  That side or this dividing; and anew

  The glory of all her glories that he knew.

  And in sharp rapture of recovering tears

  He woke on fire with yearnings of old years,

  Pure as one purged of pain that passion bore,

  Ill child of bitter mother; for his own

  Looked laughing toward him from her midsea throne,

  Up toward him there ashore.

  Thence in his heart the great same joy began,

  Of child that made him man:

  And turned again from all hearts else on quest,

  He communed with his own heart, and had rest.

  And like sea-winds upon loud waters ran

  His days and dreams together, till the joy

  Burned in him of the boy.

  Till the earth’s great comfort and the sweet sea’s breath

  Breathed and blew life in where was heartless death,

  Death spirit-stricken of soul-sick days, where strife

  Of thought and flesh made mock of death and life.

  And grace returned upon him of his birth

  Where heaven was mixed with heavenlike sea and earth;

  And song shot forth strong wings that took the sun

  From inward, fledged with might of sorrow and mirth

  And father’s fire made mortal in his son.

  Nor was not spirit of strength in blast and breeze

  To exalt again the sun’s child and the sea’s;

  For as wild mares in Thessaly grow great

  With child of ravishing winds, that violate

  Their leaping length of limb with manes like fire

  And eyes outburning heaven’s

  With fires more violent than the lightning levin’s

  And breath drained out and desperate of desire,

  Even so the spirit in him, when winds grew strong,

  Grew great with child of song.

  Nor less than when his veins first leapt for joy

  To draw delight in such as burns a boy,

  Now too the soul of all his senses felt

  The passionate pride of deep sea-pulses dealt

  Through nerve and jubilant vein

  As from the love and largess of old time,

  And with his heart again

  The tidal throb of all the tides keep rhyme

  And charm him from his own soul’s separate sense

  With infinite and invasive influence

  That made strength sweet in him and sweetness strong,

  Being now no more a singer, but a song.

  Till one clear day when brighter sea-wind blew

  And louder sea-shine lightened, for the waves

  Were full of godhead and the light that saves,

  His father’s, and their spirit had pierced him through,

  He felt strange breath and light all round him shed

  That bowed him down with rapture; and he knew

  His father’s hand, hallowing his humbled head,

  And the old great voice of the old good time, that said:

  “Child of my sunlight and the sea, from birth

  A fosterling and fugitive on earth;

  Sleepless of soul as wind or wave or fire,

  A manchild with an ungrown God’s desire;

  Because thou hast loved nought mortal more than me,

  Thy father, and thy mother-hearted sea;

  Because thou hast set thine heart to s
ing, and sold

  Life and life’s love for song, God’s living gold;

  Because thou hast given thy flower and fire of youth

  To feed men’s hearts with visions, truer than truth;

  Because thou hast kept in those world-wandering eyes

  The light that makes me music of the skies;

  Because thou hast heard with world-unwearied ears

  The music that puts light into the spheres;

  Have therefore in thine heart and in thy mouth

  The sound of song that mingles north and south,

  The song of all the winds that sing of me,

  And in thy soul the sense of all the sea.”

  ON THE CLIFFS

  SAPPHO.

  Between the moondawn and the sundown here

  The twilight hangs half starless; half the sea

  Still quivers as for love or pain or fear

  Or pleasure mightier than these all may be

  A man’s live heart might beat

  Wherein a God’s with mortal blood should meet

  And fill its pulse too full to bear the strain

  With fear or love or pleasure’s twin-born, pain.

  Fiercely the gaunt woods to the grim soil cling

  That bears for all fair fruits

  Wan wild sparse flowers of windy and wintry spring

  Between the tortive serpent-shapen roots

  Wherethrough their dim growth hardly strikes and shoots

  And shews one gracious thing

  Hardly, to speak for summer one sweet word

  Of summer’s self scarce heard.

  But higher the steep green sterile fields, thick-set

  With flowerless hawthorn even to the upward verge

  Whence the woods gathering watch new cliffs emerge

  Higher than their highest of crowns that sea-winds fret,

  Hold fast, for all that night or wind can say,

  Some pale pure colour yet,

  Too dim for green and luminous for grey.

  Between the climbing inland cliffs above

  And these beneath that breast and break the bay,

  A barren peace too soft for hate or love

  Broods on an hour too dim for night or day.

  O wind, O wingless wind that walk’st the sea,

  Weak wind, wing-broken, wearier wind than we,

  Who are yet not spirit-broken, maimed like thee,

  Who wail not in our inward night as thou

  In the outer darkness now,

  What word has the old sea given thee for mine ear

  From thy faint lips to hear?

  For some word would she send me, knowing not how.

  Nay, what far other word

  Than ever of her was spoken, or of me

  Or all my winged white kinsfolk of the sea

  Between fresh wave and wave was ever heard,

  Cleaves the clear dark enwinding tree with tree

  Too close for stars to separate and to see

  Enmeshed in multitudinous unity?

  What voice of what strong God hath stormed and stirred

  The fortressed rock of silence, rent apart

  Even to the core Night’s all-maternal heart?

  What voice of God grown heavenlier in a bird,

  Made keener of edge to smite

  Than lightning — yea, thou knowest, O mother Night,

  Keen as that cry from thy strange children sent

  Wherewith the Athenian judgment-shrine was rent,

  For wrath that all their wrath was vainly spent,

  Their wrath for wrong made right

  By justice in her own divine despite

  That bade pass forth unblamed

  The sinless matricide and unashamed?

