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

by Algernon Charles Swinburne

  I bade them tell you I was sick; the sun

  Pains me. Sit here.

  K. Hen.

  There’s no sick show in you.

  Sing still, and I will sit against your feet

  And see the singing measure in your throat

  Moved evenly; the headband leaves your hair

  Space to lie soft outside.

  Ros.

  Stoop then and touch

  That I may bind it on your hands; I would

  Fain have such hands to use so royally.

  As you are king, sir, tell me without shame

  Doth not your queen share praise with you, show best

  In all crowned ways even as you do? I have heard

  Men praise the state in her and the great shape;

  Yet pray you, though you find her sweet enow,

  Praise her not over-measure; yet speak truth;

  But so I would not have you make her praise

  The proper pleasure of your lips, the speech

  Found best in them; yet do not scant her so

  That I may see you tender of my pain,

  Sparing to gall my wits with laud of her.

  K. Hen.

  O sweet, what sting is this she makes in you?

  A Frenchwoman, black-haired and with grey lips

  And fingers like a hawk’s cut claw that nips

  One’s wrist to carry — is this so great a thing

  As should wring wet out of your lids?

  Ros.

  I know

  That for my sake you pinch her praises in,

  Starve her of right; do not so fearfully;

  I shall best love you if you praise her, seeing

  I would not have you marry a worse face,

  Say, than mine even; therefore be liberal,

  Praise her to the full, till you shall see that I

  Fall sick upon your words, bid them be pitiful

  And bruise not me.

  K. Hen.

  I will not praise her to you.

  Show me a little golden good of yours,

  But some soft piece of gracious habit grown

  Common with you, quite new with me and sweet.

  It is the smell of roses where you come

  That makes my sense faint now; you taste of it,

  Walk with it always.

  Ros.

  Hark, the rain begins,

  Slips like a bird that feels among shut leaves;

  One — two; it catches in the rose-branches

  Like a word caught. Now, as I shut your eyes,

  Show me what sight gets first between the lids,

  So covered in to make false witness true.

  Speak, and speak faith.

  K. Hen.

  I think this first; here once

  The hard noon being too strong a weight for us,

  We lay against the edges of slant leaves

  Facing the grass, our bodies touching them,

  Cooled from the sun, and drank cold wine; you had

  A straight gown flaked with gold i’the undersleeves;

  And in your throat I caught the quick faint red

  Drunk down, that ran and stained it out of white,

  A long warm thread not coloured like a vein

  But wine-coloured; this was a joy to see.

  O little throat so tender to show red,

  Would you not wear my lips as well, be kissed

  To a soft mark if one but touched you so?

  I will not touch; only to feel you fast,

  Lie down and take your feet inside both hands,

  Untie your hair to blind both eyes across —

  Yea, there sweet, kiss me now.

  Ros.

  Do but stoop yet

  And I will put my fingers where the hair

  Is mixed upon the great crown’s wearing-place;

  Sir, do you think I must fall old indeed

  First of us two? look how between my wrists

  Even about the purplest beat of them

  This lean scant flesh goes in. I am grown past love;

  The breath aches each way in my sobbing sides

  When I would sing, and tears climb up my throat

  In bitter breaks like swellings of round fruit

  From the rind inwards, and my pulses go

  Like fits of singing when the head gives way

  And leaves pure nought to stammer in spoilt lips,

  Even for this and my sad patience here

  Built up and blinded in with growing green,

  Use me not with your eyes untenderly,

  But though I tire you, make you sigh at me,

  Say no blame overloud; I have flowers only

  And foolish ways to get me through the day,

  And songs of yours to piece with weeping words

  And famish and forget. Pray you go now,

  I am the abuse of your compassion.

  K. Hen.

  I am gone presently; but for this space

  Give me poor leave to love you with mine eyes

  And feasted expectation of shut lips.

  God help! your hair burns me to see like gold

  Burnt to pure heat; your colour seen turns in me

  To pain and plague upon the temple-vein

  That aches as if the sun’s heat snapt the blood

  In hot mid measure; I could cry on you

  Like a maid weeping-wise, you are so fair

  It hurts me in the head, makes the life sick

  Here in my hands, that one may see how beats

  Feverous blue upon my finger-tips.

  Touch me now gently; I am as he that saith

  In the great song sick words and sorrowful

  Of love’s hard sweet and hunger of harsh hours;

  Your beauty makes me blind and hot, I am

  Stabbed in the brows with it.

  Ros.

