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

by Algernon Charles Swinburne

For a memory recalling the rapture of earth, and redeeming the sky,

  Shines down from the heights to the depths: will the watchword of dawn be July

  When to-morrow acclaims November?

  The stern salutation of sorrow to death or repentance to shame

  Was all that the season was wont to accord her of grace or acclaim;

  No lightnings of love and of laughter.

  But here, in the laugh of the loud west wind from around and above,

  In the flash of the waters beneath him, what sound or what light but of love

  Rings round him or leaps forth after?

  II

  Wind beloved of earth and sky and sea beyond all winds that blow,

  Wind whose might in fight was England’s on her mightiest warrior day,

  South-west wind, whose breath for her was life, and fire to scourge her foe,

  Steel to smite and death to drive him down an unreturning way,

  Well-beloved and welcome, sounding all the clarions of the sky,

  Rolling all the marshalled waters toward the charge that storms the shore,

  We receive, acclaim, salute thee, we who live and dream and die,

  As the mightiest mouth of song that ever spake acclaimed of yore.

  We that live as they that perish praise thee, lord of cloud and wave,

  Wind of winds, clothed on with darkness whence as lightning light comes forth,

  We that know thee strong to guard and smite, to scatter and to save,

  We to whom the south-west wind is dear as Athens held the north.

  He for her waged war as thou for us against all powers defiant,

  Fleets full-fraught with storm from Persia, laden deep with death from Spain:

  Thee the giant god of song and battle hailed as god and giant,

  Yet not his but ours the land is whence thy praise should ring and rain;

  Rain as rapture shed from song, and ring as trumpets blown for battle,

  Sound and sing before thee, loud and glad as leaps and sinks the sea:

  Yea, the sea’s white steeds are curbed and spurred of thee, and pent as cattle,

  Yet they laugh with love and pride to live, subdued not save of thee.

  Ears that hear thee hear in heaven the sound of widening wings gigantic,

  Eyes that see the cloud-lift westward see thy darkening brows divine;

  Wings whose measure is the limit of the limitless Atlantic,

  Brows that bend, and bid the sovereign sea submit her soul to thine.

  III

  Twelve days since is it — twelve days gone,

  Lord of storm, that a storm-bow shone

  Higher than sweeps thy sublime dark wing,

  Fair as dawn is and sweet like spring?

  Never dawn in the deep wide east

  Spread so splendid and strange a feast,

  Whence the soul as it drank and fed

  Felt such rapture of wonder shed.

  Never spring in the wild wood’s heart

  Felt such flowers at her footfall start,

  Born of earth, as arose on sight

  Born of heaven and of storm and light.

  Stern and sullen, the grey grim sea

  Swelled and strove as in toils, though free,

  Free as heaven, and as heaven sublime,

  Clear as heaven of the toils of time.

  IV

  Suddenly, sheer from the heights to the depths of the sky and the sea,

  Sprang from the darkness alive as a vision of life to be

  Glory triune and transcendent of colour afar and afire,

  Arching and darkening the darkness with light as of dream or desire.

  Heaven, in the depth of its height, shone wistful and wan from above:

  Earth from beneath, and the sea, shone stricken and breathless with love.

  As a shadow may shine, so shone they; as ghosts of the viewless blest,

  That sleep hath sight of alive in a rapture of sunbright rest,

  The green earth glowed and the grey sky gleamed for a wondrous while;

  And the storm’s full frown was crossed by the light of its own deep smile.

  As the darkness of thought and of passion is touched by the light that gives

  Life deathless as love from the depth of a spirit that sees and lives,

  From the soul of a seer and a singer, wherein as a scroll unfurled

  Lies open the scripture of light and of darkness, the word of the world,

  So, shapeless and measureless, lurid as anguish and haggard as crime,

  Pale as the front of oblivion and dark as the heart of time,

  The wild wan heaven at its height was assailed and subdued and made

  More fair than the skies that know not of storm and endure not shade.

  The grim sea-swell, grey, sleepless, and sad as a soul estranged,

  Shone, smiled, took heart, and was glad of its wrath: and the world’s face changed.

  V

  Up from moorlands northward gleaming

  Even to heaven’s transcendent height,

  Clothed with massive cloud, and seeming

  All one fortress reared of night,

  Down to where the deep sea, dreaming

  Angry dreams, lay dark and white,

  White as death and dark as fate,

  Heaving with the strong wind’s weight,

  Sad with stormy pride of state,

  One full rainbow shone elate.

  Up from inmost memory’s dwelling

  Where the light of life abides,

  Where the past finds tongue, foretelling

  Time that comes and grace that guides,

  Power that saves and sways, compelling

  Souls that ebb and flow like tides,

  Shone or seemed to shine and swim

  Through the cloud-surf great and grim,

  Thought’s live surge, the soul of him

  By whose light the sun looks dim.