  Yea, what new cry is this, what note more bright

  Than their song’s wing of words was dark of flight,

  What word is this thou hast heard,

  Thine and not thine or theirs, O Night, what word

  More keen than lightning and more sweet than light?

  As all men’s hearts grew godlike in one bird

  And all those hearts cried on thee, crying with might,

  Hear us, O mother Night.

  Dumb is the mouth of darkness as of death:

  Light, sound and life are one

  In the eyes and lips of dawn that draw the sun

  To hear what first child’s word with glimmering breath

  Their weak wan weanling child the twilight saith;

  But night makes answer none.

  God, if thou be God, — bird, if bird thou be, —

  Do thou then answer me.

  For but one word, what wind soever blow,

  Is blown up usward ever from the sea.

  In fruitless years of youth dead long ago

  And deep beneath their own dead leaves and snow

  Buried, I heard with bitter heart and sere

  The same sea’s word unchangeable, nor knew

  But that mine own life-days were changeless too

  And sharp and salt with unshed tear on tear

  And cold and fierce and barren; and my soul,

  Sickening, swam weakly with bated breath

  In a deep sea like death,

  And felt the wind buffet her face with brine

  Hard, and harsh thought on thought in long bleak roll

  Blown by keen gusts of memory sad as thine

  Heap the weight up of pain, and break, and leave

  Strength scarce enough to grieve

  In the sick heavy spirit, unmanned with strife

  Of waves that beat at the tired lips of life.

  Nay, sad may be man’s memory, sad may be

  The dream he weaves him as for shadow of thee,

  But scarce one breathing-space, one heartbeat long,

  Wilt thou take shadow of sadness on thy song.

  Not thou, being more than man or man’s desire,

  Being bird and God in one,

  With throat of gold and spirit of the sun;

  The sun whom all our souls and songs call sire,

  Whose godhead gave thee, chosen of all our quire,

  Thee only of all that serve, of all that sing

  Before our sire and king,

  Borne up some space on time’s world-wandering wing,

  This gift, this doom, to bear till time’s wing tire —

  Life everlasting of eternal fire.

  Thee only of all; yet can no memory say

  How many a night and day

  My heart has been as thy heart, and my life

  As thy life is, a sleepless hidden thing,

  Full of the thirst and hunger of winter and spring,

  That seeks its food not in such love or strife

  As fill men’s hearts with passionate hours and rest.

  From no loved lips and on no loving breast

  Have I sought ever for such gifts as bring

  Comfort, to stay the secret soul with sleep.

  The joys, the loves, the labours, whence men reap

  Rathe fruit of hopes and fears,

  I have made not mine; the best of all my days

  Have been as those fair fruitless summer strays,

  Those water-waifs that but the sea-wind steers,

  Flakes of glad foam or flowers on footless ways

  That take the wind in season and the sun,

  And when the wind wills is their season done.

  For all my days as all thy days from birth

  My heart as thy heart was in me as thee,

  Fire; and not all the fountains of the sea

  Have waves enough to quench it, nor on earth

  Is fuel enough to feed,

  While day sows night and night sows day for seed.

  We were not marked for sorrow, thou nor I,

  For joy nor sorrow, sister, were we made,

  To take delight and grief to live and die,

  Assuaged by pleasures or by pains affrayed

  Tha
t melt men’s hearts and alter; we retain

  A memory mastering pleasure and all pain,

  A spirit within the sense of ear and eye,

  A soul behind the soul, that seeks and sings

  And makes our life move only with its wings

  And feed but from its lips, that in return

  Feed of our hearts wherein the old fires that burn

  Have strength not to consume

  Nor glory enough to exalt us past our doom.

  Ah, ah, the doom (thou knowest whence rang that wail)

  Of the shrill nightingale!

  (From whose wild lips, thou knowest, that wail was thrown)

  For round about her have the great gods cast

  A wing-borne body, and clothed her close and fast

  With a sweet life that hath no part in moan.

  But me, for me (how hadst thou heart to hear?)

  Remains a sundering with the two-edged spear.

  Ah, for her doom! so cried in presage then

  The bodeful bondslave of the king of men,

  And might not win her will.

  Too close the entangling dragnet woven of crime,

  The snare of ill new-born of elder ill,

  The curse of new time for an elder time,

  Had caught, and held her yet,

  Enmeshed intolerably in the intolerant net,

  Who thought with craft to mock the God most high,

  And win by wiles his crown of prophecy

  From the Sun’s hand sublime,

  As God were man, to spare or to forget.

  But thou, — the gods have given thee and forgiven thee

  More than our master gave

  That strange-eyed spirit-wounded strange-tongued slave

  There questing houndlike where the roofs red-wet

  Reeked as a wet red grave.

  Life everlasting has their strange grace given thee,

  Even hers whom thou wast wont to sing and serve

  With eyes, but not with song, too swift to swerve;

  Yet might not even thine eyes estranged estrange her,

  Who seeing thee too, but inly, burn and bleed

  Like that pale princess-priest of Priam’s seed,

  For stranger service gave thee guerdon stranger;

  If this indeed be guerdon, this indeed

  Her mercy, this thy meed —

  That thou, being more than all we born, being higher

  Than all heads crowned of him that only gives

  The light whereby man lives,

  The bay that bids man moved of God’s desire

  Lay hand on lute or lyre,