  Yea, God be good,

  Am I fair yet? but say that I am fair,

  Make me assured, praise me quite perfectly

  Lest I doubt God may love me something less

  And his hot fear so nip me in the cheek

  That I burn through. Nay, but go hence; I would

  Even lose the sweet I love, that I may lose

  The fear of losing it.

  K. Hen.

  I am gone quickly.

  You know my life is made a pain to me

  With angry work, harsh hands upon my life

  That finger in the torn sad sides of it

  For the old thorn; touch but my face and feel

  How all is thwarted with thick networking

  Where your lips found it smooth, clung soft; there, now,

  You take some bruise and gall of mine clear out

  With a cool kissing mouth.

  Ros.

  I had a will

  To make some chafing matter with your pride

  And laugh at last; ay, also to be eased

  Of some small wrath at your harsh tarriance;

  But you put sadness softly in my lips

  With your marred speech. Look, the rain slackens yet.

  K. Hen.

  I will go now that both our hearts are sweet

  And lips most peaceable; so shall we sleep

  Till the next honey please them, with a touch

  Soft in our mouths; sing once and I am gone.

  Ros.

  I will sing something heavy in the word

  That it may serve us; help me to such words.

  The marigolds have put me in my song,

  They shine yet redly where you made me it.

  Hélas, madame, ayez de moi merci,

  Qui porte en cœur triste fleur de souci;

  N’est plus de rose, et plus ne vois ici

  Que triste fleur.

  M’est trop grand deuil, hélas, dans cette vie;

  Car vieil espoir me lie et me délie,

  Et triste fleur m’est force, ô belle amie,

  Porter en cœur.

&nb
sp; See the rain! have you care to ride by this?

  Yea, kiss me one strong kiss out of your heart,

  Do not kiss more; I love you with my lips,

  My eyes and heart, your love is in my blood,

  I shall die merely if you hold to me.

  IV. Ante-Chapel at Shene.

  Choir-music from within. In the passage outside, Arthur, a boy of the choir, reading.

  Enter Sir Robert de Bouchard.

  Bouchard.

  She spares me time to think of it; well, so

  I pull this tumbled matter square with God,

  What sting can men’s mouths hurt me with? What harm

  Because the savour of undieted sense

  Palates not me? the taste and smell of love

  Sickens me, being so fed with its keen use

  That delicate divisions of soft touch

  Feel gross to me as dullest accident?

  That way of will most men take pleasure in

  It tires my feet to walk. Then for the harder game —

  Joust where the steel swings, fight that clears up blood,

  I want the relish too; being no such sinewed ape,

  Blunder of brawn and jolted muscle-work,

  As beats and bleeds about his iron years,

  Anoints his hide with stupid lust and sleep,

  Fattens to mould and dies; rubs sides with dust,

  Ending his riddle. I have seen time enough,

  Struck blows and tricked and paid and won and wrought,

  I know not well why wrought. A monk, now — there’s right work;

  Dull work or wise, body and head keep up;

  I should have pulled in scapular and alb

  To shut my head up and its work, who knows?

  Arthur(outside).

  They told me I should see the king come in;

  I shall not get the words out clear enough, —

  No time, I doubt. I wonder will he wear

  Chain-mail or samite-work? I would take mail —

  A man fares best in good close joints of mail.

  Fautor

  — I seem to catch it up their way;

  This time I’ll come off clear yet. One rhyme sticks —

  (He repeats.)

  Fautor meus, magne Deus, quis adversùm tibi stabit?

  Parùm ridet qui te videt; sponsam sponsus accusabit;

  Sicut herbam qui superbam flatu gentem dissipabit,

  Flectit cœlum quasi velum quo personam implicabit.

  There, all straight out, clean forthright singing, this;

  I’ll see the king in the face and speak out hard

  That he shall hear me. Last time all fell wrong;

  I had that song about the lily-plants

  Growing up goodly in their green of time

  With gold heads and gold sprinkles in the neck

  And God among them, feeding like a lamb

  That takes out sin; so I let slip his name —

  Euh! I can touch the prints of the big switch;

  One, six, twelve, — ah! the sharp small suckers stung

  Like a whole hive loose, as Hugh’s arm swung out.

  Good for this king that I shall see to have

  Fine padded work and silk seats pillow-puft

  Instead of wood to twist on painfully.

  Bouch.

  So comes mine answer in; I thank you, Lord;

  I’ll none of this. Give men clean work and sleep,

  And baby bodies this priest’s blessed way.