  In what synod were they sitting,

  All the gods and lords of time,

  Whence they watched as fen-fires flitting

  Years and names of men sublime,

  When their counsels found it fitting

  One should stand where none might climb —

  None of man begotten, none

  Born of men beneath the sun

  Till the race of time be run,

  Save this heaven-enfranchised one?

  With what rapture of creation

  Was the soul supernal thrilled,

  With what pride of adoration

  Was the world’s heart fired and filled,

  Heaved in heavenward exaltation

  Higher than hopes or dreams might build,

  Grave with awe not known while he

  Was not, mad with glorious glee

  As the sun-saluted sea,

  When his hour bade Shakespeare be?

  VI

  There, clear as night beholds her crowning seven,

  The sea beheld his likeness set in heaven.

  The shadow of his spirit full in sight

  Shone: for the shadow of that soul is light.

  Nor heaven alone bore witness: earth avowed

  Him present, and acclaimed of storm aloud.

  From the arching sky to the ageless hills and sea

  The whole world, visible, audible, was he:

  Each part of all that wove that wondrous whole

  The raiment of the presence of his soul.

  The sun that smote and kissed the dark to death

  Spake, smiled, and strove, like song’s triumphant breath;

  The soundless cloud whose thunderous heart was dumb

  Swelled, lowered, and shrank to feel its conqueror come.

  Yet high from heaven its empire vast and vain

  Frowned, and renounced not night’s reluctant reign.

  The serpentine swift sounds and shapes wherein

  The stainless sea mocks earth and death and sin,

  Crawls
dark as craft, or flashes keen as hate,

  Subdued and insubmissive, strong like fate

  And weak like man, bore wrathful witness yet

  That storms and sins are more than suns that set;

  That evil everlasting, girt for strife

  Eternal, wars with hope as death with life.

  The dark sharp shifting wind that bade the waves

  Falter, lose heart, bow down like foes made slaves,

  And waxed within more bitter as they bowed,

  Baffling the sea, swallowing the sun with cloud,

  Devouring fast as fire on earth devours

  And hungering hard as frost that feeds on flowers,

  Clothed round with fog that reeked as fume from hell,

  And darkening with its miscreative spell

  Light, glad and keen and splendid as the sword

  Whose heft had known Othello’s hand its lord,

  Spake all the soul that hell drew back to greet

  And felt its fire shrink shuddering from his feet.

  Far off the darkness darkened, and recoiled,

  And neared again, and triumphed: and the coiled

  Colourless cloud and sea discoloured grew

  Conscious of horror huge as heaven, and knew

  Where Goneril’s soul made chill and foul the mist,

  And all the leprous life in Regan hissed.

  Fierce homeless ghosts, rejected of the pit,

  From hell to hell of storm fear watched them flit.

  About them and before, the dull grey gloom

  Shuddered, and heaven seemed hateful as the tomb

  That shrinks from resurrection; and from out

  That sullen hell which girt their shades about

  The nether soul that lurks and lowers within

  Man, made of dust and fire and shame and sin,

  Breathed: all the cloud that felt it breathe and blight

  Was blue as plague or black as thunderous night.

  Elect of hell, the children of his hate

  Thronged, as to storm sweet heaven’s triumphal gate.

  The terror of his giving rose and shone

  Imminent: life had put its likeness on.

  But higher than all its horrent height of shade

  Shone sovereign, seen by light itself had made,

  Above the woes of all the world, above

  Life, sin, and death, his myriad-minded love.

  From landward heights whereon the radiance leant

  Full-fraught from heaven, intense and imminent,

  To depths wherein the seething strengths of cloud

  Scarce matched the wrath of waves whereon they bowed,

  From homeborn pride and kindling love of home

  To the outer skies and seas of fire and foam,

  From splendour soft as dew that sundawn thrills

  To gloom that shudders round the world it fills,

  From midnights murmuring round Titania’s ear

  To midnights maddening round the rage of Lear,

  The wonder woven of storm and sun became

  One with the light that lightens from his name.

  The music moving on the sea that felt

  The storm-wind even as snows of springtide melt

  Was blithe as Ariel’s hand or voice might make

  And bid all grief die gladly for its sake.

  And there the soul alive in ear and eye

  That watched the wonders of an hour pass by

  Saw brighter than all stars that heaven inspheres

  The silent splendour of Cordelia’s tears,

  Felt in the whispers of the quickening wind

  The radiance of the laugh of Rosalind,

  And heard, in sounds that melt the souls of men

  With love of love, the tune of Imogen.

  VII

  For the strong north-east is not strong to subdue and to slay the divine south-west,

  And the darkness is less than the light that it darkens, and dies in reluctant rest.

  It hovers and hangs on the labouring and trembling ascent of the dawn from the deep,

  Till the sun’s eye quicken the world and the waters, and smite it again into sleep.

