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

by Algernon Charles Swinburne

  Set lip to trumpet or deflowered green reed —

  If this were given thee for a grace indeed,

  That thou, being first of all these, thou alone

  Shouldst have the grace to die not, but to live

  And lose nor change one pulse of song, one tone

  Of all that were thy lady’s and thine own,

  Thy lady’s whom thou criedst on to forgive,

  Thou, priest and sacrifice on the altar-stone

  Where none may worship not of all that live,

  Love’s priestess, errant on dark ways diverse;

  If this were grace indeed for Love to give,

  If this indeed were blessing and no curse.

  Love’s priestess, mad with pain and joy of song,

  Song’s priestess, mad with joy and pain of love,

  Name above all names that are lights above,

  We have loved, praised, pitied, crowned and done thee wrong,

  O thou past praise and pity; thou the sole

  Utterly deathless, perfect only and whole

  Immortal, body and soul.

  For over all whom time hath overpast

  The shadow of sleep inexorable is cast,

  The implacable sweet shadow of perfect sleep

  That gives not back what life gives death to keep;

  Yea, all that lived and loved and sang and sinned

  Are all borne down death’s cold sweet soundless wind

  That blows all night and knows not whom its breath,

  Darkling, may touch to death:

  But one that wind hath touched and changed not, — one

  Whose body and soul are parcel of the sun;

  One that earth’s fire could burn not, nor the sea

  Quench; nor might human doom take hold on thee;

  All praise, all pity, all dreams have done thee wrong,

  All love, with eyes love-blinded from above;

  Song’s priestess, mad with joy and pain of love,

  Love’s priestess, mad with pain and joy of song.

  Hast thou none other answer then for me

  Than the air may have of thee,

  Or the earth’s warm woodlands girdling with green girth

  Thy secret sleepless burning life on earth,

  Or even the sea that once, being woman crowned

  And girt with fire and glory of anguish round,

  Thou wert so fain to seek to, fain to crave

  If she would hear thee and save

  And give thee comfort of thy great green grave?

  Because I have known thee always who thou art,

  Thou knowest, have known thee to thy heart’s own heart,

  Nor ever have given light ear to storied song

  That did thy sweet name sweet unwitting wrong,

  Nor ever have called thee nor would call for shame,

  Thou knowest, but inly by thine only name,

  Sappho — because I have known thee and loved, hast thou

  None other answer now?

  As brother and sister were we, child and bird,

  Since thy first Lesbian word

  Flamed on me, and I knew not whence I knew

  This was the song that struck my whole soul through,

  Pierced my keen spirit of sense with edge more keen,

  Even when I knew not, — even ere sooth was seen, —

  When thou wast but the tawny sweet winged thing

  Whose cry was but of spring.

  And yet even so thine ear should hear me — yea,

  Hear me this nightfall by this northland bay,

  Even for their sake whose loud good word I had,

  Singing of thee in the all-beloved clime

  Once, where the windy wine of spring makes mad

  Our sisters of Majano, who kept time

  Clear to my choral rhyme.

  Yet was the song acclaimed of these aloud

  Whose praise had made mute humbleness misproud,

  The song with answering song applauded thus,

  But of that Daulian dream of Itylus.

  So but for love’s love haply was it — nay,

  How else? — that even their song took my song’s part,

  For love of love and sweetness of sweet heart,

  Or god-given glorious madness of mid May

  And heat of heart and hunger and thirst to sing,

  Full of the new wine of the wind of spring.

  Or if this were not, and it be not sin

  To hold myself in spirit of thy sweet kin,

  In heart and spirit of song;

  If this my great love do thy grace no wrong,

  Thy grace that gave me grace to dwell therein;

  If thy gods thus be my gods, and their will

  Made my song part of thy song — even such part

  As man’s hath of God’s heart —

  And my life like as thy life to fulfil;

  What have our gods then given us? Ah, to thee,

  Sister, much more, much happier than to me,

  Much happier things they have given, and more of grace

  Than falls to man’s light race;

  For lighter are we, all our love and pain

  Lighter than thine, who knowest of time or place

  Thus much, that place nor time

  Can heal or hurt or lull or change again

  The singing soul that makes his soul sublime

  Who hears the far fall of its fire-fledged rhyme

  Fill darkness as with bright and burning rain

  Till all the live gloom inly glows, and light

  Seems with the sound to cleave the core of night.

  The singing soul that moves thee, and that moved

  When thou wast woman, and their songs divine

  Who mixed for Grecian mouths heaven’s lyric wine

  Fell dumb, fell down reproved

  Before one sovereign Lesbian song of thine.

  That soul, though love and life had fain held fast,

  Wind-winged with fiery music, rose and past

  Through the indrawn hollow of earth and heaven and hell,

  As through some strait sea-shell

  The wide sea’s immemorial song, — the sea

  That sings and breathes in strange men’s ears of thee

  How in her barren bride-bed, void and vast,

  Even thy soul sang itself to sleep at last.

