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

by Algernon Charles Swinburne

  Wind, and light, and wind, and cloud, and wind.

  7.

  Out and in and out the sharp straits wander,

  In and out and in the wild way strives,

  Starred and paved and lined with flowers that squander

  Gold as golden as the gold of hives,

  Salt and moist and multiform: but yonder,

  See, what sign of life or death survives?

  8.

  Seen then only when the songs of olden

  Harps were young whose echoes yet endure,

  Hymned of Homer when his years were golden,

  Known of only when the world was pure,

  Here is Hades, manifest, beholden,

  Surely, surely here, if aught be sure!

  9.

  Where the border-line was crossed, that, sundering

  Death from life, keeps weariness from rest,

  None can tell, who fares here forward wondering;

  None may doubt but here might end his quest.

  Here life’s lightning joys and woes once thundering

  Sea-like round him cease like storm suppressed.

  10.

  Here the wise wave-wandering steadfast-hearted

  Guest of many a lord of many a land

  Saw the shape or shade of years departed,

  Saw the semblance risen and hard at hand,

  Saw the mother long from love’s reach parted,

  Anticleia, like a statue stand.

  11.

  Statue? nay, nor tissued image woven

  Fair on hangings in his father’s hall;

  Nay, too fast her faith of heart was proven,

  Far too firm her loveliest love of all;

  Love wherethrough the loving heart was cloven,

  Love that hears not when the loud Fates call.

  12.

  Love that lives and stands up re-created

  Then when life has ebbed and anguish fled;

  Love more strong than death or all things fated,

  Child’s and mother’s, lit by love and led;

  Love that found what life so long awaited

  Here, when life came down among the dead.

  13.

  Here, where never came alive another,

  Came her son across the sundering tide

  Crossed before by many a warrior brother

  Once that warred on Ilion at his side;

  Here spread forth vain hands to clasp the mother

  Dead, that sorrowing for his love’s sake died.

  14.

  Parted, though by narrowest of divisions,

  Clasp he might not, only might implore,

  Sundered yet by bitterest of derisions,

  Son, and mother from the son she bore —

  Here? But all dispeopled here of visions

  Lies, forlorn of shadows even, the shore.

  15.

  All too sweet such men’s Hellenic speech is,

  All too fain they lived of light to see,

  Once to see the darkness of these beaches,

  Once to sing this Hades found of me

  Ghostless, all its gulfs and creeks and reaches,

  Sky, and shore, and cloud, and waste, and sea.

  IV.

  1.

  But aloft and afront of me faring

  Far forward as folk in a dream

  That strive, between doubting and daring

  Right on till the goal for them gleam,

  Full forth till their goal on them lighten,

  The harbour where fain they would be,

  What headlands there darken and brighten?

  What change in the sea?

  2.

  What houses and woodlands that nestle

  Safe inland to lee of the hill

  As it slopes from the headlands that wrestle

  And succumb to the strong sea’s will?

  Truce is not, nor respite, nor pity,

  For the battle is waged not of hands

  Where over the grave of a city

  The ghost of it stands.

  3.

  Where the wings of the sea-wind slacken,

  Green lawns to the landward thrive,

  Fields brighten and pine-woods blacken,

  And the heat in their heart is alive;

  They blossom and warble and murmur,

  For the sense of their spirit is free:

  But harder to shoreward and firmer

  The grasp of the sea.

  4.

  Like ashes the low cliffs crumble,

  The banks drop down into dust,

  The heights of the hills are made humble,

  As a reed’s is the strength of their trust:

  As a city’s that armies environ,

  The strength of their stay is of sand:

  But the grasp of the sea is as iron,

  Laid hard on the land.

  5.

  A land that is thirstier than ruin;

  A sea that is hungrier than death;

  Heaped hills that a tree never grew in;

  Wide sands where the wave draws breath;

  All solace is here for the spirit

  That ever for ever may be

  For the soul of thy son to inherit,

  My mother, my sea.

  6.

  O delight of the headlands and beaches!

  O desire of the wind on the wold,

  More glad than a man’s when it reaches

  That end which it sought from of old

  And the palm of possession is dreary

  To the sense that in search of it sinned;

  But nor satisfied ever nor weary

  Is ever the wind.

  7.

  The delight that he takes but in living

  Is more than of all things that live:

  For the world that has all things for giving

  Has nothing so goodly to give:

  But more than delight his desire is,

  For the goal where his pinions would be

  Is immortal as air or as fire is,

  Immense as the sea.

  8.

  Though hence come the moan that he borrows

  From darkness and depth of the night,

  Though hence be the spring of his sorrows,

  Hence too is the joy of his might;

  The delight that his doom is for ever

  To seek and desire and rejoice,

  And the sense that eternity never

  Shall silence his voice.

  9.

  That satiety never may stifle

  Nor weariness ever estrange

  Nor time be so strong as to rifle

  Nor change be so great as to change

  His gift that renews in the giving.

  The joy that exalts him to be

  Alone of all elements living

  The lord of the sea.

  10.

  What is fire, that its flame should consume her?

  More fierce than all fires are her waves:

  What is earth, that its gulfs should entomb her?

  More deep are her own than their graves.

  Life shrinks from his pinions that cover

  The darkness by thunders bedinned:

  But she knows him, her lord and her lover,

  The godhead of wind.

  11.

  For a season his wings are about her,

  His breath on her lips for a space;

  Such rapture he wins not without her

  In the width of his worldwide race.

  Though the forests bow down, and the mountains

  Wax dark, and the tribes of them flee,

  His delight is more deep in the fountains

  And springs of the sea.

  12.

  There are those too of mortals that love him,

  There are souls that desire and require,

  Be the glories of midnight above him

  Or beneath him the daysprings of fire:

  And their hearts are as
harps that approve him

  And praise him as chords of a lyre

  That were fain with their music to move him

  To meet their desire.

  13.

  To descend through the darkness to grace them,

  Till darkness were lovelier than light:

  To encompass and grasp and embrace them,

  Till their weakness were one with his might:

  With the strength of his wings to caress them,

  With the blast of his breath to set free;

  With the mouths of his thunders to bless them

  For sons of the sea.

  14.

  For these have the toil and the guerdon

  That the wind has eternally: these

  Have part in the boon and the burden

  Of the sleepless unsatisfied breeze,

  That finds not, but seeking rejoices

  That possession can work him no wrong:

  And the voice at the heart of their voice is

  The sense of his song.

  15.

  For the wind’s is their doom and their blessing;

  To desire, and have always above

  A possession beyond their possessing,

  A love beyond reach of their love.

  Green earth has her sons and her daughters,

  And these have their guerdons; but we

  Are the wind’s and the sun’s and the water’s,

  Elect of the sea.

  V.

  1.

  For the sea too seeks and rejoices,

  Gains and loses and gains,

  And the joy of her heart’s own choice is

  As ours, and as ours are her pains:

  As the thoughts of our hearts are her voices,

  And as hers is the pulse of our veins.

  2.

  Her fields that know not of dearth

  Nor lie for their fruit’s sake fallow

  Laugh large in the depth of their mirth

  But inshore here in the shallow,

  Embroiled with encumbrance of earth,

  Their skirts are turbid and yellow.

  3.

  The grime of her greed is upon her,

  The sign of her deed is her soil;

  As the earth’s is her own dishonour,

  And corruption the crown of her toil:

  She hath spoiled and devoured, and her honour

  Is this, to be shamed by her spoil.

  4.

  But afar where pollution is none,

  Nor ensign of strife nor endeavour,

  Where her heart and the sun’s are one,

  And the soil of her sin comes never,

  She is pure as the wind and the sun,

  And her sweetness endureth for ever.

  VI.

  1.

  Death, and change, and darkness everlasting,

  Deaf, that hears not what the daystar saith,

  Blind, past all remembrance and forecasting,

  Dead, past memory that it once drew breath;

  These, above the washing tides and wasting,

  Reign, and rule this land of utter death.

  2.

  Change of change, darkness of darkness, hidden,

  Very death of very death, begun

  When none knows, — the knowledge is forbidden —

  Self-begotten, self-proceeding, one,

  Born, not made — abhorred, unchained, unchidden,

  Night stands here defiant of the sun.

  3.

  Change of change, and death of death begotten,

  Darkness born of darkness, one and three,

  Ghostly godhead of a world forgotten,

  Crowned with heaven, enthroned on land and sea,

  Here, where earth with dead men’s bones is rotten,

  God of Time, thy likeness worships thee.

  4.

  Lo, thy likeness of thy desolation,

  Shape and figure of thy might, O Lord,

  Formless form, incarnate miscreation,

  Served of all things living and abhorred;

  Earth herself is here thine incarnation,

  Time, of all things born on earth adored.

