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

by Algernon Charles Swinburne

  March 1882.

  TO WILLIAM BELL SCOTT

  The larks are loud above our leagues of whin

  Now the sun’s perfume fills their glorious gold

  With odour like the colour: all the wold

  Is only light and song and wind wherein

  These twain are blent in one with shining din.

  And now your gift, a giver’s kingly-souled,

  Dear old fast friend whose honours grow not old,

  Bids memory’s note as loud and sweet begin.

  Though all but we from life be now gone forth

  Of that bright household in our joyous north

  Where I, scarce clear of boyhood just at end,

  First met your hand; yet under life’s clear dome,

  Now seventy strenuous years have crowned my friend,

  Shines no less bright his full-sheaved harvest-home.

  April 20, 1882.

  A DEATH ON EASTER DAY

  The strong spring sun rejoicingly may rise,

  Rise and make revel, as of old men said,

  Like dancing hearts of lovers newly wed:

  A light more bright than ever bathed the skies

  Departs for all time out of all men’s eyes.

  The crowns that girt last night a living head

  Shine only now, though deathless, on the dead:

  Art that mocks death, and Song that never dies.

  Albeit the bright sweet mothlike wings be furled,

  Hope sees, past all division and defection,

  And higher than swims the mist of human breath,

  The soul most radiant once in all the world

  Requickened to regenerate resurrection

  Out of the likeness of the shadow of death.

  April 1882.

  ON THE DEATHS OF THOMAS CARLYLE AND GEORGE ELIOT

  Two souls diverse out of our human sight

  Pass, followed one with love and each with wonder:

  The stormy sophist with his mouth of thunder,

  Clothed with loud words and mantled in the might

  Of darkness and magnificence of night;

  And one whose eye could smite the night in sunder,

  Searching if light or no light were thereunder,

  And found in love of loving-kindness light.

  Duty divine and Thought with eyes of fire

  Still following Righteousness with deep desire

  Shone sole and stern before her and above,

  Sure stars and sole to steer by; but more sweet

  Shone lower the loveliest lamp for earthly feet,

  The light of little children, and their love.

  AFTER LOOKING INTO CARLYLE’S REMINISCENCES

  I

  Three men lived yet when this dead man was young

  Whose names and words endure for ever: one

  Whose eyes grew dim with straining toward the sun,

  And his wings weakened, and his angel’s tongue

  Lost half the sweetest song was ever sung,

  But like the strain half uttered earth hears none,

  Nor shall man hear till all men’s songs are done:

  One whose clear spirit like an eagle hung

  Between the mountains hallowed by his love

  And the sky stainless as his soul above:

  And one the sweetest heart that ever spake

  The brightest words wherein sweet wisdom smiled.

  These deathless names by this dead snake defiled

  Bid memory spit upon him for their sake.

  II

  Sweet heart, forgive me for thine own sweet sake,

  Whose kind blithe soul such seas of sorrow swam,

  And for my love’s sake, powerless as I am

  For love to praise thee, or like thee to make

  Music of mirth where hearts less pure would break,

  Less pure than thine, our life-unspotted Lamb.

  Things hatefullest thou hadst not heart to damn,

  Nor wouldst have set thine heel on this dead snake.

  Let worms consume its memory with its tongue,

  The fang that stabbed fair Truth, the lip that stung

  Men’s memories uncorroded with its breath.

  Forgive me, that with bitter words like his

  I mix the gentlest English name that is,

  The tenderest held of all that know not death.

  A LAST LOOK

  Sick of self-love, Malvolio, like an owl

  That hoots the sun rerisen where starlight sank,

  With German garters crossed athwart thy frank

  Stout Scottish legs, men watched thee snarl and scowl,

  And boys responsive with reverberate howl

  Shrilled, hearing how to thee the springtime stank

  And as thine own soul all the world smelt rank

  And as thine own thoughts Liberty seemed foul.

  Now, for all ill thoughts nursed and ill words given

  Not all condemned, not utterly forgiven,

  Son of the storm and darkness, pass in peace.

  Peace upon earth thou knewest not: now, being dead,

  Rest, with nor curse nor blessing on thine head,

  Where high-strung hate and strenuous envy cease.

  DICKENS

  Chief in thy generation born of men

  Whom English praise acclaimed as English-born,

  With eyes that matched the worldwide eyes of morn

  For gleam of tears or laughter, tenderest then

  When thoughts of children warmed their light, or when

  Reverence of age with love and labour worn,

  Or godlike pity fired with godlike scorn,

  Shot through them flame that winged thy swift live pen:

  Where stars and suns that we behold not burn,

  Higher even than here, though highest was here thy place,

  Love sees thy spirit laugh and speak and shine

  With Shakespeare and the soft bright soul of Sterne

  And Fielding’s kindliest might and Goldsmith’s grace;

  Scarce one more loved or worthier love than thine.

