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

by Algernon Charles Swinburne

  Gods too but endure for a season; but thou, if thou be

  God, more than shadows conceived and adored of man,

  Kind Gods and fierce, that bound him or made him free,

  The skies that scorn us are less in thy sight than we,

  Whose souls have strength to conceive and perceive thee, Pan,

  With sense more subtle than senses that hear and see.

  Yet may not it say, though it seek thee and think to find

  One soul of sense in the fire and the frost-bound clod,

  What heart is this, what spirit alive or blind,

  That moves thee: only we know that the ways we trod

  We tread, with hands unguided, with feet unshod,

  With eyes unlightened; and yet, if with steadfast mind,

  Perchance may we find thee and know thee at last for God.

  Yet then should God be dark as the dawn is bright,

  And bright as the night is dark on the world — no more.

  Light slays not darkness, and darkness absorbs not light;

  And the labour of evil and good from the years of yore

  Is even as the labour of waves on a sunless shore.

  And he who is first and last, who is depth and height,

  Keeps silence now, as the sun when the woods wax hoar.

  The dark dumb godhead innate in the fair world’s life

  Imbues the rapture of dawn and of noon with dread,

  Infects the peace of the star-shod night with strife,

  Informs with terror the sorrow that guards the dead.

  No service of bended knee or of humbled head

  May soothe or subdue the God who has change to wife:

  And life with death is as morning with evening wed.

  And yet, if the light and the life in the light that here

  Seem soft and splendid and fervid as sleep may seem

  Be more than the shine of a smile or the flash of a tear,

  Sleep, change, and death are less than a spell-struck dream,

  And fear than the fall of a leaf on a starlit stream.

  And yet, if the hope that hath said it absorb not fear,

  What helps it man that the stars and the waters gleam?

  What helps it man, that the noon be indeed intense,

  The night be indeed worth worship? Fear and pain

  Were lords and masters yet of the secret sense,

  Which now dares deem not that light is as darkness, fain

  Though dark dreams be to declare it, crying in vain.

  For whence, thou God of the light and the darkness, whence

  Dawns now this vision that bids not the sunbeams wane?

  What light, what shadow, diviner than dawn or night,

  Draws near, makes pause, and again — or I dream — draws near?

  More soft than shadow, more strong than the strong sun’s light,

  More pure than moonbeams — yea, but the rays run sheer

  As fire from the sun through the dusk of the pinewood, clear

  And constant; yea, but the shadow itself is bright

  That the light clothes round with love that is one with fear.

  Above and behind it the noon and the woodland lie,

  Terrible, radiant with mystery, superb and subdued,

  Triumphant in silence; and hardly the sacred sky

  Seems free from the tyrannous weight of the dumb fierce mood

  Which rules as with fire and invasion of beams that brood

  The breathless rapture of earth till its hour pass by

  And leave her spirit released and her peace renewed.

  I sleep not: never in sleep has a man beholden

  This. From the shadow that trembles and yearns with light

  Suppressed and elate and reluctant — obscure and golden

  As water kindled with presage of dawn or night —

  A form, a face, a wonder to sense and sight,

  Grows great as the moon through the month; and her eyes embolden

  Fear, till it change to desire, and desire to delight.

  I sleep not: sleep would die of a dream so strange;

  A dream so sweet would die as a rainbow dies,

  As a sunbow laughs and is lost on the waves that range

  And reck not of light that flickers or spray that flies.

  But the sun withdraws not, the woodland shrinks not or sighs,

  No sweet thing sickens with sense or with fear of change;

  Light wounds not, darkness blinds not, my steadfast eyes.

  Only the soul in my sense that receives the soul

  Whence now my spirit is kindled with breathless bliss

  Knows well if the light that wounds it with love makes whole,

  If hopes that carol be louder than fears that hiss,

  If truth be spoken of flowers and of waves that kiss,

  Of clouds and stars that contend for a sunbright goal.

  And yet may I dream that I dream not indeed of this?

  An earth-born dreamer, constrained by the bonds of birth,

  Held fast by the flesh, compelled by his veins that beat

  And kindle to rapture or wrath, to desire or to mirth,

  May hear not surely the fall of immortal feet,

  May feel not surely if heaven upon earth be sweet;

  And here is my sense fulfilled of the joys of earth,

  Light, silence, bloom, shade, murmur of leaves that meet.

  Bloom, fervour, and perfume of grasses and flowers aglow,

  Breathe and brighten about me: the darkness gleams,

  The sweet light shivers and laughs on the slopes below,

  Made soft by leaves that lighten and change like dreams;

  The silence thrills with the whisper of secret streams

  That well from the heart of the woodland: these I know:

  Earth bore them, heaven sustained them with showers and beams.

  I lean my face to the heather, and drink the sun

  Whose flame-lit odour satiates the flowers: mine eyes

  Close, and the goal of delight and of life is one:

  No more I crave of earth or her kindred skies.

  No more? But the joy that springs from them smiles and flies:

  The sweet work wrought of them surely, the good work done,

  If the mind and the face of the season be loveless, dies.

  Thee, therefore, thee would I come to, cleave to, cling,

  If haply thy heart be kind and thy gifts be good,

  Unknown sweet spirit, whose vesture is soft in spring,

  In summer splendid, in autumn pale as the wood

  That shudders and wanes and shrinks as a shamed thing should,

  In winter bright as the mail of a war-worn king

  Who stands where foes fled far from the face of him stood.

  My spirit or thine is it, breath of thy life or of mine,

  Which fills my sense with a rapture that casts out fear?

  Pan’s dim frown wanes, and his wild eyes brighten as thine,

  Transformed as night or as day by the kindling year.

  Earth-born, or mine eye were withered that sees, mine ear

  That hears were stricken to death by the sense divine,

  Earth-born I know thee: but heaven is about me here.

  The terror that whispers in darkness and flames in light,

  The doubt that speaks in the silence of earth and sea,

  The sense, more fearful at noon than in midmost night,

  Of wrath scarce hushed and of imminent ill to be,

  Where are they? Heaven is as earth, and as heaven to me

  Earth: for the shadows that sundered them here take flight;

  And nought is all, as am I, but a dream of thee.

  ON THE SOUTH COAST

  TO THEODORE WATTS

  Hills and valleys where April rallies his radiant squadron of flowers and birds,

  Steep strange beaches and lustrous reaches of fluctuant sea that the land engirds,
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  Fields and downs that the sunrise crowns with life diviner than lives in words,

  Day by day of resurgent May salute the sun with sublime acclaim,

  Change and brighten with hours that lighten and darken, girdled with cloud or flame;

  Earth’s fair face in alternate grace beams, blooms, and lowers, and is yet the same.

  Twice each day the divine sea’s play makes glad with glory that comes and goes

  Field and street that her waves keep sweet, when past the bounds of their old repose,

  Fast and fierce in renewed reverse, the foam-flecked estuary ebbs and flows.

  Broad and bold through the stays of old staked fast with trunks of the wildwood tree,

  Up from shoreward, impelled far forward, by marsh and meadow, by lawn and lea,

  Inland still at her own wild will swells, rolls, and revels the surging sea.

  Strong as time, and as faith sublime, — clothed round with shadows of hopes and fears,

  Nights and morrows, and joys and sorrows, alive with passion of prayers and tears, —

  Stands the shrine that has seen decline eight hundred waxing and waning years.

  Tower set square to the storms of air and change of season that glooms and glows,

  Wall and roof of it tempest-proof, and equal ever to suns and snows,

  Bright with riches of radiant niches and pillars smooth as a straight stem grows.

  Aisle and nave that the whelming wave of time has whelmed not or touched or neared,

  Arch and vault without stain or fault, by hands of craftsmen we know not reared,

  Time beheld them, and time was quelled; and change passed by them as one that feared.

  Time that flies as a dream, and dies as dreams that die with the sleep they feed,

  Here alone in a garb of stone incarnate stands as a god indeed,

  Stern and fair, and of strength to bear all burdens mortal to man’s frail seed.

  Men and years are as leaves or tears that storm or sorrow is fain to shed:

  These go by as the winds that sigh, and none takes note of them quick or dead:

  Time, whose breath is their birth and death, folds here his pinions, and bows his head.

  Still the sun that beheld begun the work wrought here of unwearied hands

  Sees, as then, though the Red King’s men held ruthless rule over lawless lands,

  Stand their massive design, impassive, pure and proud as a virgin stands.

  Statelier still as the years fulfil their count, subserving her sacred state,

  Grows the hoary grey church whose story silence utters and age makes great:

  Statelier seems it than shines in dreams the face unveiled of unvanquished fate.

  Fate, more high than the star-shown sky, more deep than waters unsounded, shines

  Keen and far as the final star on souls that seek not for charms or signs;

  Yet more bright is the love-shown light of men’s hands lighted in songs or shrines.

  Love and trust that the grave’s deep dust can soil not, neither may fear put out,

  Witness yet that their record set stands fast, though years be as hosts in rout,

  Spent and slain; but the signs remain that beat back darkness and cast forth doubt.

  Men that wrought by the grace of thought and toil things goodlier than praise dare trace,

  Fair as all that the world may call most fair, save only the sea’s own face,

  Shrines or songs that the world’s change wrongs not, live by grace of their own gift’s grace.

  Dead, their names that the night reclaims — alive, their works that the day relumes —

  Sink and stand, as in stone and sand engraven: none may behold their tombs:

  Nights and days shall record their praise while here this flower of their grafting blooms.

