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

by Algernon Charles Swinburne

  With underthoughts of love and faith, more strong

  Than doubt and hate and all ill thoughts which throng,

  Haply, round hope’s or fear’s world-wandering feet

  That find no rest from wandering till they meet

  Death, bearing palms in hand and crowns of song;

  His face, who thought to vanquish wrong with wrong,

  Erring, and make rage and redemption meet,

  Havoc and freedom; weaving in one weft

  Good with his right hand, evil with his left;

  But all a hero lived and erred and died;

  Looked thus upon the living world he left

  So bravely that with pity less than pride

  Men hail him Patriot and Tyrannicide.

  EVENING ON THE BROADS.

  Over two shadowless waters, adrift as a pinnace in peril,

  Hangs as in heavy suspense, charged with irresolute light,

  Softly the soul of the sunset upholden awhile on the sterile

  Waves and wastes of the land, half repossessed by the night.

  Inland glimmer the shallows asleep and afar in the breathless

  Twilight: yonder the depths darken afar and asleep.

  Slowly the semblance of death out of heaven descends on the deathless

  Waters: hardly the light lives on the face of the deep —

  Hardly, but here for awhile. All over the grey soft shallow

  Hover the colours and clouds of the twilight, void of a star.

  As a bird unfledged is the broad-winged night, whose winglets are callow

  Yet, but soon with their plumes will she cover her brood from afar,

  Cover the brood of her worlds that cumber the skies with their blossom

  Thick as the darkness of leaf-shadowed spring is encumbered with flowers.

  World upon world is enwound in the bountiful girth of her bosom,

  Warm and lustrous with life lovely to look on as ours.

  Still is the sunset adrift as a spirit in doubt that dissembles

  Still with itself, being sick of division and dimmed by dismay —

  Nay, not so; but with love and delight beyond passion it trembles,

  Fearful and fain of the night, lovely with love of the day:

  Fain and fearful of rest that is like unto death, and begotten

  Out of the womb of the tomb, born of the seed of the grave:

  Lovely with shadows of loves that are only not wholly forgotten,

  Only not wholly suppressed by the dark as a wreck by the wave.

  Still there linger the loves of the morning and noon, in a vision

  Blindly beheld, but in vain: ghosts that are tired, and would rest.

  But the glories beloved of the night rise all too dense for division,

  Deep in the depth of her breast sheltered as doves in a nest.

  Fainter the beams of the loves of the daylight season enkindled

  Wane, and the memories of hours that were fair with the love of them

  fade:

  Loftier, aloft of the lights of the sunset stricken and dwindled,

  Gather the signs of the love at the heart of the night new-made.

  New-made night, new-born of the sunset, immeasurable, endless,

  Opens the secret of love hid from of old in her heart,

  In the deep sweet heart full-charged with faultless love of the friendless

  Spirits of men that are eased when the wheels of the sun depart.

  Still is the sunset afloat as a ship on the waters upholden

  Full-sailed, wide-winged, poised softly for ever asway —

  Nay, not so, but at least for a little, awhile at the golden

  Limit of arching air fain for an hour to delay.

  Here on the bar of the sand-bank, steep yet aslope to the gleaming

  Waste of the water without, waste of the water within,

  Lights overhead and lights underneath seem doubtfully dreaming

  Whether the day be done, whether the night may begin.

  Far and afar and farther again they falter and hover,

  Warm on the water and deep in the sky and pale on the cloud:

  Colder again and slowly remoter, afraid to recover

  Breath, yet fain to revive, as it seems, from the skirt of the shroud.

  Faintly the heartbeats shorten and pause of the light in the westward

  Heaven, as eastward quicken the paces of star upon star

  Hurried and eager of life as a child that strains to the breast-ward

  Eagerly, yearning forth of the deeps where the ways of them are,

  Glad of the glory of the gift of their life and the wealth of its wonder,

  Fain of the night and the sea and the sweet wan face of the earth.

  Over them air grows deeper, intense with delight in them: under

  Things are thrilled in their sleep as with sense of a sure new birth.

  But here by the sand-bank watching, with eyes on the sea-line, stranger

  Grows to me also the weight of the sea-ridge gazed on of me,

  Heavily heaped up, changefully changeless, void though of danger

  Void not of menace, but full of the might of the dense dull sea.

  Like as the wave is before me, behind is the bank deep-drifted;

  Yellow and thick as the bank is behind me in front is the wave.

  As the wall of a prison imprisoning the mere is the girth of it lifted:

  But the rampire of water in front is erect as the wall of a grave.

  And the crests of it crumble and topple and change, but the wall is not

  broken:

  Standing still dry-shod, I see it as higher than my head,

  Moving inland alway again, reared up as in token

  Still of impending wrath still in the foam of it shed.

  And even in the pauses between them, dividing the rollers in sunder,

  High overhead seems ever the sea-line fixed as a mark,

  And the shore where I stand as a valley beholden of hills whence thunder

  Cloud and torrent and storm, darkening the depths of the dark.

