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

by Algernon Charles Swinburne

  Bud, or new-fledged bird

  In your hearts’ nest heard

  Murmuring like a dove

  Bright as those that drew

  Over waves where blew

  No loud wind the blue

  Heaven-hued car of love.

  Not the glorious grace

  Even of that one face

  Potent to displace

  All the towers of Troy

  Surely shone more clear

  Once with childlike cheer

  Than this child’s face here

  Now with living joy.

  After these again

  Here in April’s train

  Breaks the bloom of twain

  Blossoms in one birth

  For a crown of May

  On the front of day

  When he takes his way

  Over heaven and earth.

  Half a heavenly thing

  Given from heaven to Spring

  By the sun her king,

  Half a tender toy,

  Seems a child of curl

  Yet too soft to twirl;

  Seems the flower-sweet girl

  By the flower-bright boy.

  All the kind gods’ grace,

  All their love, embrace

  Ever either face,

  Ever brood above them:

  All soft wings of hours

  Screen them as with flowers

  From all beams and showers:

  All life’s seasons love them.

  When the dews of sleep

  Falling lightliest keep

  Eyes too close to peep

  Forth and laugh off rest,

  Joy from face to feet

  Fill them, as is meet:

  Life to them be sweet

  As their mother’s breast.

  When those dews are dry,

  And in day’s bright eye

  Looking full they lie

  Bright as rose and pearl,

  All returns of joy

  Pure of time’s alloy

  Bless the rose-red boy,

  Guard the rose-white girl.

  POSTSCRIPT

  Friends, if I could take

  Half a note from Blake

  Or but one verse make

  Of the Conqueror’s mine,

  Better than my best

  Song above your nest

  I would sing: the quest

  Now seems too divine.

  April 28, 1881.

  THE SALT OF THE EARTH

  If childhood were not in the world,

  But only men and women grown;

  No baby-locks in tendrils curled,

  No baby-blossoms blown;

  Though men were stronger, women fairer,

  And nearer all delights in reach,

  And verse and music uttered rarer

  Tones of more godlike speech;

  Though the utmost life of life’s best hours

  Found, as it cannot now find, words;

  Though desert sands were sweet as flowers

  And flowers could sing like birds,

  But children never heard them, never

  They felt a child’s foot leap and run

  This were a drearier star than ever

  Yet looked upon the sun.

  SEVEN YEARS OLD

  I

  Seven white roses on one tree,

  Seven white loaves of blameless leaven,

  Seven white sails on one soft sea,

  Seven white swans on one lake’s lee,

  Seven white flowerlike stars in heaven,

  All are types unmeet to be

  For a birthday’s crown of seven.

  II

  Not the radiance of the roses,

  Not the blessing of the bread,

  Not the breeze that ere day grows is

  Fresh for sails and swans, and closes

  Wings above the sun’s grave spread,

  When the starshine on the snows is

  Sweet as sleep on sorrow shed.

  III

  Nothing sweetest, nothing best,

  Holds so good and sweet a treasure

  As the love wherewith once blest

  Joy grows holy, grief takes rest,

  Life, half tired with hours to measure,

  Fills his eyes and lips and breast

  With most light and breath of pleasure;

  IV

  As the rapture unpolluted,

  As the passion undefiled,

  By whose force all pains heart-rooted

  Are transfigured and transmuted,

  Recompensed and reconciled,

  Through the imperial, undisputed,

  Present godhead of a child.

  V

  Brown bright eyes and fair bright head,

  Worth a worthier crown than this is,

  Worth a worthier song instead,

  Sweet grave wise round mouth, full fed

  With the joy of love, whose bliss is

  More than mortal wine and bread,

  Lips whose words are sweet as kisses,

  VI

  Little hands so glad of giving,

  Little heart so glad of love,

  Little soul so glad of living,

  While the strong swift hours are weaving

  Light with darkness woven above,

  Time for mirth and time for grieving,

  Plume of raven and plume of dove,

  VII

  I can give you but a word

  Warm with love therein for leaven,

  But a song that falls unheard

  Yet on ears of sense unstirred

  Yet by song so far from heaven,

  Whence you came the brightest bird,

  Seven years since, of seven times seven.

  EIGHT YEARS OLD

  I

  Sun, whom the faltering snow-cloud fears,

  Rise, let the time of year be May,

  Speak now the word that April hears,

  Let March have all his royal way;

  Bid all spring raise in winter’s ears

  All tunes her children hear or play,

  Because the crown of eight glad years

  On one bright head is set to-day.

  II

  What matters cloud or sun to-day

  To him who wears the wreath of years

  So many, and all like flowers at play

  With wind and sunshine, while his ears

  Hear only song on every way?

  More sweet than spring triumphant hears

  Ring through the revel-rout of May

  Are these, the notes that winter fears.

  III

  Strong-hearted winter knows and fears

  The music made of love at play,

  Or haply loves the tune he hears

  From hearts fulfilled with flowering May,

  Whose molten music thaws his ears

  Late frozen, deaf but yesterday

  To sounds of dying and dawning years,

  Now quickened on his deathward way.

  IV

  For deathward now lies winter’s way

  Down the green vestibule of years

  That each year brightens day by day

  With flower and shower till hope scarce fears

  And fear grows wholly hope of May.

  But we — the music in our ears

  Made of love’s pulses as they play

  The heart alone that makes it hears.

  V

  The heart it is that plays and hears

  High salutation of to-day.

  Tongue falters, hand shrinks back, song fears

  Its own unworthiness to play

  Fit music for those eight sweet years,

  Or sing their blithe accomplished way.

  No song quite worth a young child’s ears

  Broke ever even from birds in May.

  VI

  There beats not in the heart of May,

  When summer hopes and springtide fears,

  There falls not fr
om the height of day,

  When sunlight speaks and silence hears,

  So sweet a psalm as children play

  And sing, each hour of all their years,

  Each moment of their lovely way,

  And know not how it thrills our ears.

  VII

  Ah child, what are we, that our ears

  Should hear you singing on your way,

  Should have this happiness? The years

  Whose hurrying wings about us play

  Are not like yours, whose flower-time fears

  Nought worse than sunlit showers in May,

  Being sinless as the spring, that hears

  Her own heart praise her every day.

  VIII

  Yet we too triumph in the day

  That bare, to entrance our eyes and ears,

  To lighten daylight, and to play

  Such notes as darkness knows and fears,

  The child whose face illumes our way,

  Whose voice lifts up the heart that hears,

  Whose hand is as the hand of May

  To bring us flowers from eight full years.

  February 4, 1882.

  COMPARISONS

  Child, when they say that others

  Have been or are like you,

  Babes fit to be your brothers,

  Sweet human drops of dew,

  Bright fruit of mortal mothers,

  What should one say or do?

  We know the thought is treason,

  We feel the dream absurd;

  A claim rebuked of reason,

  That withers at a word:

  For never shone the season

  That bore so blithe a bird.

  Some smiles may seem as merry,

  Some glances gleam as wise,

  From lips as like a cherry

  And scarce less gracious eyes;

  Eyes browner than a berry,

  Lips red as morning’s rise.

  But never yet rang laughter

  So sweet in gladdened ears

  Through wall and floor and rafter

  As all this household hears

  And rings response thereafter

  Till cloudiest weather clears.

  When those your chosen of all men,

  Whose honey never cloys,

  Two lights whose smiles enthrall men,

  Were called at your age boys,

  Those mighty men, while small men,

  Could make no merrier noise.

  Our Shakespeare, surely, daffed not

  More lightly pain aside

  From radiant lips that quaffed not

  Of forethought’s tragic tide:

  Our Dickens, doubtless, laughed not

  More loud with life’s first pride.

  The dawn were not more cheerless

  With neither light nor dew

  Than we without the fearless

  Clear laugh that thrills us through:

  If ever child stood peerless,

  Love knows that child is you.

  WHAT IS DEATH?

  Looking on a page where stood

  Graven of old on old-world wood

  Death, and by the grave’s edge grim,

  Pale, the young man facing him,

  Asked my well-beloved of me

  Once what strange thing; this might be,

  Gaunt and great of limb.

  Death, I told him: and, surprise

  Deepening more his wildwood eyes

  (Like some sweet fleet thing’s whose breath

  Speaks all spring though nought it saith),

  Up he turned his rosebright face

  Glorious with its seven years’ grace,

  Asking — What is death?

  A CHILD’S PITY

  No sweeter thing than children’s ways and wiles,

  Surely, we say, can gladden eyes and ears:

  Yet sometime sweeter than their words or smiles

  Are even their tears.

