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

by Algernon Charles Swinburne

  On the fairest of many king’s daughters

  Bore down for a spoil from above,

  Chose forth of all farthest far islands

  As a haven to harbour her head,

  Of all lowlands on earth and all highlands,

  His bride-worthy bed?

  Or haply, my sea-flower, he found thee [Str. 4.

  Made fast as with anchors to land,

  And broke, that his waves might be round thee,

  Thy fetters like rivets of sand?

  And afar by the blast of him drifted

  Thy blossom of beauty was borne,

  As a lark by the heart in her lifted

  To mix with the morn?

  By what rapture of rage, by what vision [Ant. 4.

  Of a heavenlier heaven than above,

  Was he moved to devise thy division

  From the land as a rest for his love?

  As a nest when his wings would remeasure

  The ways where of old they would be,

  As a bride-bed upbuilt for his pleasure

  By sea-rock and sea?

  For in no deeps of midmost inland May

  More flowerbright flowers the hawthorn, or more sweet

  Swells the wild gold of the earth for wandering feet;

  For on no northland way

  Crowds the close whin-bloom closer, set like thee

  With thorns about for fangs of sea-rock shown

  Through blithe lips of the bitter brine to lee;

  Nor blithelier landward comes the sea-wind blown,

  Nor blithelier leaps the land-wind back to sea:

  Nor louder springs the living song of birds

  To shame our sweetest words.

  And in the narrowest of thine hollowest hold

  For joy thine aspens quiver as though for cold,

  And many a self-lit flower-illumined tree

  Outlaughs with snowbright or with rosebright glee

  The laughter of the fields whose laugh is gold.

  Yea, even from depth to height,

  Even thine own beauty with its own delight

  Fulfils thine heart in thee an hundredfold

  Beyond the larger hearts of islands bright

  With less intense contraction of desire

  Self-satiate, centred in its own deep fire;

  Of shores not self-enchanted and entranced

  By heavenly severance from all shadow of mirth

  Or mourning upon earth:

  As thou, by no similitude enhanced,

  By no fair foil made fairer, but alone

  Fair as could be no beauty save thine own,

  And wondrous as no world-beholden wonder:

  Throned, with the world’s most perilous sea for throne,

  And praised from all its choral throats of thunder.

  Yet one praise hast thou, holier [Str. 5.

  Than praise of theirs may be,

  To exalt thee, wert thou lowlier

  Than all that take the sea

  With shores whence waves ebb slowlier

  Than these fall off from thee;

  That One, whose name gives glory, [Ant. 5.

  One man whose life makes light,

  One crowned and throned in story

  Above all empire’s height,

  Came, where thy straits run hoary,

  To hold thee fast in sight;

  With hallowing eyes to hold thee, [Str. 6.

  With rapturous heart to read,

  To encompass and enfold thee

  With love whence all men feed,

  To brighten and behold thee,

  Who is mightiest of man’s seed:

  More strong than strong disaster, [Ant. 6.

  For fate and fear too strong;

  Earth’s friend, whose eyes look past her,

  Whose hands would purge of wrong;

  Our lord, our light, our master,

  Whose word sums up all song.

  Be it April or September [Str. 7.

  That plays his perfect part,

  Burn June or blow December,

  Thou canst not in thine heart

  But rapturously remember,

  All heavenlike as thou art,

  Whose footfall made thee fairer, [Ant. 7.

  Whose passage more divine,

  Whose hand, our thunder-bearer,

  Held fire that bade thee shine

  With subtler glory and rarer

  Than thrills the sun’s own shrine.

  Who knows how then his godlike banished gaze

  Turned haply from its goal of natural days

  And homeward hunger for the clear French clime,

  Toward English earth, whereunder now the Accursed

  Rots, in the hate of all men’s hearts inhearsed,

  A carrion ranker to the sense of time

  For that sepulchral gift of stone and lime

  By royal grace laid on it, less of weight

  Than the load laid by fate,

  Fate, misbegotten child of his own crime,

  Son of as foul a bastard-bearing birth

  As even his own on earth;

  Less heavy than the load of cursing piled

  By loyal grace of all souls undefiled

  On one man’s head, whose reeking soul made rotten

  The loathed live corpse on earth once misbegotten?

  But when our Master’s homeless feet were here

  France yet was foul with joy more foul than fear,

  And slavery chosen, more vile by choice of chance

  Than dull damnation of inheritance

  From Russian year to year

  Alas fair mother of men, alas my France,

  What ailed thee so to fall, that wert so dear

  For all men’s sake to all men, in such trance,

  Plague-stricken? Had the very Gods, that saw

  Thy glory lighten on us for a law,

  Thy gospel go before us for a guide,

  Had these waxed envious of our love and awe,

  Or was it less their envy than thy pride

  That bared thy breast for the obscene vulture-claw,

  High priestess, by whose mouth Love prophesied

  That fate should yet mean freedom? Howsoever,

  That hour, the helper of men’s hearts, we praise,

  Which blots out of man’s book of after days

  The name above all names abhorred for ever.