  ON LAMB’S SPECIMENS OF DRAMATIC POETS

  I

  If all the flowers of all the fields on earth

  By wonder-working summer were made one,

  Its fragrance were not sweeter in the sun,

  Its treasure-house of leaves were not more worth

  Than those wherefrom thy light of musing mirth

  Shone, till each leaf whereon thy pen would run

  Breathed life, and all its breath was benison.

  Beloved beyond all names of English birth,

  More dear than mightier memories; gentlest name

  That ever clothed itself with flower-sweet fame,

  Or linked itself with loftiest names of old

  By right and might of loving; I, that am

  Less than the least of those within thy fold,

  Give only thanks for them to thee, Charles Lamb.

  II

  So many a year had borne its own bright bees

  And slain them since thy honey-bees were hived,

  John Day, in cells of flower-sweet verse contrived

  So well with craft of moulding melodies,

  Thy soul perchance in amaranth fields at ease

  Thought not to hear the sound on earth revived

  Of summer music from the spring derived

  When thy song sucked the flower of flowering trees.

  But thine was not the chance of every day:

  Time, after many a darkling hour, grew sunny,

  And light between the clouds ere sunset swam,

  Laughing, and kissed their darkness all away,

  When, touched and tasted and approved, thy honey

  Took subtler sweetness from the lips of Lamb.

  TO JOHN NICHOL

  I

  Friend of the dead, and friend of all my days

  Even since they cast off boyhood, I salute

  The son
g saluting friends whose songs are mute

  With full burnt-offerings of clear-spirited praise.

  That since our old young years our several ways

  Have led through fields diverse of flower and fruit,

  Yet no cross wind has once relaxed the root

  We set long since beneath the sundawn’s rays,

  The root of trust whence towered the trusty tree,

  Friendship — this only and duly might impel

  My song to salutation of your own;

  More even than praise of one unseen of me

  And loved — the starry spirit of Dobell,

  To mine by light and music only known.

  II

  But more than this what moves me most of all

  To leave not all unworded and unsped

  The whole heart’s greeting of my thanks unsaid

  Scarce needs this sign, that from my tongue should fall

  His name whom sorrow and reverent love recall,

  The sign to friends on earth of that dear head

  Alive, which now long since untimely dead

  The wan grey waters covered for a pall.

  Their trustless reaches dense with tangling stems

  Took never life more taintless of rebuke,

  More pure and perfect, more serene and kind,

  Than when those clear eyes closed beneath the Thames,

  And made the now more hallowed name of Luke

  Memorial to us of morning left behind.

  May 1881.

  DYSTHANATOS

  Ad generem Cereris sine cæde et vulnere pauci

  Descendunt reges, aut siccâ morte tyranni.

  By no dry death another king goes down

  The way of kings. Yet may no free man’s voice,

  For stern compassion and deep awe, rejoice

  That one sign more is given against the crown,

  That one more head those dark red waters drown

  Which rise round thrones whose trembling equipoise

  Is propped on sand and bloodshed and such toys

  As human hearts that shrink at human frown.

  The name writ red on Polish earth, the star

  That was to outshine our England’s in the far

  East heaven of empire — where is one that saith

  Proud words now, prophesying of this White Czar?

  “In bloodless pangs few kings yield up their breath,

  Few tyrants perish by no violent death.”

  March 14, 1881.

  EUONYMOS

  [Greek: eu mên hê timên edidou nikêphoros alkê

  ek nikês onom’ esche phobou kear aien athiktos.]

  A year ago red wrath and keen despair

  Spake, and the sole word from their darkness sent

  Laid low the lord not all omnipotent

  Who stood most like a god of all that were

  As gods for pride of power, till fire and air

  Made earth of all his godhead. Lightning rent

  The heart of empire’s lurid firmament,

  And laid the mortal core of manhood bare.

  But when the calm crowned head that all revere

  For valour higher than that which casts out fear,

  Since fear came near it never, comes near death,

  Blind murder cowers before it, knowing that here

  No braver soul drew bright and queenly breath

  Since England wept upon Elizabeth.

  March 8, 1882.

  ON THE RUSSIAN PERSECUTION OF THE JEWS

  O son of man, by lying tongues adored,

  By slaughterous hands of slaves with feet red-shod

  In carnage deep as ever Christian trod

  Profaned with prayer and sacrifice abhorred

  And incense from the trembling tyrant’s horde,

  Brute worshippers or wielders of the rod,

  Most murderous even of all that call thee God,

  Most treacherous even that ever called thee Lord;

  Face loved of little children long ago,

  Head hated of the priests and rulers then,

  If thou see this, or hear these hounds of thine

  Run ravening as the Gadarean swine,

  Say, was not this thy Passion, to foreknow

  In death’s worst hour the works of Christian men?

  January 23, 1882.

  BISMARCK AT CANOSSA

  Not all disgraced, in that Italian town,

  The imperial German cowered beneath thine hand,

  Alone indeed imperial Hildebrand,

  And felt thy foot and Rome’s, and felt her frown

  And thine, more strong and sovereign than his crown,

  Though iron forged its blood-encrusted band.

  But now the princely wielder of his land,

  For hatred’s sake toward freedom, so bows down,

  No strength is in the foot to spurn: its tread

  Can bruise not now the proud submitted head:

  But how much more abased, much lower brought low,

  And more intolerably humiliated,

  The neck submissive of the prosperous foe,

  Than his whom scorn saw shuddering in the snow!

  December 31, 1881.

  QUIA NOMINOR LEO

  I

  What part is left thee, lion? Ravenous beast,

  Which hadst the world for pasture, and for scope

  And compass of thine homicidal hope

  The kingdom of the spirit of man, the feast

  Of souls subdued from west to sunless east,

  From blackening north to bloodred south aslope,

  All servile; earth for footcloth of the pope,

  And heaven for chancel-ceiling of the priest;

  Thou that hadst earth by right of rack and rod,

  Thou that hadst Rome because thy name was God,

  And by thy creed’s gift heaven wherein to dwell;

  Heaven laughs with all his light and might above

  That earth has cast thee out of faith and love;

  Thy part is but the hollow dream of hell.

  II

  The light of life has faded from thy cause,

  High priest of heaven and hell and purgatory:

  Thy lips are loud with strains of oldworld story,

  But the red prey was rent out of thy paws

  Long since: and they that dying brake down thy laws

  Have with the fires of death-enkindled glory

  Put out the flame that faltered on thy hoary

  High altars, waning with the world’s applause.

  This Italy was Dante’s: Bruno died

  Here: Campanella, too sublime for pride,

  Endured thy God’s worst here, and hence went home.

  And what art thou, that time’s full tide should shrink

  For thy sake downward? What art thou, to think

  Thy God shall give thee back for birthright Rome?

  January 1882.

  THE CHANNEL TUNNEL

  Not for less love, all glorious France, to thee,

  “Sweet enemy” called in days long since at end,

  Now found and hailed of England sweeter friend,

  Bright sister of our freedom now, being free;

  Not for less love or faith in friendship we

  Whose love burnt ever toward thee reprehend

  The vile vain greed whose pursy dreams portend

  Between our shores suppression of the sea.

  Not by dull toil of blind mechanic art

  Shall these be linked for no man’s force to part

  Nor length of years and changes to divide,

  But union only of trust and loving heart

  And perfect faith in freedom strong to abide

  And spirit at one with spirit on either side.

  April 3, 1882.

  SIR WILLIAM GOMM

  I

  At threescore years and five aroused anew

  To rule in India, forth a soldier went

  On whose bright-f
ronted youth fierce war had spent

  Its iron stress of storm, till glory grew

  Full as the red sun waned on Waterloo.

  Landing, he met the word from England sent

  Which bade him yield up rule: and he, content,

  Resigned it, as a mightier warrior’s due;

  And wrote as one rejoicing to record

  That “from the first” his royal heart was lord

  Of its own pride or pain; that thought was none

  Therein save this, that in her perilous strait

  England, whose womb brings forth her sons so great,

  Should choose to serve her first her mightiest son.

  II

  Glory beyond all flight of warlike fame

  Go with the warrior’s memory who preferred

  To praise of men whereby men’s hearts are stirred,

  And acclamation of his own proud name

  With blare of trumpet-blasts and sound and flame

  Of pageant honour, and the titular word

  That only wins men worship of the herd,

  His country’s sovereign good; who overcame

  Pride, wrath, and hope of all high chance on earth,

  For this land’s love that gave his great heart birth.

  O nursling of the sea-winds and the sea,

  Immortal England, goddess ocean-born,

  What shall thy children fear, what strengths not scorn,

  While children of such mould are born to thee?

  SONNETS ON ENGLISH DRAMATIC POETS (1590-1650)

  CONTENTS

  CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE

  WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

  BEN JONSON

  BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER

  PHILIP MASSINGER

  JOHN FORD

  JOHN WEBSTER

  THOMAS DECKER

  THOMAS MIDDLETON