  Flower more fair than the sun-thrilled air bids laugh and lighten and wax and rise,

  Fruit more bright than the fervent light sustains with strength from the kindled skies,

  Flower and fruit that the deathless root of man’s love rears though the man’s name dies.

  Stately stands it, the work of hands unknown of: statelier, afar and near,

  Rise around it the heights that bound our landward gaze from the seaboard here;

  Downs that swerve and aspire, in curve and change of heights that the dawn holds dear.

  Dawn falls fair on the grey walls there confronting dawn, on the low green lea,

  Lone and sweet as for fairies’ feet held sacred, silent and strange and free,

  Wild and wet with its rills; but yet more fair falls dawn on the fairer sea.

  Eastward, round by the high green bound of hills that fold the remote fields in,

  Strive and shine on the low sea-line fleet waves and beams when the days begin;

  Westward glow, when the days burn low, the sun that yields and the stars that win.

  Rose-red eve on the seas that heave sinks fair as dawn when the first ray peers;

  Winds are glancing from sunbright Lancing to Shoreham, crowned with the grace of years;

  Shoreham, clad with the sunset, glad and grave with glory that death reveres.

  Death, more proud than the kings’ heads bowed before him, stronger than all things, bows

  Here his head: as if death were dead, and kingship plucked from his crownless brows,

  Life hath here such a face of cheer as change appals not and time avows.

  Skies fulfilled with the sundown, stilled and splendid, spread as a flower that spreads,

  Pave with rarer device and fairer than heaven’s the luminous oyster-beds,

  Grass-embanked, and in square plots ranked, inlaid with gems that the sundown sheds.

  Squares more bright and with lovelier light than heaven that kindled it shines with shine

  Warm and soft as the dome aloft, but heavenlier yet than the sun’s own shrine:

  Heaven is high, but the water-sky lit here seems deeper and more divine.

  Flowers on flowers, that the whole world’s bowers may show not, here may the sunset show,

  Lightly graven in the waters paven with ghostly gold by the clouds aglow:

  Bright as love is the vault above, but lovelier lightens the wave below.

  Rosy grey, or as fiery spray full-plumed, or greener than emerald, gleams

  Plot by plot as the skies allot for each its glory, divine as dreams

  Lit with fire of appeased desire which sounds the secret of all that seems;

  Dreams that show what we fain would know, and know not save by the grace of sleep,

  Sleep whose hands have removed the bands that eyes long waking and fain to weep

  Feel fast bound on them — light around them strange, and darkness above them steep.

  Yet no vision that heals division of love from love, and renews awhile

  Life and breath in the lips where death has quenched the spirit of speech and smile,

  Shows on earth, or in heaven’s mid mirth, where no fears enter or doubts defile,

  Aught more fair than the radiant air and water here by the twilight wed,

  Here made one by the waning sun whose last love quickens to rosebright red

  Half the crown of the soft high down that rears to northward its wood-girt head.

  There, when day is at height of sway, men’s eyes who stand, as we oft have stood,

  High where towers with its world of flowers the golden spinny that flanks the wood,

  See before and around them shore and seaboard glad as their gifts are good.

  Higher and higher to the north aspire the green smooth-swelling unending downs;

  East and west on the brave earth’s breast glow girdle-jewels of gleaming towns;

  Southward shining, the lands declining subside in peace that the sea’s light crowns.

  Westward wide in its fruitful pride the plain lies lordly with plenteous grace;

  Fair as dawn’s when the fields and lawns desire her glitters the glad land�
��s face:

  Eastward yet is the sole sign set of elder days and a lordlier race.

  Down beneath us afar, where seethe in wilder weather the tides aflow,

  Hurled up hither and drawn down thither in quest of rest that they may not know,

  Still as dew on a flower the blue broad stream now sleeps in the fields below.

  Mild and bland in the fair green land it smiles, and takes to its heart the sky;

  Scarce the meads and the fens, the reeds and grasses, still as they stand or lie,

  Wear the palm of a statelier calm than rests on waters that pass them by.

  Yet shall these, when the winds and seas of equal days and coequal nights

  Rage, rejoice, and uplift a voice whose sound is even as a sword that smites,

  Felt and heard as a doomsman’s word from seaward reaches to landward heights,

  Lift their heart up, and take their part of triumph, swollen and strong with rage,

  Rage elate with desire and great with pride that tempest and storm assuage;

  So their chime in the ear of time has rung from age to rekindled age.

  Fair and dear is the land’s face here, and fair man’s work as a man’s may be:

  Dear and fair as the sunbright air is here the record that speaks him free;

  Free by birth of a sacred earth, and regent ever of all the sea.

  AN AUTUMN VISION

  OCTOBER 31, 1889

  +Zephyrou gigantos aura+

  I

  Is it Midsummer here in the heavens that illumine October on earth?

  Can the year, when his heart is fulfilled with desire of the days of his mirth,

  Redeem them, recall, or remember?