  And His name shall we praise not, whom these flowers,

  These rocks and ravening waters bound for girth

  Round this wild starry spanlong plot of earth,

  Beheld, the mightier for those heavier hours

  That bowed his heart not down

  Nor marred one crowning blossom of his crown?

  For surely, might we say,

  Even from the dark deep sea-gate that makes way

  Through channelled darkness for the darkling day

  Hardly to let men’s faltering footfall win

  The sunless passage in,

  Where breaks a world aflower against the sun,

  A small sweet world of wave-encompassed wonder

  Kept from the wearier landward world asunder

  With violence of wild waters, and with thunder

  Of many winds as one,

  To where the keen sea-current grinds and frets

  The black bright sheer twin flameless Altarlets

  That lack no live blood-sacrifice they crave

  Of shipwreck and the shrine-subservient wave,

  Having for priest the storm-wind, and for choir

  Lightnings and clouds whose prayer and praise are fire,

  All the isle acclaimed him coming; she, the least

  Of all things loveliest that the sea’s love hides

  From strange men’s insult, walled about with tides

  That bid strange guests back from her flower-strewn feast,

  Set all her fields aflower, her flowers aflame,

  To applaud him that he came.

&nb
sp; Nor surely flashed not something of delight

  Through that steep strait of rock whose twin-cliffed height

  Links crag with crag reiterate, land with land,

  By one sheer thread of narrowing precipice

  Bifront, that binds and sunders

  Abyss from hollower imminent abyss

  And wilder isle with island, blind for bliss

  Of sea that lightens and of wind that thunders;

  Nor pealed not surely back from deep to steep

  Reverberate acclamation, steep to deep

  Inveterately reclaiming and replying

  Praise, and response applausive; nor the sea,

  For all the sea-wind’s crying,

  Knew not the song her sister, even as she

  Thundering, or like her confluent spring-tides brightening,

  And like her darkness lightening;

  The song that moved about him silent, now

  Both soundless wings refolded and refurled

  On that Promethean brow,

  Then quivering as for flight that wakes the world.

  From the roots of the rocks underlying the gulfs that engird it around

  [Str. 8.

  Was the isle not enkindled with light of him landing, or thrilled not

  with sound?

  Yea, surely the sea like a harper laid hand on the shore as a lyre,

  As the lyre in his own for a birthright of old that was given of his sire,

  And the hand of the child was put forth on the chords yet alive and aflame

  From the hand of the God that had wrought it in heaven; and the hand was

  the same.

  And the tongue of the child spake, singing; and never a note that he sang,

  But the strings made answer unstricken, as though for the God they rang.

  And the eyes of the child shone, lightening; and touched as by life at his

  nod,

  They shuddered with music, and quickened as though from the glance of the

  God.

  So trembled the heart of the hills and the rocks to receive him, and

  yearned

  With desirous delight of his presence and love that beholding him burned.

  Yea, down through the mighty twin hollows where never the sunlight shall be,

  Deep sunk under imminent earth, and subdued to the stress of the sea,

  That feel when the dim week changes by change of their tides in the dark,

  As the wave sinks under within them, reluctant, removed from its mark,

  Even there in the terror of twilight in bloom with its blossoms ablush,

  Did a sense of him touch not the gleam of their flowers with a fierier

  flush?

  Though the sun they behold not for ever, yet knew they not over them One

  Whose soul was the soul of the morning, whose song was the song of the sun?

  But the secrets inviolate of sunlight in hollows untrodden of day,

  Shall he dream what are these who beholds not? or he that hath seen,

  shall he say?

  For the path is for passage of sea-mews; and he that hath glided and leapt

  Over sea-grass and sea-rock, alighting as one from a citadel crept

  That his foemen beleaguer, descending by darkness and stealth, at the last

  Peers under, and all is as hollow to hellward, agape and aghast.

  But afloat and afar in the darkness a tremulous colour subsides [Ant. 8.

  From the crimson high crest of the purple-peaked roof to the soft-coloured

  sides

  That brighten as ever they widen till downward the level is won

  Of the soundless and colourless water that knows not the sense of the sun:

  From the crown of the culminant arch to the floor of the lakelet abloom,

  One infinite blossom of blossoms innumerable aflush through the gloom.

  All under the deeps of the darkness are glimmering; all over impends

  An immeasurable infinite flower of the dark that dilates and descends,

  That exults and expands in its breathless and blind efflorescence of heart

  As it broadens and bows to the wave-ward, and breathes not, and hearkens

  apart.

  As a beaker inverse at a feast on Olympus, exhausted of wine,

  But inlaid as with rose from the lips of Dione that left it divine:

  From the lips everliving of laughter and love everlasting, that leave

  In the cleft of his heart who shall kiss them a snake to corrode it and

  cleave.