  Up to the sea, not upon it or over it, upward from under

  Seems he to gaze, whose eyes yearn after it here from the shore:

  A wall of turbid water, aslope to the wide sky’s wonder

  Of colour and cloud, it climbs, or spreads as a slanted floor.

  And the large lights change on the face of the mere like things that were

  living,

  Winged and wonderful, beams like as birds are that pass and are free:

  But the light is dense as darkness, a gift withheld in the giving,

  That lies as dead on the fierce dull face of the landward sea.

  Stained and stifled and soiled, made earthier than earth is and duller,

  Grimly she puts back light as rejected, a thing put away:

  No transparent rapture, a molten music of colour;

  No translucent love taken and given of the day.

  Fettered and marred and begrimed is the light’s live self on her falling,

  As the light of a man’s life lighted the fume of a dungeon mars:

  Only she knows of the wind, when her wrath gives ear to him calling;

  The delight of the light she knows not, nor answers the sun or the stars.

  Love she hath none to return for the luminous love of their giving:

  None to reflect from the bitter and shallow response of her heart

  Yearly she feeds on her dead, yet herself seems dead and not living,

  Or confused as a soul heavy-laden with trouble that will not depart.

  In the sound of her speech to the darkness the moan of her evil remorse is,

  Haply, for strong ships gnawed by the dog-toothed sea-bank’s fang

  And trampled to death by the rage of the feet of her foam-lipped horses

  Whose manes are yellow as plague, and as ensigns of pestilence hang,

  That wave in the foul faint ai
r of the breath of a death-stricken city;

  So menacing heaves she the manes of her rollers knotted with sand,

  Discoloured, opaque, suspended in sign as of strength without pity,

  That shake with flameless thunder the low long length of the strand.

  Here, far off in the farther extreme of the shore as it lengthens

  Northward, lonely for miles, ere ever a village begin,

  On the lapsing land that recedes as the growth of the strong sea

  strengthens

  Shoreward, thrusting further and further its outworks in,

  Here in Shakespeare’s vision, a flower of her kin forsaken,

  Lay in her golden raiment alone on the wild wave’s edge,

  Surely by no shore else, but here on the bank storm-shaken,

  Perdita, bright as a dew-drop engilt of the sun on the sedge.

  Here on a shore unbeheld of his eyes in a dream he beheld her

  Outcast, fair as a fairy, the child of a far-off king:

  And over the babe-flower gently the head of a pastoral elder

  Bowed, compassionate, hoar as the hawthorn-blossom in spring,

  And kind as harvest in autumn: a shelter of shade on the lonely

  Shelterless unknown shore scourged of implacable waves:

  Here, where the wind walks royal, alone in his kingdom, and only

  Sounds to the sedges a wail as of triumph that conquers and craves.

  All these waters and wastes are his empire of old, and awaken

  From barren and stagnant slumber at only the sound of his breath:

  Yet the hunger is eased not that aches in his heart, nor the goal overtaken

  That his wide wings yearn for and labour as hearts that yearn after

  death.

  All the solitude sighs and expects with a blind expectation

  Somewhat unknown of its own sad heart, grown heart-sick of strife:

  Till sometime its wild heart maddens, and moans, and the vast ululation

  Takes wing with the clouds on the waters, and wails to be quit of its

  life.

  For the spirit and soul of the waste is the wind, and his wings with their

  waving

  Darken and lighten the darkness and light of it thickened or thinned;

  But the heart that impels them is even as a conqueror’s insatiably craving

  That victory can fill not, as power cannot satiate the want of the wind.

  All these moorlands and marshes are full of his might, and oppose not

  Aught of defence nor of barrier, of forest or precipice piled:

  But the will of the wind works ever as his that desires what he knows not,

  And the wail of his want unfulfilled is as one making moan for her child.

  And the cry of his triumph is even as the crying of hunger that maddens

  The heart of a strong man aching in vain as the wind’s heart aches

  And the sadness itself of the land for its infinite solitude saddens

  More for the sound than the silence athirst for the sound that slakes.

  And the sunset at last and the twilight are dead: and the darkness is

  breathless

  With fear of the wind’s breath rising that seems and seems not to sleep:

  But a sense of the sound of it alway, a spirit unsleeping and deathless,

  Ghost or God, evermore moves on the face of the deep.

  THE EMPEROR’S PROGRESS.

  A STUDY IN THREE STAGES.

  (On the Busts of Nero in the Uffizj.)

  I.

  A child of brighter than the morning’s birth

  And lovelier than all smiles that may be smiled

  Save only of little children undefiled,

  Sweet, perfect, witless of their own dear worth,

  Live rose of love, mute melody of mirth,

  Glad as a bird is when the woods are mild,

  Adorable as is nothing save a child,

  Hails with wide eyes and lips his life on earth,

  His lovely life with all its heaven to be.

