And for joy of the bright news heard
Flower murmurs to flower.
The ways that were glad of his feet
In the woods that he knew
Grow softer to meet
The sense of his footfall anew.
He is near now as day,
Says hope to the new-born light:
He is near now as June is to May,
Says love to the night.
XXIV
Good things I keep to console me
For lack of the best of all,
A child to command and control me,
Bid come and remain at his call.
Sun, wind, and woodland and highland,
Give all that ever they gave:
But my world is a cultureless island,
My spirit a masterless slave.
And friends are about me, and better
At summons of no man stand:
But I pine for the touch of a fetter,
The curb of a strong king’s hand.
Each hour of the day in her season
Is mine to be served as I will:
And for no more exquisite reason
Are all served idly and ill.
By slavery my sense is corrupted,
My soul not fit to be free:
I would fain be controlled, interrupted,
Compelled as a thrall may be.
For fault of spur and of bridle
I tire of my stall to death:
My sail flaps joyless and idle
For want of a small child’s breath.
XXV
Whiter and whiter
The dark lines grow,
And broader opens and brighter
The sense of the text below.
Nightfall and morrow
Bring nigher the boy
Whom wanting we want not sorrow,
Whom having we want no joy.
Clearer and clearer
The sweet sense grows
Of the word which hath summer for hearer,
The word on the lips of the rose.
Duskily dwindles
Each deathlike day,
Till June rearising rekindles
The depth of the darkness of May.
XXVI
“In his bright radiance and collateral light
Must I be comforted, not in his sphere.”
Stars in heaven are many,
Suns in heaven but one:
Nor for man may any
Star supplant the sun.
Many a child as joyous
As our far-off king
Meets as though to annoy us
In the paths of spring.
Sure as spring gives warning,
All things dance in tune:
Sun on Easter morning,
Cloud and windy moon,
Stars between the tossing
Boughs of tuneful trees,
Sails of ships recrossing
Leagues of dancing seas;
Best, in all this playtime,
Best of all in tune,
Girls more glad than Maytime,
Boys more bright than June;
Mixed with all those dances,
Far through field and street
Sing their silent glances,
Ring their radiant feet.
Flowers wherewith May crowned us
Fall ere June be crowned:
Children blossom round us
All the whole year round.
Is the garland worthless
For one rose the less,
And the feast made mirthless?
Love, at least, says yes.
Strange it were, with many
Stars enkindling air,
Should but one find any
Welcome: strange it were,
Had one star alone won
Praise for light from far:
Nay, love needs his own one
Bright particular star.
Hope and recollection
Only lead him right
In its bright reflection
And collateral light.
Find as yet we may not
Comfort in its sphere:
Yet these days will weigh not
When it warms us here;
When full-orbed it rises,
Now divined afar:
None in all the skies is
Half so good a star;
None that seers importune
Till a sign be won:
Star of our good fortune,
Rise and reign, our sun!
XXVII
I pass by the small room now forlorn
Where once each night as I passed I knew
A child’s bright sleep from even to morn
Made sweet the whole night through.
As a soundless shell, as a songless nest,
Seems now the room that was radiant then
And fragrant with his happier rest
Than that of slumbering men.
The day therein is less than the day,
The night is indeed night now therein:
Heavier the dark seems there to weigh,
And slower the dawns begin.
As a nest fulfilled with birds, as a shell
Fulfilled with breath of a god’s own hymn,
Again shall be this bare blank cell,
Made sweet again with him.
XXVIII
Spring darkens before us,
A flame going down,
With chant from the chorus
Of days without crown —
Cloud, rain, and sonorous
Soft wind on the down.
She is wearier not of us
Than we of the dream
That spring was to love us
And joy was to gleam
Through the shadows above us
That shift as they stream.
Half dark and half hoary,
Float far on the loud
Mild wind, as a glory
Half pale and half proud
From the twilight of story,
Her tresses of cloud;
Like phantoms that glimmer
Of glories of old
With ever yet dimmer
Pale circlets of gold
As darkness grows grimmer
And memory more cold.
Like hope growing clearer
With wane of the moon,
Shines toward us the nearer
Gold frontlet of June,
And a face with it dearer
Than midsummer noon.
