Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne (Illustrated) (Delphi Poets Series)
Page 94
swift ages
All was told —
Seen of eyes yet bright from heaven — for the lips that laughed
were seven
Sweet years old.
X
Why should May remember
March, if March forget
The days that began with December
The nights that a frost could fret?
All their griefs are done with
Now the bright months bless
Fit souls to rejoice in the sun with,
Fit heads for the wind’s caress;
Souls of children quickening
With the whole world’s mirth,
Heads closelier than field-flowers thickening
That crowd and illuminate earth,
Now that May’s call musters
Files of baby bands
To marshal in joyfuller clusters
Than the flowers that encumber their hands.
Yet morose November
Found them no less gay,
With nought to forget or remember
Less bright than a branch of may.
All the seasons moving
Move their minds alike
Applauding, acclaiming, approving
All hours of the year that strike.
So my heart may fret not,
Wondering if my friend
Remember me not or forget not
Or ever the month find end.
Not that love sows lighter
Seed in children sown,
But that life being lit in them brighter
Moves fleeter than even our own.
May nor yet September
Binds their hearts, that yet
Remember, forget, and remember,
Forget, and recall, and forget.
XI
As light on a lake’s face moving
Between a cloud and a cloud
Till night reclaim it, reproving
The heart that exults too loud,
The heart that watching rejoices
When soft it swims into sight
Applauded of all the voices
And stars of the windy night,
So brief and unsure, but sweeter
Than ever a moondawn smiled,
Moves, measured of no tune’s metre,
The song in the soul of a child;
The song that the sweet soul singing
Half listens, and hardly hears,
Though sweeter than joy-bells ringing
And brighter than joy’s own tears;
The song that remembrance of pleasure
Begins, and forgetfulness ends
With a soft swift change in the measure
That rings in remembrance of friends
As the moon on the lake’s face flashes,
So haply may gleam at whiles
A dream through the dear deep lashes
Whereunder a child’s eye smiles,
And the least of us all that love him
May take for a moment part
With angels around and above him,
And I find place in his heart.
XII
Child, were you kinless and lonely —
Dear, were you kin to me —
My love were compassionate only
Or such as it needs would be.
But eyes of father and mother
Like sunlight shed on you shine:
What need you have heed of another
Such new strange love as is mine?
It is not meet if unruly
Hands take of the children’s bread
And cast it to dogs; but truly
The dogs after all would be fed.
On crumbs from the children’s table
That crumble, dropped from above,
My heart feeds, fed with unstable
Loose waifs of a child’s light love.
Though love in your heart were brittle
As glass that breaks with a touch,
You haply would lend him a little
Who surely would give you much.
XIII
Here is a rough
Rude sketch of my friend,
Faint-coloured enough
And unworthily penned.
Fearlessly fair
And triumphant he stands,
And holds unaware
Friends’ hearts in his hands;
Stalwart and straight
As an oak that should bring
Forth gallant and great
Fresh roses in spring.
On the paths of his pleasure
All graces that wait
What metre shall measure
What rhyme shall relate
Each action, each motion,
Each feature, each limb,
Demands a devotion
In honour of him:
Head that the hand
Of a god might have blest,
Laid lustrous and bland
On the curve of its crest:
Mouth sweeter than cherries,
Keen eyes as of Mars,
Browner than berries
And brighter than stars.
Nor colour nor wordy
Weak song can declare
The stature how sturdy,
How stalwart his air.
As a king in his bright
Presence-chamber may be,
So seems he in height —
Twice higher than your knee.
As a warrior sedate
With reserve of his power,
So seems he in state —
As tall as a flower:
As a rose overtowering
The ranks of the rest
That beneath it lie cowering,
Less bright than their best.
And his hands are as sunny
As ruddy ripe corn
Or the browner-hued honey
From heather-bells borne.
When summer sits proudest,
Fulfilled with its mirth,
And rapture is loudest
In air and on earth,
The suns of all hours
That have ripened the roots
Bring forth not such flowers
And beget not such fruits.
And well though I know it,
As fain would I write,
Child, never a poet
Could praise you aright.
I bless you? the blessing
Were less than a jest
Too poor for expressing;
I come to be blest,
With humble and dutiful
Heart, from above:
Bless me, O my beautiful
Innocent love!
This rhyme in your praise
With a smile was begun;
But the goal of his ways
Is uncovered to none,
Nor pervious till after
The limit impend;
It is not in laughter
These rhymes of you end.
XIV
Spring, and fall, and summer, and winter,
Which may Earth love least of them all,
Whose arms embrace as their signs imprint her,
Summer, or winter, or spring, or fall?
The clear-eyed spring with the wood-birds mating,
The rose-red summer with eyes aglow,
The yellow fall with serene eyes waiting,
The wild-eyed winter with hair all snow?
Spring’s eyes are soft, but if frosts benumb her
As winter’s own will her shrewd breath sting:
Storms may rend the raiment of summer,
And fall grow bitter as harsh-lipped spring.
One sign for summer and winter guides me,
One for spring, and the like for fall:
Whichever from sight of my friend divides me,
That is the worst ill season of all.
XV
Worse than winter is spring
If I come not to sight of my king:
But then what a spring will it be
When my king takes homage of me!
I send his grace from afar
Homage, as though to a star;
As a shepherd whose flock takes flight
May worship a star by night.
As a flock that a wolf is upon
My songs take flight and are gone:
No heart is in any to sing
Aught but the praise of my king.