  To one for once a piteous tale was read,

  How, when the murderous mother crocodile

  Was slain, her fierce brood famished, and lay dead,

  Starved, by the Nile.

  In vast green reed-beds on the vast grey slime

  Those monsters motherless and helpless lay,

  Perishing only for the parent’s crime

  Whose seed were they.

  Hours after, toward the dusk, our blithe small bird

  Of Paradise, who has our hearts in keeping,

  Was heard or seen, but hardly seen or heard,

  For pity weeping.

  He was so sorry, sitting still apart,

  For the poor little crocodiles, he said.

  Six years had given him, for an angel’s heart,

  A child’s instead.

  Feigned tears the false beasts shed for murderous ends,

  We know from travellers’ tales of crocodiles:

  But these tears wept upon them of my friend’s

  Outshine his smiles.

  What heavenliest angels of what heavenly city

  Could match the heavenly heart in children here?

  The heart that hallowing all things with its pity

  Casts out all fear?

  So lovely, so divine, so dear their laughter

  Seems to us, we know not what could be more dear:

  But lovelier yet we see the sign thereafter

  Of such a tear.

  With sense of love half laughing and half weeping

  We met your tears, our small sweet-spirited friend:

  Let your love have us in its heavenly keeping

  To life’s last end.

  A CHILD’S LAUGHTER

  All the bells of heaven may ring,

  All the birds of heaven may sing,

  All the wells on earth may spring,

  All the winds on earth may bring

  All sweet sounds together;

  Sweeter far than all things heard,

  Hand of harper, tone of bird,

  Sound of woods at sundawn stirred,

  Welling water’s winsome word,

  Wind in warm wan weather,

  One thing yet there is, that none

  Hearing ere its chime be done

  Knows not well the sweetest one

  Heard of man beneath the sun,

  Hoped in heaven hereafter;

  Soft and strong and loud and light,

  Very sound of very light

  Heard from morning’s rosiest height,

  When the soul of all delight

  Fills a child’s clear laughter.

  Golden bells of welcome rolled

  Never forth such notes, nor told

  Hours so blithe in tones so bold,

  As the radiant mouth of gold

  Here that rings forth heaven.

  If the golden-crested wren

  Were a nightingale — why, then,

  Something seen and heard of men

  Might be half as sweet as when

  Laughs a child of seven.

  A CHILD’S THANKS

  How low soe’er men rank us,

  How high soe’er we win,

  The children far above us

  Dwell, and they deign to love us,

  With lovelier love than ours,

  And smiles more sweet than flowers;

  As though the sun should thank us

  For letting light come in.

  With too divine complaisance,

  Whose grace misleads them thus,

  Being gods, in heavenly blindness

  They call our worship kindness,

  Our pebble-gift a gem:

  They think us good to them,

  Whose glance, whose breath, whose presence,

  Are gifts too good for us.

  The poet high and hoary

  Of meres that mountains bind

  Felt his great heart more often

  Yearn, and its proud strength soften

  From stern to tenderer mood,

  At t
hought of gratitude

  Shown than of song or story

  He heard of hearts unkind.

  But with what words for token

  And what adoring tears

  Of reverence risen to passion,

  In what glad prostrate fashion

  Of spirit and soul subdued,

  May man show gratitude

  For thanks of children spoken

  That hover in his ears?

  The angels laugh, your brothers,

  Child, hearing you thank me,

  With eyes whence night grows sunny,

  And touch of lips like honey,

  And words like honey-dew:

  But how shall I thank you?

  For gifts above all others

  What guerdon-gift may be?

  What wealth of words caressing,

  What choice of songs found best,

  Would seem not as derision,

  Found vain beside the vision

  And glory from above

  Shown in a child’s heart’s love?

  His part in life is blessing;

  Ours, only to be blest.

  A CHILD’S BATTLES

  +pyx aretan heurôn+. — PINDAR.

  Praise of the knights of old

  May sleep: their tale is told,

  And no man cares:

  The praise which fires our lips is

  A knight’s whose fame eclipses

  All of theirs.

  The ruddiest light in heaven

  Blazed as his birth-star seven

  Long years ago:

  All glory crown that old year

  Which brought our stout small soldier

  With the snow!

  Each baby born has one

  Star, for his friends a sun,

  The first of stars:

  And we, the more we scan it,

  The more grow sure your planet,