XXIX
You send me your love in a letter,
I send you my love in a song:
Ah child, your gift is the better,
Mine does you but wrong.
No fame, were the best less brittle,
No praise, were it wide as earth,
Is worth so much as a little
Child’s love may be worth.
We see the children above us
As they might angels above:
Come back to us, child, if you love us,
And bring us your love.
XXX
No time for books or for letters:
What time should there be?
No room for tasks and their fetters:
Full room to be free.
The wind and the sun and the Maytime
Had never a guest
More worthy the most that his playtime
Could give of its best.
If rain should come on, peradventure,
(But sunshine forbid!)
Vain hope in us haply might venture
To dream as it did.
But never may come, of all comers
Least welcome, the rain,
To mix with his servant the summer’s
Rose-garlanded train!
He would write, but his hours are as busy
As bees in the sun,
And the jubilant whirl of their dizzy
Dance never is done.
The message is more than a letter,
Let love understand,
And the thought of his joys even better
Than sight of his hand.
XXXI
Wind, high-souled, full-hearted
South-west wind of the spring!
Ere April and earth had parted,
Skies, bright with thy forward wing,
Grew dark in an hour with the shadow behind it, that bade not a
bird dare sing.
Wind whose feet are sunny,
Wind whose wings are cloud,
With lips more sweet than honey
Still, speak they low or loud,
Rejoice now again in the strength of thine heart: let the depth of
thy soul wax proud.
We hear thee singing or sighing,
Just not given to sight,
All but visibly flying
Between the clouds and the light,
And the light in our hearts is enkindled, the shadow therein of the
clouds put to flight.
From the gift of thine hands we gather
The core of the flowers therein,
Keen glad heart of heather,
Hot sweet heart of whin,
Twin breaths in thy godlike breath close blended of wild spring’s
wildest of kin.
All but visibly beating
We feel thy wings in the far
Clear waste, and the plumes of them fleeting,
Soft as swan’s plumes are,
And strong as a wild swan’s pinions, and swift as the flash of the
flight of a star.
As the flight of a planet enkindled
Seems thy far soft flight
Now May’s reign has dwindled
And the crescent of June takes light
And the presence of summer is here, and the hope of a welcomer
presence in sight.
Wind, sweet-souled, great-hearted
Southwest wind on the wold!
From us is a glory departed
That now shall return as of old,
Borne back on thy wings as an eagle’s expanding, and crowned with
the sundawn’s gold.
There is not a flower but rejoices,
There is not a leaf but has heard:
All the fields find voices,
All the woods are stirred:
There is not a nest but is brighter because of the coming of one
bright bird.
Out of dawn and morning,
Noon and afternoon,
The sun to the world gives warning
Of news that brightens the moon;
And the stars all night exult with us, hearing of joy that shall
come with June.
SUNRISE
If the wind and the sunlight of April and August had mingled the
past and hereafter
In a single adorable season whose life were a rapture of love and
of laughter,
And the blithest of singers were back with a song; if again from
his tomb as from prison,
If again from the night or the twilight of ages Aristophanes had
arisen,
With the gold-feathered wings of a bird that were also a god upon
earth at his shoulders,
And the gold-flowing laugh of the manhood of old at his lips, for a
joy to beholders,
He alone unrebuked of presumption were able to set to some adequate
measure
The delight of our eyes in the dawn that restores them the sun of
their sense and the pleasure.
For the days of the darkness of spirit are over for all of us here,
and the season
When desire was a longing, and absence a thorn, and rejoicing a
word without reason.
For the roof overhead of the pines is astir with delight as of
jubilant voices,
And the floor underfoot of the bracken and heather alive as a heart
that rejoices.
For the house that was childless awhile, and the light of it
darkened, the pulse of it dwindled,
Rings radiant again with a child’s bright feet, with the light of
his face is rekindled.
And the ways of the meadows that knew him, the sweep of the down
that the sky’s belt closes,
Grow gladder at heart than the soft wind made them whose feet were
but fragrant with roses,
Though the fall of the year be upon us, who trusted in June and by
June were defrauded,
And the summer that brought us not back the desire of our eyes be
gone hence unapplauded.