Fain would I once and again
Sing deeds and passions of men:
But ever a child’s head gleams
Between my work and my dreams.
Between my hand and my eyes
The lines of a small face rise,
And the lines I trace and retrace
Are none but those of the face.
XVI
Till the tale of all this flock of days alike
All be done,
Weary days of waiting till the month’s hand strike
Thirty-one,
Till the clock’s hand of the month break off, and end
With the clock,
Till the last and whitest sheep at last be penned
Of the flock,
I their shepherd keep the count of night and day
With my song,
Though my song be, like this month which once was May,
All too long.
XVII
The incarnate sun, a tall strong youth,
On old Greek eyes in sculpture smiled:
But trulier had it given the truth
To shape him like a child.
No face full-grown of all our dearest
So lightens all our darkness, none
Most loved of all our hearts hold nearest
To far outshines the sun,
As when with sly shy smiles that feign
Doubt if the hour be clear, the time
Fit to break off my work again
Or sport of prose or rhyme,
My friend peers in on me with merry
Wise face, and though the sky stay dim
The very light of day, the very
Sun’s self comes in with him.
XVIII
Out of sight,
Out of mind!
Could the light
Prove unkind?
Can the sun
Quite forget
What was done
Ere he set?
Does the moon
When she wanes
Leave no tune
That remains
In the void
Shell of night
Overcloyed
With her light?
Must the shore
At low tide
Feel no more
Hope or pride,
No intense
Joy to be,
In the sense
Of the sea —
In the pulses
Of her shocks
It repulses,
When its rocks
Thrill and ring
As with glee?
Has my king
Cast off me,
Whom no bird
Flying south
Brings one word
From his mouth?
Not the ghost
Of a word.
Riding post
Have I heard,
Since the day
When my king
Took away
With him spring,
And the cup
Of each flower
Shrivelled up
That same hour,
With no light
Left behind.
Out of sight,
Out of mind!
XIX
Because I adore you
And fall
On the knees of my spirit before you —
After all,
You need not insult,
My king,
With neglect, though your spirit exult
In the spring,
Even me, though not worth,
God knows,
One word of you sent me in mirth,
Or one rose
Out of all in your garden
That grow
Where the frost and the wind never harden
Flakes of snow,
Nor ever is rain
At all,
But the roses rejoice to remain
Fair and tall —
The roses of love,
More sweet
Than blossoms that rain from above
Round our feet,
When under high bowers
We pass,
Where the west wind freckles with flowers
All the grass.
But a child’s thoughts bear
More bright
Sweet visions by day, and more fair
Dreams by night,
Than summer’s whole treasure
Can be:
What am I that his thought should take pleasure,
Then, in me?
I am only my love’s
True lover,
With a nestful of songs, like doves
Under cover,
That I bring in my cap
Fresh caught,
To be laid on my small king’s lap —
Worth just nought.
Yet it haply may hap
That he,
When the mirth in his veins is as sap
In a tree,
Will remember me too
Some day
Ere the transit be thoroughly through
Of this May —
Or perchance, if such grace
May be,
Some night when I dream of his face.
Dream of me.
Or if this be too high
A hope
For me to prefigure in my
Horoscope,
He may dream of the place
Where we
Basked once in the light of his face,
Who now see
Nought brighter, not one
Thing bright,
Than the stars and the moon and the sun,
Day nor night.
XX
Day by darkling day,
Overpassing, bears away
Somewhat of the burden of this weary May.
Night by numbered night,
Waning, brings more near in sight
Hope that grows to vision of my heart’s delight.
Nearer seems to burn
In the dawn’s rekindling urn
Flame of fragrant incense, hailing his return.
Louder seems each bird
In the brightening branches heard
Still to speak some ever more delightful word.
All the mists that swim
Round the dawns that grow less dim
Still wax brighter and more bright with hope of him.
All the suns that rise
Bring that day more near our eyes
When the sight of him shall clear our clouded skies.
All the winds that roam
Fruitful fields or fruitless foam
Blow the bright hour near that brings his bright face home.
XXI
I hear of two far hence
In a garden met,
And the fragrance blown from thence
Fades not yet.
The one is seven years old,
And my friend is he:
But the years of the other have told
Eighty-three.
To hear these twain converse
Or to see them greet
Were sweeter than softest verse
May be sweet.
The hoar old gardener there
With an eye more mild
Perchance than his mild white hair
Meets the child.
I had rather hear the words
That the twain exchange
Than the songs of all the birds
There that range,
Call, chirp, and twitter there
Through the garden-beds
Where the sun alike sees fair
Those two heads,
And which may holier be
Held in heaven of those
Or more worth heart’s thanks to see
No man knows.
XXII
Of such is the kingdom of heaven,
No glory that ever was shed
From the crowning star of the seven
That crown the north world’s head,
No word that ever was spoken
Of human or godlike tongue,
Gave ever such godlike token
Since human harps were strung.
No sign that ever was given
To faithful or faithless eyes
Showed ever beyond clouds riven
So clear a Paradise.
Earth’s creeds may be seventy times seven
And blood have defiled each creed:
If of such be the kingdom of heaven,
It must be heaven indeed.
XXIII
The wind on the downs is bright
As though from the sea:
And morning and night
Take comfort again with me.
He is nearer to-day,
Each night to each morning saith,
Whose return shall revive dead May
With the balm of his breath.
The sunset says to the moon,
He is nearer to-night
Whose coming in June
Is looked for more than the light.
Bird answers to bird,
Hour passes the sign on to hour,