Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne (Illustrated) (Delphi Poets Series)
Page 122
III.
Eros, with shafts by thousands aimed
At laughing lovers round in rows,
Fades from their sight whose tongues proclaimed
Eros.
But higher than transient shapes or shows
The light of love in life inflamed
Springs, toward no goal that these disclose.
Above those heavens which passion claimed
Shines, veiled by change that ebbs and flows,
The soul in all things born or framed,
Eros.
SORROW
Sorrow, on wing through the world for ever,
Here and there for awhile would borrow
Rest, if rest might haply deliver
Sorrow.
One thought lies close in her heart gnawn thorough
With pain, a weed in a dried-up river,
A rust-red share in an empty furrow.
Hearts that strain at her chain would sever
The link where yesterday frets to-morrow:
All things pass in the world, but never
Sorrow.
SLEEP
Sleep, when a soul that her own clouds cover
Wails that sorrow should always keep
Watch, nor see in the gloom above her
Sleep,
Down, through darkness naked and steep,
Sinks, and the gifts of his grace recover
Soon the soul, though her wound be deep.
God beloved of us, all men’s lover,
All most weary that smile or weep
Feel thee afar or anear them hover,
Sleep.
ON AN OLD ROUNDEL TRANSLATED BY D. C. ROSSETTI FROM THE FRENCH OF VILLON
I.
Death, from thy rigour a voice appealed,
And men still hear what the sweet cry saith,
Crying aloud in thine ears fast sealed,
Death.
As a voice in a vision that vanisheth,
Through the grave’s gate barred and the portal steeled
The sound of the wail of it travelleth.
Wailing aloud from a heart unhealed,
It woke response of melodious breath
From lips now too by thy kiss congealed,
Death
II.
Ages ago, from the lips of a sad glad poet
Whose soul was a wild dove lost in the whirling snow,
The soft keen plaint of his pain took voice to show it
Ages ago.
So clear, so deep, the divine drear accents flow,
No soul that listens may choose but thrill to know it,
Pierced and wrung by the passionate music’s throe.
For us there murmurs a nearer voice below it,
Known once of ears that never again shall know,
Now mute as the mouth which felt death’s wave o’erflow it
Ages ago.
A LANDSCAPE BY COURBET
Low lies the mere beneath the moorside, still
And glad of silence: down the wood sweeps clear
To the utmost verge where fed with many a rill
Low lies the mere.
The wind speaks only summer: eye nor ear
Sees aught at all of dark, hears aught of shrill,
From sound or shadow felt or fancied here.
Strange, as we praise the dead man’s might and skill,
Strange that harsh thoughts should make such heavy cheer,
While, clothed with peace by heaven’s most gentle will,
Low lies the mere.
A FLOWER-PIECE BY FANTIN
Heart’s ease or pansy, pleasure or thought,
Which would the picture give us of these?
Surely the heart that conceived it sought
Heart’s ease.
Surely by glad and divine degrees
The heart impelling the hand that wrought
Wrought comfort here for a soul’s disease.
Deep flowers, with lustre and darkness fraught,
From glass that gleams as the chill still seas
Lean and lend for a heart distraught
Heart’s ease.
A NIGHT-PIECE BY MILLET
Wind and sea and cloud and cloud-forsaking
Mirth of moonlight where the storm leaves free
Heaven awhile, for all the wrath of waking
Wind and sea.
Bright with glad mad rapture, fierce with glee,
Laughs the moon, borne on past cloud’s o’ertaking
Fast, it seems, as wind or sail can flee.
One blown sail beneath her, hardly making
Forth, wild-winged for harbourage yet to be,
Strives and leaps and pants beneath the breaking
Wind and sea.
MARZO PAZZO
Mad March, with the wind in his wings wide-spread,
Leaps from heaven, and the deep dawn’s arch
Hails re-risen again from the dead
Mad March.
Soft small flames on rowan and larch
Break forth as laughter on lips that said
Nought till the pulse in them beat love’s march.
But the heartbeat now in the lips rose-red
Speaks life to the world, and the winds that parch
Bring April forth as a bride to wed
Mad March.
DEAD LOVE
Dead love, by treason slain, lies stark,
White as a dead stark-stricken dove:
None that pass by him pause to mark
Dead love.
His heart, that strained and yearned and strove
As toward the sundawn strives the lark,
Is cold as all the old joy thereof.