  Night, holy and starry, the fostress of souls, with the fragrance of heaven in her breath,

  Subdues with the sense of her godhead the forces and mysteries of sorrow and death.

  Eternal as dawn’s is the comfort she gives: but the mist that beleaguers and slays

  Comes, passes, and is not: the strength of it withers, appalled or assuaged by the day’s.

  Faith, haggard as Fear that had borne her, and dark as the sire that begat her, Despair,

  Held rule on the soul of the world and the song of it saddening through ages that were;

  Dim centuries that darkened and brightened and darkened again, and the soul of their song

  Was great as their grief, and sublime as their suffering, and strong as their sorrows were strong.

  It knew not, it saw not, but shadows triune, and evoked by the strength of their spell

  Dark hell, and the mountain of anguish, and heaven that was hollower and harder than hell.

  These are not: the womb of the darkness that bare them rejects them, and knows them no more:

  Thought, fettered in misery and iron, revives in the light that it lived in of yore.

  For the soul that is wisdom and freedom, the spirit of England redeemed from her past,

  Speaks life through the lips of the master and lord of her children, the first and the last.

  Thought, touched by his hand and redeemed by his breath, sees, hears, and accepts from above

  The limitless lightnings of vision and passion, the measureless music of love.

  A SWIMMER’S DREAM

  NOVEMBER 4, 1889

  Somno mollior unda

  I

  Dawn is dim on the dark soft water,

  Soft and passionate, dark and sweet.

  Love’s own self was the deep sea’s daughter,

  Fair and flawless from face to feet,

  Hailed of all when the world was golden,

  Loved of lovers whose names beholden

  Thrill men’s eyes as with light of olden

  Days more glad than their flight was fleet.

  So they sang: but for men that love her,

  Souls that hear not her word in vain,

  Earth beside her and heaven above her

  Seem but shadows that wax and wane.

  Softer than sleep’s are the sea’s caresses,

  Kinder than love’s that betrays and blesses,

  Blither than spring’s when her flowerful tresses

  Shake forth sunlight and shine with rain.

  All the strength of the waves that perish

  Swells beneath me and laughs and sighs,

  Sighs for love of the life they cherish,

  Laughs to know that it lives and dies,

  Dies for joy of its life, and lives

  Thrilled with joy that its brief death gives —

  Death whose laugh or whose breath forgives

  Change that bids it subside and rise.

  II

  Hard and heavy, remote but nearing,

  Sunless hangs the severe sky’s weight,

  Cloud on cloud, though the wind be veering

  Heaped on high to the sundawn’s gate.

  Dawn and even and noon are one,

  Veiled with vapour and void of sun;

  Nought in sight or in fancied hearing

  Now less mighty than time or fate.

  The grey sky gleams and the grey seas glimmer,

  Pale and sweet as a dream’s delight,

  As a dream’s where darkness and light seem dimmer,

  Touched by dawn or subdued by night.

  The dark wind, stern and sublime and sad,

  Swings the rollers to westward, clad

  With lustrous shadow that lures the swimmer,

  Lures and lulls him with dreams of light. />
  Light, and sleep, and delight, and wonder,

  Change, and rest, and a charm of cloud,

  Fill the world of the skies whereunder

  Heaves and quivers and pants aloud

  All the world of the waters, hoary

  Now, but clothed with its own live glory,

  That mates the lightning and mocks the thunder

  With light more living and word more proud.

  III

  Far off westward, whither sets the sounding strife,

  Strife more sweet than peace, of shoreless waves whose glee

  Scorns the shore and loves the wind that leaves them free,

  Strange as sleep and pale as death and fair as life,

  Shifts the moonlight-coloured sunshine on the sea.

  Toward the sunset’s goal the sunless waters crowd,

  Fast as autumn days toward winter: yet it seems

  Here that autumn wanes not, here that woods and streams

  Lose not heart and change not likeness, chilled and bowed,

  Warped and wrinkled: here the days are fair as dreams.

  IV

  O russet-robed November,

  What ails thee so to smile?

  Chill August, pale September,

  Endured a woful while,

  And fell as falls an ember

  From forth a flameless pile:

  But golden-girt November

  Bids all she looks on smile.

  The lustrous foliage, waning

  As wanes the morning moon,

  Here falling, here refraining,

  Outbraves the pride of June

  With statelier semblance, feigning

  No fear lest death be soon:

  As though the woods thus waning

  Should wax to meet the moon.

  As though, when fields lie stricken

  By grey December’s breath,

  These lordlier growths that sicken

  And die for fear of death

  Should feel the sense requicken

  That hears what springtide saith

  And thrills for love, spring-stricken

  And pierced with April’s breath.

  The keen white-winged north-easter

  That stings and spurs thy sea

  Doth yet but feed and feast her

  With glowing sense of glee: