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

by Algernon Charles Swinburne

  The sun’s first rising found us

  Throned on its equal throne.

  IV

  North and South and East and West,

  All true hearts that wish thee best

  Beat one tune and own one quest,

  Staunch and sure as steel.

  God guard from dark disunion

  Our threefold State’s communion,

  God save the loyal Union,

  The royal Commonweal!

  EAST TO WEST

  Sunset smiles on sunrise: east and west are one,

  Face to face in heaven before the sovereign sun.

  From the springs of the dawn everlasting a glory renews and transfigures the west,

  From the depths of the sunset a light as of morning enkindles the broad sea’s breast,

  And the lands and the skies and the waters are glad of the day’s and the night’s work done.

  Child of dawn, and regent on the world-wide sea,

  England smiles on Europe, fair as dawn and free.

  Not the waters that gird her are purer, nor mightier the winds that her waters know.

  But America, daughter and sister of England, is praised of them, far as they flow:

  Atlantic responds to Pacific the praise of her days that have been and shall be.

  So from England westward let the watchword fly,

  So for England eastward let the seas reply;

  Praise, honour, and love everlasting be sent on the wind’s wings, westward and east,

  That the pride of the past and the pride of the future may mingle as friends at feast,

  And the sons of the lords of the world-wide seas be one till the world’s life die.

  INSCRIPTIONS FOR THE FOUR SIDES OF A PEDESTAL

  I

  Marlowe, the father of the sons of song

  Whose praise is England’s crowning praise, above

  All glories else that crown her, sweet and strong

  As England, clothed with light and fire of love,

  And girt with might of passion, thought, and trust,

  Stands here in spirit, sleeps not here in dust.

  II

  Marlowe, a star too sovereign, too superb,

  To fade when heaven took fire from Shakespeare’s light,

  A soul that knew but song’s triumphal curb

  And love’s triumphant bondage, holds of right

  His pride of place, who first in place and time

  Made England’s voice as England’s heart sublime.

  III

  Marlowe bade England live in living song:

  The light he lifted up lit Shakespeare’s way:

  He spake, and life sprang forth in music, strong

  As fire or lightning, sweet as dawn of day.

  Song was a dream where day took night to wife:

  “Let there be life,” he said: and there was life.

  IV

  Marlowe of all our fathers first beheld

  Beyond the tidal ebb and flow of things

  The tideless depth and height of souls, impelled

  By thought or passion, borne on waves or wings,

  Beyond all flight or sight but song’s: and he

  First gave our song a sound that matched our sea.

  ON THE DEATH OF RICHARD BURTON

  Night or light is it now, wherein

  Sleeps, shut out from the wild world’s din,

  Wakes, alive with a life more clear,

  One who found not on earth his kin?

  Sleep were sweet for awhile, were dear

  Surely to souls that were heartless here,

  Souls that faltered and flagged and fell,

  Soft of spirit and faint of cheer.

  A living soul that had strength to quell

  Hope the spectre and fear the spell,

  Clear-eyed, content with a scorn sublime

  And a faith superb, can it fare not well?

  Life, the shadow of wide-winged time,

  Cast from the wings that change as they climb,

  Life may vanish in death, and seem

  Less than the promise of last year’s prime.

  But not for us is the past a dream

  Wherefrom, as light from a clouded stream,

  Faith fades and shivers and ebbs away,

  Faint as the moon if the sundawn gleam.

  Faith, whose eyes in the low last ray

  Watch the fire that renews the day,

  Faith which lives in the living past,

  Rock-rooted, swerves not as weeds that sway.

  As trees that stand in the storm-wind fast

  She stands, unsmitten of death’s keen blast,

  With strong remembrance of sunbright spring

  Alive at heart to the lifeless last.

  Night, she knows, may in no wise cling

  To a soul that sinks not and droops not wing,

  A sun that sets not in death’s false night

  Whose kingdom finds him not thrall but king.

  Souls there are that for soul’s affright

  Bow down and cower in the sun’s glad sight,

  Clothed round with faith that is one with fear,

  And dark with doubt of the live world’s light.

  But him we hailed from afar or near

  As boldest born of the bravest here

  And loved as brightest of souls that eyed

  Life, time, and death with unchangeful cheer,

  A wider soul than the world was wide,

  Whose praise made love of him one with pride,

  What part has death or has time in him,

  Who rode life’s lists as a god might ride?

  While England sees not her old praise dim,

  While still her stars through the world’s night swim,

  A fame outshining her Raleigh’s fame,

  A light that lightens her loud sea’s rim,

  Shall shine and sound as her sons proclaim

  The pride that kindles at Burton’s name.

  And joy shall exalt their pride to be

  The same in birth if in soul the same.

  But we that yearn for a friend’s face — we

  Who lack the light that on earth was he —

  Mourn, though the light be a quenchless flame

  That shines as dawn on a tideless sea.

  ELEGY

  1869-1891

  Auvergne, Auvergne, O wild and woful land,

  O glorious land and gracious, white as gleam

  The stairs of heaven, black as a flameless brand,

  Strange even as life, and stranger than a dream,

  Could earth remember man, whose eyes made bright

  The splendour of her beauty, lit by day

  Or soothed and softened and redeemed by night,

  Wouldst thou not know what light has passed away?

  Wouldst thou not know whom England, whom the world,

  Mourns? For the world whose wildest ways he trod,

  And smiled their dangers down that coiled and curled

  Against him, knows him now less man than god.

  Our demigod of daring, keenest-eyed

  To read and deepest read in earth’s dim things,

  A spirit now whose body of death has died

  And left it mightier yet in eyes and wings,

  The sovereign seeker of the world, who now

  Hath sought what world the light of death may show,

  Hailed once with me the crowns that load thy brow,

  Crags dark as midnight, columns bright as snow.

  Thy steep small Siena, splendid and content

  As shines the mightier city’s Tuscan pride

  Which here its face reflects in radiance, pent

  By narrower bounds from towering side to side,

  Set fast between the ridged and foamless waves

  Of earth more fierce and fluctuant than the sea,

  The fearless town of towers that hails and braves

  The heights that gird, the sun that brands L
e Puy;

  The huddled churches clinging on the cliffs

  As birds alighting might for storm’s sake cling,

  Moored to the rocks as tempest-harried skiffs

  To perilous refuge from the loud wind’s wing;

  The stairs on stairs that wind and change and climb

  Even up to the utmost crag’s edge curved and curled,

  More bright than vision, more than faith sublime,

  Strange as the light and darkness of the world;

  Strange as are night and morning, stars and sun,

  And washed from west and east by day’s deep tide.

  Shine yet less fair, when all their heights are won,

  Than sundawn shows thy pillared mountain-side.

  Even so the dawn of death, whose light makes dim

  The starry fires that life sees rise and set,

  Shows higher than here he shone before us him

  Whom faith forgets not, nor shall fame forget.

  Even so those else unfooted heights we clomb

  Through scudding mist and eddying whirls of cloud,

  Blind as a pilot beaten blind with foam,

  And shrouded as a corpse with storm’s grey shroud,

  Foot following foot along the sheer strait ledge

  Where space was none to bear the wild goat’s feet

  Till blind we sat on the outer footless edge

  Where darkling death seemed fain to share the seat,

  The abyss before us, viewless even as time’s,

  The abyss to left of us, the abyss to right,

  Bid thought now dream how high the freed soul climbs

  That death sets free from change of day and night.

  The might of raging mist and wind whose wrath

  Shut from our eyes the narrowing rock we trod,

  The wondrous world it darkened, made our path

  Like theirs who take the shadow of death for God.

  Yet eastward, veiled in vapour white as snow,

  The grim black herbless heights that scorn the sun

  And mock the face of morning rose to show

  The work of earth-born fire and earthquake done.

  And half the world was haggard night, wherein

  We strove our blind way through: but far above

  Was light that watched the wild mists whirl and spin,

  And far beneath a land worth light and love.

  Deep down the Valley of the Curse, undaunted

  By shadow and whisper of winds with sins for wings

  And ghosts of crime wherethrough the heights live haunted

  By present sense of past and monstrous things,

  The glimmering water holds its gracious way

  Full forth, and keeps one happier hand’s-breadth green

  Of all that storm-scathed world whereon the sway

  Sits dark as death of deadlier things unseen.

  But on the soundless and the viewless river

  That bears through night perchance again to day

  The dead whom death and twin-born fame deliver

  From life that dies, and time’s inveterate sway,

  No shadow save of falsehood and of fear

  That brands the future with the past, and bids

  The spirit wither and the soul grow sere,

  Hovers or hangs to cloud life’s opening lids,

  If life have eyes to lift again and see,

  Beyond the bounds of sensual sight or breath,

  What life incognisable of ours may be

  That turns our light to darkness deep as death.

  Priests and the soulless serfs of priests may swarm

  With vulturous acclamation, loud in lies,

  About his dust while yet his dust is warm

  Who mocked as sunlight mocks their base blind eyes,

  Their godless ghost of godhead, false and foul

  As fear his dam or hell his throne: but we,

  Scarce hearing, heed no carrion church-wolf’s howl:

  The corpse be theirs to mock; the soul is free.