Dead men, re-risen from dust, may hark
When rings the trumpet blown above:
It will not raise from out the dark
Dead love.
DISCORD
Unreconciled by life’s fleet years, that fled
With changeful clang of pinions wide and wild,
Though two great spirits had lived, and hence had sped
Unreconciled;
Though time and change, harsh time’s imperious child,
That wed strange hands together, might not wed
High hearts by hope’s misprision once beguiled;
Faith, by the light from either’s memory shed,
Sees, radiant as their ends were undefiled,
One goal for each — not twain among the dead
Unreconciled.
CONCORD
Reconciled by death’s mild hand, that giving
Peace gives wisdom, not more strong than mild,
Love beholds them, each without misgiving
Reconciled.
Each on earth alike of earth reviled,
Hated, feared, derided, and forgiving,
Each alike had heaven at heart, and smiled.
Both bright names, clothed round with man’s thanksgiving,
Shine, twin stars above the storm-drifts piled,
Dead and deathless, whom we saw not living
Reconciled.
MOURNING
Alas my brother! the cry of the mourners of old
That cried on each other,
All crying aloud on the dead as the death-note rolled,
Alas my brother!
As flashes of dawn that mists from an east wind smother
With fold upon fold,
The past years gleam that linked us one with another.
Time sunders hearts as of brethren whose eyes behold
No more their mother:
But a cry sounds yet from the shrine whose fires wax cold,
Alas my brother!
APEROTOS EROS
Strong as death, and cruel as the grave,
Clothed with cloud and tempest’s blackening breath,
Known of death’s dread self, whom none outbrave,
Strong as death,
Love, brow-bound with anguish for a wreath,<
br />
Fierce with pain, a tyrant-hearted slave,
Burns above a world that groans beneath.
Hath not pity power on thee to save,
Love? hath power no pity? Nought he saith,
Answering: blind he walks as wind or wave,
Strong as death.
TO CATULLUS
My brother, my Valerius, dearest head
Of all whose crowning bay-leaves crown their mother
Rome, in the notes first heard of thine I read
My brother.
No dust that death or time can strew may smother
Love and the sense of kinship inly bred
From loves and hates at one with one another.
To thee was Caesar’s self nor dear nor dread,
Song and the sea were sweeter each than other:
How should I living fear to call thee dead
My brother?
INSULARUM OCELLE
Sark, fairer than aught in the world that the lit skies cover,
Laughs inly behind her cliffs, and the seafarers mark
As a shrine where the sunlight serves, though the blown clouds hover,
Sark.
We mourn, for love of a song that outsang the lark,
That nought so lovely beholden of Sirmio’s lover
Made glad in Propontis the flight of his Pontic bark.
Here earth lies lordly, triumphal as heaven is above her,
And splendid and strange as the sea that upbears as an ark,
As a sign for the rapture of storm-spent eyes to discover,
Sark.
IN SARK
Abreast and ahead of the sea is a crag’s front cloven asunder
With strong sea-breach and with wasting of winds whence terror is
shed
As a shadow of death from the wings of the darkness on waters that
thunder
Abreast and ahead.
At its edge is a sepulchre hollowed and hewn for a lone man’s bed,
Propped open with rock and agape on the sky and the sea thereunder,
But roofed and walled in well from the wrath of them slept its dead.
Here might not a man drink rapture of rest, or delight above wonder,
Beholding, a soul disembodied, the days and the nights that fled,
With splendour and sound of the tempest around and above him and
under,
Abreast and ahead?
IN GUERNSEY TO THEODORE WATTS
I.
The heavenly bay, ringed round with cliffs and moors,
Storm-stained ravines, and crags that lawns inlay,
Soothes as with love the rocks whose guard secures
The heavenly bay.
O friend, shall time take ever this away,
This blessing given of beauty that endures,
This glory shown us, not to pass but stay?
Though sight be changed for memory, love ensures
What memory, changed by love to sight, would say -
The word that seals for ever mine and yours
The heavenly bay.
II.
My mother sea, my fostress, what new strand,
What new delight of waters, may this be,
The fairest found since time’s first breezes fanned
My mother sea?
Once more I give me body and soul to thee,
Who hast my soul for ever: cliff and sand
Recede, and heart to heart once more are we.
My heart springs first and plunges, ere my hand
Strike out from shore: more close it brings to me,
More near and dear than seems my fatherland,
My mother sea.
III.
Across and along, as the bay’s breadth opens, and o’er us
Wild autumn exults in the wind, swift rapture and strong
Impels us, and broader the wide waves brighten before us
Across and along.
The whole world’s heart is uplifted, and knows not wrong;
The whole world’s life is a chant to the sea-tide’s chorus;
Are we not as waves of the water, as notes of the song?
Like children unworn of the passions and toils that wore us,
We breast for a season the breadth of the seas that throng,
Rejoicing as they, to be borne as of old they bore us
Across and along.
IV.
On Dante’s track by some funereal spell
Drawn down through desperate ways that lead not back
We seem to move, bound forth past flood and fell
On Dante’s track.
The grey path ends: the gaunt rocks gape: the black
Deep hollow tortuous night, a soundless shell,
Glares darkness: are the fires of old grown slack?
Nay, then, what flames are these that leap and swell
As ‘twere to show, where earth’s foundations crack,
The secrets of the sepulchres of hell
On Dante’s track?
V.
By mere men’s hands the flame was lit, we know,
From heaps of dry waste whin and casual brands:
Yet, knowing, we scarce believe it kindled so
By mere men’s hands.
Above, around, high-vaulted hell expands,
Steep, dense, a labyrinth walled and roofed with woe,
Whose mysteries even itself not understands.
The scorn in Farinata’s eyes aglow
Seems visible in this flame: there Geryon stands:
No stage of earth’s is here, set forth to show
By mere men’s hands.
VI.
Night, in utmost noon forlorn and strong, with heart athirst and
fasting,
Hungers here, barred up for ever, whence as one whom dreams affright
Day recoils before the low-browed lintel threatening doom and casting
Night.
All the reefs and islands, all the lawns and highlands, clothed with
light,
Laugh for love’s sake in their sleep outside: but here the night
speaks, blasting
Day with silent speech and scorn of all things known from depth to
height.
Lower than dive the thoughts of spirit-stricken fear in souls
forecasting
Hell, the deep void seems to yawn beyond fear’s reach, and higher
than sight
Rise the walls and roofs that compass it about with everlasting
Night.
VII.
The house accurst, with cursing sealed and signed,
Heeds not what storms about it burn and burst:
No fear more fearful than its own may find
The house accurst.
Barren as crime, anhungered and athirst,
Blank miles of moor sweep inland, sere and blind,
Where summer’s best rebukes not winter’s worst.
The low bleak tower with nought save wastes behind
Stares down the abyss whereon chance reared and nursed
This type and likeness of the accurst man’s mind,
The house accurst.
VIII.
Beloved and blest, lit warm with love and fame,
The house that had the light of the earth for guest
Hears for his name’s sake all men hail its name
Beloved and blest.
This eyrie was the homeless eagle’s nest
When storm laid waste his eyrie: hence he came
Again, when storm smote sore his mother’s breast.
Bow down men bade us, or be clothed with blame
And mocked for madness: worst, they sware, was best:
But grief shone here, while joy was one with shame,
Beloved and blest.
ENVOI
Fly, white butterflies, out to sea,
Frail pale wings for the winds to try,
Small white wi
ngs that we scarce can see
Fly.
Here and there may a chance-caught eye
Note in a score of you twain or three
Brighter or darker of tinge or dye.
Some fly light as a laugh of glee,
Some fly soft as a low long sigh:
All to the haven where each would be
Fly.
ASTROPHEL AND OTHER POEMS
CONTENTS
TO WILLIAM MORRIS
ASTROPHEL
A NYMPHOLEPT
ON THE SOUTH COAST
AN AUTUMN VISION
A SWIMMER’S DREAM
GRACE DARLING
LOCH TORRIDON
THE PALACE OF PAN
A YEAR’S CAROLS
ENGLAND: AN ODE
ETON: AN ODE
THE UNION
EAST TO WEST
INSCRIPTIONS FOR THE FOUR SIDES OF A PEDESTAL
ON THE DEATH OF RICHARD BURTON
ELEGY
A SEQUENCE OF SONNETS ON THE DEATH OF ROBERT BROWNING
SUNSET AND MOONRISE
BIRTHDAY ODE
THRENODY
THE BALLAD OF MELICERTES
AU TOMBEAU DE BANVILLE