For July came joyless among us, and August went out from us arid
and sterile,
And the hope of our hearts, as it seemed, was no more than a flower
that the seasons imperil,
And the joy of our hearts, as it seemed, than a thought which
regret had not heart to remember,
Till four dark months overpast were atoned for, and summer began in
September.
Hark, April again as a bird in the house with a child’s voice
hither and thither:
See, May in the garden again with a child’s face cheering the woods
ere they wither.
June laughs in the light of his eyes, and July on the sunbright
cheeks of him slumbers,
And August glows in a smile more sweet than the cadence of
gold-mouthed numbers.
In the morning the sight of him brightens the sun, and the noon
with delight in him flushes,
And the silence of nightfall is music about him as soft as the
sleep that it hushes.
We awake with a sense of a sunrise that is not a gift of the
sundawn’s giving,
And a voice that salutes us is sweeter than all sounds else in the
world of the living,
And a presence that warms us is brighter than all in the world of
our visions beholden,
Though the dreams of our sleep were as those that the light of a
world without grief makes golden.
For the best that the best of us ever devised as a likeness of
heaven and its glory,
What was it of old, or what is it and will be for ever, in song or
in story,
Or in shape or in colour of carven or painted resemblance, adored
of all ages,
But a vision recorded of children alive in the pictures of old or
the pages?
Where children are not, heaven is not, and heaven if they come not
again shall be never:
But the face and the voice of a child are assurance of heaven and
its promise for ever.
TRISTRAM OF LYONESSE
This long epic poem narrates the medieval story of the ill-fated lovers Tristan and Isuelt. First published in 1882 by Chatto and Windus, Swinburne himself considered Tristram of Lyonesse to be the crowning achievement of his poetic career. The poem consists of 4488 rhyming pentameters and is divided into ten sections, including a Prelude and nine Cantos, as well as being preceded by a dedicatory sonnet to Swinburne’s friend Theodore Watts-Dunton.
The Prelude begins with a hymn to love and introduces Isuelt among the twelve beautiful women of myth and story, each of whom represents a different month of the year. The introduction to the work concludes with Swinburne’s apology for adding yet another retelling to the already lengthy literature written on the subject of Tristan and Iseult. The first canto is titled The Sailing of the Swallow and begins with elaborate descriptions of both Iseult and Tristram sailing to King Mark of Cornwall, whom Iseult is to marry. The future lovers discuss various tales of the Matter of Britain and Tristram sings
two love-songs to please the innocent Isuelt. The canto ends with their drinking of the love-potion and their fateful first kiss, which will lead to their eventual tragic deaths.
‘Tristan and Iseult’ by Herbert Draper, 1901
CONTENTS
PRELUDE
THE SAILING OF THE SWALLOW
THE QUEEN’S PLEASANCE
TRISTRAM IN BRITTANY
THE MAIDEN MARRIAGE
ISEULT AT TINTAGEL
JOYOUS GARD
THE WIFE’S VIGIL
THE LAST PILGRIMAGE
THE SAILING OF THE SWAN
‘Tristan and Iseult’ by Edmund Blair Leighton, 1902
PRELUDE
Love, that is first and last of all things made,
The light that has the living world for shade,
The spirit that for temporal veil has on
The souls of all men woven in unison,
One fiery raiment with all lives inwrought
And lights of sunny and starry deed and thought,
And alway through new act and passion new
Shines the divine same body and beauty through,
The body spiritual of fire and light
That is to worldly noon as noon to night;
Love, that is flesh upon the spirit of man
And spirit within the flesh whence breath began;
Love, that keeps all the choir of lives in chime;
Love, that is blood within the veins of time;
That wrought the whole world without stroke of hand,
Shaping the breadth of sea, the length of land,
And with the pulse and motion of his breath
Through the great heart of the earth strikes life and death,
The sweet twain chords that make the sweet tune live
Through day and night of things alternative,
Through silence and through sound of stress and strife,
And ebb and flow of dying death and life:
Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne (Illustrated) (Delphi Poets Series) Page 95