  5.

  All that worship thee are fearful of thee;

  No man may not worship thee for fear:

  Prayers nor curses prove not nor disprove thee,

  Move nor change thee with our change of cheer:

  All at last, though all abhorred thee, love thee,

  God, the sceptre of whose throne is here.

  6.

  Here thy throne and sceptre of thy station,

  Here the palace paven for thy feet;

  Here thy sign from nation unto nation

  Passed as watchword for thy guards to greet,

  Guards that go before thine exaltation,

  Ages, clothed with bitter years and sweet.

  7.

  Here, where sharp the sea-bird shrills his ditty,

  Flickering flame-wise through the clear live calm,

  Rose triumphal, crowning all a city,

  Roofs exalted once with prayer and psalm,

  Built of holy hands for holy pity,

  Frank and fruitful as a sheltering palm.

  8.

  Church and hospice wrought in faultless fashion,

  Hall and chancel bounteous and sublime,

  Wide and sweet and glorious as compassion,

  Filled and thrilled with force of choral chime,

  Filled with spirit of prayer and thrilled with passion

  Hailed a God more merciful than Time.

  9.

  Ah, less mighty, less than Time prevailing,

  Shrunk, expelled, made nothing at his nod,

  Less than clouds across the sea-line sailing,

  Lies he, stricken by his master’s rod.

  ‘Where is man?’ the cloister murmurs wailing;

  Back the mute shrine thunders— ‘Where is God?’

  10.

  Here is all the end of all his glory —

  Dust, and grass, and barren silent stones.

  Dead, like him, one hollow tower and hoary

  Naked in the sea-wind stands and moans,

  Filled and thrilled with its perpetual story:

  Here, where earth is dense with dead men’s bones.

  11.

  Low and loud and long, a voice for ever,

  Sounds the wind’s clear story like a song.

  Tomb from tomb the waves devouring sever,

  Dust from dust as years relapse along;

  Graves where men made sure to rest, and never

  Lie dismantled by the seasons’ wrong.

  12.

  Now displaced, devoured and desecrated,

  Now by Time’s hands darkly disinterred,

  These poor dead that sleeping here awaited

  Long the archangel’s re-creating word,

  Closed about with roofs and walls high-gated

  Till the blast of judgment should be heard,

  13.

  Naked, shamed, cast out of consecration,

  Corpse and coffin, yea the very graves,

  Scoffed at, scattered, shaken from their station,

  Spurned and scourged of wind and sea like slaves,

  Desolate beyond man’s desolation,

  Shrink and sink into the waste of waves.

  14.

  Tombs, with bare white piteous bones protruded,

  Shroudless, down the loose collapsing banks,

  Crumble, from their constant place detruded,

  That the sea devours and gives not thanks.

  Graves where hope and prayer and sorrow brooded

  Gape and slide and perish, ranks on ranks.

  15.

  Rows on rows and line by line they crumble,

  They that thought for all time through to be.

  Scarce a stone whereon a child might stumble

  Breaks the grim field paced alone of me.

  Earth, and man, and
all their gods wax humble

  Here, where Time brings pasture to the sea.

  VII.

  1.

  But afar on the headland exalted,

  But beyond in the curl of the bay,

  From the depth of his dome deep-vaulted

  Our father is lord of the day.

  Our father and lord that we follow,

  For deathless and ageless is he;

  And his robe is the whole sky’s hollow,

  His sandal the sea.

  2.

  Where the horn of the headland is sharper,

  And her green floor glitters with fire,

  The sea has the sun for a harper,

  The sun has the sea for a lyre.

  The waves are a pavement of amber,

  By the feet of the sea-winds trod

  To receive in a god’s presence-chamber

  Our father, the God.

  3.

  Time, haggard and changeful and hoary,

  Is master and God of the land:

  But the air is fulfilled of the glory

  That is shed from our lord’s right hand.

  O father of all of us ever,

  All glory be only to thee

  From heaven, that is void of thee never,

  And earth, and the sea.

  4.

  O Sun, whereof all is beholden,

  Behold now the shadow of this death,

  This place of the sepulchres, olden

  And emptied and vain as a breath.

  The bloom of the bountiful heather

  Laughs broadly beyond in thy light

  As dawn, with her glories to gather,

  At darkness and night.