  So glimmers the gloom into glory, the glory recoils into gloom,

  That the eye of the sun could not kindle, the lip not of Love could relume.

  So darkens reverted the cup that the kiss of her mouth set on fire:

  So blackens a brand in his eyeshot asmoulder awhile from the pyre.

  For the beam from beneath and without it refrangent again from the wave

  Strikes up through the portal a ghostly reverse on the dome of the cave,

  On the depth of the dome ever darkling and dim to the crown of its arc:

  That the sun-coloured tapestry, sunless for ever, may soften the dark.

  But within through the side-seen archway a glimmer again from the right

  Is the seal of the sea’s tide set on the mouth of the mystery of night.

  And the seal on the seventh day breaks but a little, that man by its mean

  May behold what the sun hath not looked on, the stars of the night have

  not seen.

  Even like that hollow-bosomed rose, inverse

  And infinite, the heaven of thy vast verse,

  Our Master, over all our souls impends,

  Imminent; we, with heart-enkindled eyes

  Upwondering, search the music-moulded skies

  Sphere by sweet sphere, concordant as it blends

  Light of bright sound, sound of clear light, in one,

  As all the stars found utterance through the sun.

  And all that heaven is like a rose in bloom,

  Flower-coloured, where its own sun’s fires illume

  As from one central and imperious heart

  The whole sky’s every part:

  But lightening still and darkling downward, lo

  The light and darkness of it,

  The leaping of the lamping levin afar

  Between the full moon and the sunset star,

  The war-song of the sounding skies aglow,

  That have the herald thunder for their prophet:

  From north to south the lyric lights that leap,

  The tragic sundawns reddening east and west

  As with bright blood from one Promethean breast,

  The peace of noon that strikes the sea to sleep,

  The wail over the world of all that weep,

  The peace of night when death brings life on rest.

  Goddess who gatherest all the herded waves

  Into thy great sweet pastureless green fold,

  Even for our love of old,

  I pray thee by thy power that slays and saves,

  Take thou my song of this thy flower to keep

  Who hast my heart in hold;

  And from thine high place of thy garden-steep,

  Where one sheer terrace oversees thy deep

  From the utmost rock-reared height

  Down even to thy dear depths of night and light,

  Take my song’s salutation; and on me

  Breathe back the benediction of thy sea.

  Between two seas the sea-bird’s wing makes halt,

  Wind-weary; while with lifting head he waits

  For breath to reinspire him from the gates

  That open still toward sunrise on the vault

  High-domed of morning, and in flight’s default

  With spreading sense of spirit anticipates

  What new sea now may lure beyond the straits

  His wings exulting that her winds exalt />
  And fill them full as sails to seaward spread,

  Fulfilled with fair speed’s promise. Pass, my song,

  Forth to the haven of thy desire and dread,

  The presence of our lord, long loved and long

  Far off above beholden, who to thee

  Was as light kindling all a windy sea.

  BIRTHDAY ODE FOR THE ANNIVERSARY FESTIVAL OF VICTOR HUGO, FEBRUARY 26, 1880

  Spring, born in heaven ere many a springtime flown, [Strophe 1.

  Dead spring that sawest on earth

  A babe of deathless birth,

  A flower of rosier flowerage than thine own,

  A glory of goodlier godhead; even this day,

  That floods the mist of February with May,

  And strikes death dead with sunlight, and the breath

  Whereby the deadly doers are done to death,

  They that in day’s despite

  Would crown the imperial night, 10

  And in deep hate of insubmissive spring

  Rethrone the royal winter for a king,

  This day that casts the days of darkness down

  Low as a broken crown,

  We call thee from the gulf of deeds and days,

  Deathless and dead, to hear us whom we praise.

  A light of many lights about thine head, [Antistrophe 1.

  Lights manifold and one,

  Stars molten in a sun,

  A sun of divers beams incorporated, 20

  Compact of confluent aureoles, each more fair

  Than man, save only at highest of man, may wear,

  So didst thou rise, when this our grey-grown age

  Had trod two paces of his pilgrimage,

  Two paces through the gloom

  From his fierce father’s tomb,

  Led by cross lights of lightnings, and the flame

  That burned in darkness round one darkling name;

  So didst thou rise, nor knewest thy glory, O thou

  Re-risen upon us now, 30

  The glory given thee for a grace to give,

  And take the praise of all men’s hearts that live.

  First in the dewy ray [Epode 1.

  Ere dawn be slain of day

  The fresh crowned lilies of discrowned kings’ prime

  Sprang splendid as of old

  With moonlight-coloured gold

  And rays refract from the oldworld heaven of time;

  Pale with proud light of stars decreased 39

  In westward wane reluctant from the conquering east.

  But even between their golden olden bloom [Str. 2.

  Strange flowers of wildwood glory,