  To sleep? Ah, then, what song is this, that here

  Makes all the night one ear,

  One ear fulfilled and mad with music, one

  Heart kindling as the heart of heaven, to hear

  A song more fiery than the awakening sun

  Sings, when his song sets fire

  To the air and clouds that build the dead night’s pyre?

  O thou of divers-coloured mind, O thou

  Deathless, God’s daughter subtle-souled — lo, now,

  Now too the song above all songs, in flight

  Higher than the day-star’s height,

  And sweet as sound the moving wings of night!

  Thou of the divers-coloured seat — behold,

  Her very song of old! —

  O deathless, O God’s daughter subtle-souled!

  That same cry through this boskage overhead

  Rings round reiterated,

  Palpitates as the last palpitated,

  The last that panted through her lips and died

  Not down this grey north sea’s half sapped cliff-side

  That crumbles toward the coastline, year by year

  More near the sands and near;

  The last loud lyric fiery cry she cried,

  Heard once on heights Leucadian, — heard not here.

  Not here; for this that fires our northland night,

  This is the song that made

  Love fearful, even the heart of love afraid,

  With the great anguish of its great delight.

  No swan-song, no far-fluttering half-drawn breath,

  No word that
love of love’s sweet nature saith,

  No dirge that lulls the narrowing lids of death,

  No healing hymn of peace-prevented strife, —

  This is her song of life.

  I loved thee, — hark, one tenderer note than all —

  Atthis, of old time, once — one low long fall,

  Sighing — one long low lovely loveless call,

  Dying — one pause in song so flamelike fast —

  Atthis, long since in old time overpast —

  One soft first pause and last.

  One, — then the old rage of rapture’s fieriest rain

  Storms all the music-maddened night again.

  Child of God, close craftswoman, I beseech thee,

  Bid not ache nor agony break nor master,

  Lady, my spirit —

  O thou her mistress, might her cry not reach thee?

  Our Lady of all men’s loves, could Love go past her,

  Pass, and not hear it?

  She hears not as she heard not; hears not me,

  O treble-natured mystery, — how should she

  Hear, or give ear? — who heard and heard not thee;

  Heard, and went past, and heard not; but all time

  Hears all that all the ravin of his years

  Hath cast not wholly out of all men’s ears

  And dulled to death with deep dense funeral chime

  Of their reiterate rhyme.

  And now of all songs uttering all her praise,

  All hers who had thy praise and did thee wrong,

  Abides one song yet of her lyric days,

  Thine only, this thy song.

  O soul triune, woman and god and bird,

  Man, man at least has heard.

  All ages call thee conqueror, and thy cry

  The mightiest as the least beneath the sky

  Whose heart was ever set to song, or stirred

  With wind of mounting music blown more high

  Than wildest wing may fly,

  Hath heard or hears, — even Æschylus as I.

  But when thy name was woman, and thy word

  Human, — then haply, surely then meseems

  This thy bird’s note was heard on earth of none,

  Of none save only in dreams.

  In all the world then surely was but one

  Song; as in heaven at highest one sceptred sun

  Regent, on earth here surely without fail

  One only, one imperious nightingale.

  Dumb was the field, the woodland mute, the lawn

  Silent; the hill was tongueless as the vale

  Even when the last fair waif of cloud that felt

  Its heart beneath the colouring moonrays melt,

  At high midnoon of midnight half withdrawn,

  Bared all the sudden deep divine moondawn.

  Then, unsaluted by her twin-born tune,

  That latter timeless morning of the moon

  Rose past its hour of moonrise; clouds gave way

  To the old reconquering ray,

  But no song answering made it more than day;

  No cry of song by night

  Shot fire into the cloud-constraining light.

  One only, one Æolian island heard

  Thrill, but through no bird’s throat,

  In one strange manlike maiden’s godlike note,

  The song of all these as a single bird.

  Till the sea’s portal was as funeral gate

  For that sole singer in all time’s ageless date

  Singled and signed for so triumphal fate,

  All nightingales but one in all the world

  All her sweet life were silent; only then,

  When her life’s wing of womanhood was furled,

  Their cry, this cry of thine was heard again,

  As of me now, of any born of men.

  Through sleepless clear spring nights filled full of thee,

  Rekindled here, thy ruling song has thrilled

  The deep dark air and subtle tender sea

  And breathless hearts with one bright sound fulfilled.

  Or at midnoon to me

  Swimming, and birds about my happier head

  Skimming, one smooth soft way by water and air,

  To these my bright born brethren and to me

  Hath not the clear wind borne or seemed to bear

  A song wherein all earth and heaven and sea

  Were molten in one music made of thee

  To enforce us, O our sister of the shore,

  Look once in heart back landward and adore?