  Free as ere yet its earthly day was done

  It lived above the coil about us curled:

  A soul whose eyes were keener than the sun,

  A soul whose wings were wider than the world.

  We, sons of east and west, ringed round with dreams,

  Bound fast with visions, girt about with fears,

  Live, trust, and think by chance, while shadow seems

  Light, and the wind that wrecks a hand that steers.

  He, whose full soul held east and west in poise,

  Weighed man with man, and creed of man’s with creed,

  And age with age, their triumphs and their toys,

  And found what faith may read not and may read.

  Scorn deep and strong as death and life, that lit

  With fire the smile at lies and dreams outworn

  Wherewith he smote them, showed sublime in it

  The splendour and the steadfastness of scorn.

  What loftier heaven, what lordlier air, what space

  Illimitable, insuperable, infinite,

  Now to that strong-winged soul yields ampler place

  Than passing darkness yields to passing light,

  No dream, no faith can tell us: hope and fear,

  Whose tongues were loud of old as children’s, now

  From babbling fall to silence: change is here,

  And death; dark furrows drawn by time’s dark plough.

  Still sunward here on earth its flight was bent,

  Even since the man within the child began

  To yearn and kindle with superb intent

  And trust in time to magnify the man.

  Still toward the old garden of the Sun, whose fruit

  The honey-heavy lips of Sophocles

  Desired and sang, wherein the unwithering root

  Sprang of all growths that thought brings forth and sees

  Incarnate, bright with bloom or dense with leaf

  Far-shadowing, deep as depth of dawn or night:

  And all were parcel of the garnered sheaf

  His strenuous spirit bound and stored aright.

  And eastward now, and ever toward the dawn,

  If death’s deep veil by life’s bright hand be rent,

  We see, as through the shadow of death withdrawn,

  The imperious soul’s indomitable ascent.

  But not the soul whose labour knew not end —

  But not the swordsman’s hand, the crested head —

  The royal heart we mourn, the faultless friend,

  Burton — a name that lives till fame be dead.

  A SEQUENCE OF SONNETS ON THE DEATH OF ROBERT BROWNING

  I

  The clearest eyes in all the world they read

  With sense more keen and spirit of sight more true

  Than burns and thrills in sunrise, when the dew

  Flames, and absorbs the glory round it shed,

  As they the light of ages quick and dead,

  Closed now, forsake us: yet the shaft that slew

  Can slay not one of all the works we knew,

  Nor death discrown that many-laurelled head.

  The works of words whose life seems lightning wrought,

  And moulded of unconquerable thought,

  And quickened with imperishable flame,

  Stand fast and shine and smile, assured that nought

  May fade of all their myriad-moulded fame,

  Nor England’s memory clasp not Browning’s name.

  December 13, 1889.

  II

  Death, what hast thou to do with one for whom

  Time is not lord, but servant? What least part

  Of all the fire that fed his living heart,

  Of all the light more keen than sundawn’s bloom

  That lit and led his spirit, strong as doom

  And bright as hope, can aught thy breath may dart

  Quench? Nay, thou knowest he knew thee what tho
u art,

  A shadow born of terror’s barren womb,

  That brings not forth save shadows. What art thou,

  To dream, albeit thou breathe upon his brow,

  That power on him is given thee, — that thy breath

  Can make him less than love acclaims him now,

  And hears all time sound back the word it saith?

  What part hast thou then in his glory, Death?

  III

  A graceless doom it seems that bids us grieve:

  Venice and winter, hand in deadly hand,

  Have slain the lover of her sunbright strand

  And singer of a stormbright Christmas Eve.

  A graceless guerdon we that loved receive

  For all our love, from that the dearest land

  Love worshipped ever. Blithe and soft and bland,

  Too fair for storm to scathe or fire to cleave,

  Shone on our dreams and memories evermore

  The domes, the towers, the mountains and the shore

  That gird or guard thee, Venice: cold and black

  Seems now the face we loved as he of yore.

  We have given thee love — no stint, no stay, no lack:

  What gift, what gift is this thou hast given us back?

  IV

  But he — to him, who knows what gift is thine,

  Death? Hardly may we think or hope, when we

  Pass likewise thither where to-night is he,

  Beyond the irremeable outer seas that shine

  And darken round such dreams as half divine

  Some sunlit harbour in that starless sea

  Where gleams no ship to windward or to lee,

  To read with him the secret of thy shrine.