  And whoso reads the name inscribed or hears

  Feels his own heart a frozen well of tears,

  Child, for deep dread and fearful pity of thee

  Whom God would not let rather die than see

  The incumbent horror of impending years.

  II.

  Man, that wast godlike being a child, and now,

  No less than kinglike, art no more in sooth

  For all thy grace and lordliness of youth,

  The crown that bids men’s branded foreheads bow

  Much more has branded and bowed down thy brow

  And gnawn upon it as with fire or tooth

  Of steel or snake so sorely, that the truth

  Seems here to bear false witness. Is it thou,

  Child? and is all the summer of all thy spring

  This? are the smiles that drew men’s kisses down

  All faded and transfigured to the frown

  That grieves thy face? Art thou this weary thing?

  Then is no slave’s load heavier than a crown

  And such a thrall no bondman as a king.

  III.

  Misery, beyond all men’s most miserable,

  Absolute, whole, defiant of defence,

  Inevitable, inexplacable, intense,

  More vast than heaven is high, more deep than hell,

  Past cure or charm of solace or of spell,

  Possesses and pervades the spirit and sense

  Whereto the expanse of the earth pays tribute; whence

  Breeds evil only, and broods on fumes that swell

  Rank from the blood of brother and mother and wife.

  ‘Misery of miseries, all is misery,’ saith

  The heavy fair-faced hateful head, at strife

  With its own lusts that burn with feverous breath

  Lips which the loathsome bitterness of life

  Leaves fearful of the bitterness of death.

  THE RESURRECTION OF ALCILIA.

  (Gratefully inscribed to Dr. A.B. Grosart.)

  Sweet song-flower of the Mayspring of our song,

  Be welcome to us, with loving thanks and praise

  To his good hand who travelling on strange ways

  Found thee forlorn and fragrant, lain along

  Beneath dead leaves that many a winter’s wrong

  Had rained and heaped through nigh three centuries’ maze

  Above thy Maybloom, hiding from our gaze

  The life that in thy leaves lay sweet and strong.

  For thine have life, while many above thine head

  Piled by the wind lie blossomless and dead.

  So now disburdened of such load above

  That lay as death’s own dust upon thee shed

  By days too deaf to hear thee like a dove

  Murmuring, we hear thee, bird and flower of love.

  THE FOURTEENTH OF JULY.

  (On the refusal by the French Senate of the plenary amnesty

  demanded by Victor Hugo, in his speech of July 3rd, for the

  surviving exiles of the Commune.)

  Thou shouldst have risen as never dawn yet rose,

  Day of the sunrise of the soul of France,

  Dawn of the whole world’s morning, when the trance

  Of all the world had end, and all its woes

  Respite, prophetic of their perfect close.

  Light of all tribes of men, all names and clans,

  Dawn of the whole world’s morning and of man’s

  Flower of the heart of morning’s mystic rose,

  Dawn of the very dawn of very day,

  When the sun brighter breaks night’s ruinous prison,

  Thou shouldst have risen as yet no dawn has risen,

  Evoked of him whose word puts night away,

  Our father, at the music of whose word

  Exile had ended, and the world had heard.

  July 5, 1880.

 
LAUNCH OF THE LIVADIA

  Malâ soluta navis exit alite.

  HOR.

  Rigged with curses dark.

  MILTON.

  THE LAUNCH OF THE LIVADIA.

  I.

  Gold, and fair marbles, and again more gold,

  And space of halls afloat that glance and gleam

  Like the green heights of sunset heaven, or seem

  The golden steeps of sunrise red and cold

  On deserts where dark exile keeps the fold

  Fast of the flocks of torment, where no beam

  Falls of kind light or comfort save in dream,

  These we far off behold not, who behold

  The cordage woven of curses, and the decks

  With mortal hate and mortal peril paven;

  From stem to stern the lines of doom engraven

  That mark for sure inevitable wrecks

  Those sails predestinate, though no storm vex,

  To miss on earth and find in hell their haven.

  II.

  All curses be about her, and all ill

  Go with her; heaven be dark above her way,

  The gulf beneath her glad and sure of prey,

  And, wheresoe’er her prow be pointed, still

  The winds of heaven have all one evil will

  Conspirant even as hearts of kings to slay

  With mouths of kings to lie and smile and pray,

  And chiefliest his whose wintrier breath makes chill

  With more than winter’s and more poisonous cold

  The horror of his kingdom toward the north,

  The deserts of his kingdom toward the east.

  And though death hide not in her direful hold

  Be all stars adverse toward her that come forth

  Nightly, by day all hours till all have ceased:

  III.

  Till all have ceased for ever, and the sum

  Be summed of all the sumless curses told

  Out on his head by all dark seasons rolled

  Over its cursed and crowned existence, dumb

  And blind and stark as though the snows made numb

  All sense within it, and all conscience cold,

  That hangs round hearts of less imperial mould

  Like a snake feeding till their doomsday come.

  O heart fast bound of frozen poison, be