  For songless were we sea-mews, yet had we

  More joy than all things joyful of thee — more,

  Haply, than all things happiest; nay, save thee,

  In thy strong rapture of imperious joy

  Too high for heart of sea-borne bird or boy,

  What living things were happiest if not we?

  But knowing not love nor change nor wrath nor wrong,

  No more we knew of song.

  Song, and the secrets of it, and their might,

  What blessings curse it and what curses bless,

  I know them since my spirit had first in sight,

  Clear as thy song’s words or the live sun’s light,

  The small dark body’s Lesbian loveliness

  That held the fire eternal; eye and ear

  Were as a god’s to see, a god’s to hear,

  Through all his hours of daily and nightly chime,

  The sundering of the two-edged spear of time:

  The spear that pierces even the sevenfold shields

  Of mightiest Memory, mother of all songs made,

  And wastes all songs as roseleaves kissed and frayed

  As here the harvest of the foam-flowered fields;

  But thine the spear may waste not that he wields

  Since first the God whose soul is man’s live breath,

  The sun whose face hath our sun’s face for shade,

  Put all the light of life and love and death

  Too strong for life, but not for love too strong,

  Where pain makes peace with pleasure in thy song,

  And in thine heart, where love and song make strife,

  Fire everlasting of eternal life.

  THE GARDEN OF CYMODOCE

  Sea, and bright wind, and heaven of ardent air,

  More dear than all things earth-born; O to me

  Mother more dear than love’s own longing, sea,

  More than love’s eyes are, fair,

  Be with my spirit of song as wings to bear,

  As fire to feel and breathe and brighten; be

  A spirit of sense more deep of deity,

  A light of love, if love may be, more strong

  In me than very song.

  For song I have loved with second love, but thee,

  Thee first, thee, mother; ere my songs had breath,

  That love of loves, whose bondage makes man free,

  Was in me strong as death.

  And seeing no slave may love thee, no, not one

  That loves not freedom more,

  And more for thy sake loves her, and for hers

  Thee; or that hates not, on whate’er thy shore

  Or what thy wave soever, all things done

  Of man beneath the sun

  In his despite and thine, to cross and curse

  Your light and song that as with lamp and verse

  Guide safe the strength of our sphered universe,

  Thy breath it was, thou knowest, and none but thine,

  That taught me love of one thing more divine.

  Ah, yet my youth was old [Str. 1.

  Its first years dead and cold

  As last year’s autumn’s gold,

  And all my spirit of singing sick and sad and sere,

  Or ever I might behold

  The fairest of thy fold

  Engirt, enringed, enrolled,

  In all thy flower-sweet flock of islands dear and near.


  Yet in my heart I deemed [Str. 2.

  The fairest things, meseemed,

  Truth, dreaming, ever dreamed,

  Had made mine eyes already like a god’s to see:

  Of all sea-things that were

  Clothed on with water and air,

  That none could live more fair

  Than thy sweet love long since had shown for love to me.

  I knew not, mother of mine, [Ant. 1.

  That one birth more divine

  Than all births else of thine

  That hang like flowers or jewels on thy deep soft breast

  Was left for me to shine

  Above thy girdling line

  Of bright and breathing brine,

  To take mine eyes with rapture and my sense with rest.

  That this was left for me, [Ant.2.

  Mother, to have of thee,

  To touch, to taste, to see,

  To feel as fire fulfilling all my blood and breath,

  As wine of living fire

  Keen as the heart’s desire

  That makes the heart its pyre

  And on its burning visions burns itself to death.

  For here of all thy waters, here of all

  Thy windy ways the wildest, and beset

  As some beleaguered city’s war-breached wall

  With deaths enmeshed all round it in deep net,

  Thick sown with rocks deadlier than steel, and fierce

  With loud cross-countering currents, where the ship

  Flags, flickering like a wind-bewildered leaf,

  The densest weft of waves that prow may pierce

  Coils round the sharpest warp of shoals that dip

  Suddenly, scarce well under for one brief

  Keen breathing-space between the streams adverse,

  Scarce showing the fanged edge of one hungering lip

  Or one tooth lipless of the ravening reef;

  And midmost of the murderous water’s web

  All round it stretched and spun,

  Laughs, reckless of rough tide and raging ebb,

  The loveliest thing that shines against the sun.

  O flower of all wind-flowers and sea-flowers, [Str. 3.

  Made lovelier by love of the sea

  Than thy golden own field-flowers, or tree-flowers

  Like foam of the sea-facing tree!

  No foot but the seamew’s there settles

  On the spikes of thine anthers like horns,

  With snow-coloured spray for thy petals,

  Black rocks for thy thorns.

  Was it here, in the waste of his waters, [Ant. 3.

  That the lordly north wind, when his love