  But, being so set between the time’s big jaws

  To dodge and keep me from the shut o’the teeth,

  Shuffle from lip to lip, a shell with priest

  For kernel in the husk and rind of knight, —

  No chink bit in me, but nigh swallowed whole —

  Who says my trick that, played on either, makes

  Music for me and sets my head on work,

  Is devil’s lesson? Pity that lives by milk

  Suckles not me; I see no reason set

  To keep me from the general use of things

  Which no more holds the great regard of man

  Than children spoiling flies. Respect and habit

  Find no such tongue against me; I but wear

  The raiment of my proper purpose, not

  The threadworn coat of use. Even who keeps on

  Such garments for the reputation’s want,

  Wears them unseamed inside. The boy there now —

  Arth.

  Yea, I loathe Hugh. Peter he beat, and me —

  Me twice, because that day the queen came in

  I twisted back my head to thrust well through

  The carved work’s double lattice to get sight

  Of a tall woman with gold clothes and hair

  That shone beyond her clothes; so sharp he smote,

  The grim beast Hugh with boarish teeth and hair

  All his chin long and where no hair should be!

  And Peter pinched and pushed all vespers through

  To get my turn and see her. How she went

  Holding her throat up, with her round neck out

  Curdwhite, no clot in it not smooth to stroke —

  All night I shook in sleep for that one thing,

  Stirred with my feet and pulled about awry.

  I think too she kept smiling with her mouth

  (Her wonderful red quiet mouth) and prayed

  All to herself. Now that men call a mouth —

  And Hugh’s begrimed big lips you call the same

  That make a thick smile up with all their fat

  Never but when he gets one by the nape

  To make him sprawl and weep. How all the hair

  Drew the hard shining of the candle-fires

  And shone back harder with a flare in it

  Through all the plaits and bands. Then Hugh said— “Look,

  You Arthur, that white woman with such eyes

  Is worse in hell than any devil that seethes;

  She keeps the colour of it in her hair

  That shakes like flame so. Wait till I get in

  And teach the beast’s will in your female flesh

  With some red slits in it, to get out loose

  In such dog’s ways.” But Hugh lied hard, I think;

  For he said after in his damned side-room

  What fierce account God made of such a name

  And how the golden king that made God songs

  Chid at their ways and called them this and that;

  And he loved many queens with just such hair

  And such good eyes, and had more scores of them

  Than I have stripes since last red week on me.

  So I can see Hugh lied. For no Jew’s wife

  Looked ever so, or found such ways to hold

  Her sweet straight body. — But my next — that’s hard.

  (Reads.)

  Bouch.

  Yea, there the snake’s head blinks? yea, doth it there?

  O this sweet thorn that worries the kind flesh!

  Yea, but the devil’s seedling side-graft, Lord,

  That pinches out the sap. — I’ll talk to him.

  Enter from the Chapel

  Queen Eleanor

  .

  Qu. El.

  Ah, you here, Bouchard? is it well with you

  When you hear music? I am hot i’the face;

  Kiss me now, Robert, where the red begins,

  And tell me, does no music hurt you? Ah —

  Will no man stop them?

  Bouch.

  Speak me lower then;

  No time to kiss bad words out on the mouth

  As one treads flame out with the heel. Well were it,

  That you should keep the purpose in your lips

  From knowledge of your eyes; let none partake,

  No inquisition of the air get out

  One secret, or the imperious sun compel

  One word of you. Wisdom doth sheath her hand

&n
bsp; To smite the fool behind.

  Qu. El.

  I pray you, sir,

  Let be your sentence; O, I am sick to death,

  Could lie down here and bruise my head with stone,

  Cover up hands and feet and die at once.

  Nathless I will not have her eyes and hair

  Crown-circled, and her breasts embraced with gold,

  When the grave catches me. It is mere time,

  The mere sick fault of age I limp with; yea,

  Time was I had put such fierce occasion on

  Like a new scented glove; but now this thing

  Tastes harsh as if I drank that blood indeed

  Which I’ll not even have spilled in dust; it clings,

  Under the lip, makes foul the sense — ha, there,

  I knew that noise was close upon my head.

  Arthur

  (outside).

  Matrem pater, fratrem frater, iste condemnabit eum;

  Erit nemo quem postremo tu non incusabis reum;

  Nihil tactum quod non fractum; fulgor ibit ante Deum;

  Mea caro prodest rarò; non est laudi caput meum.

  Qu. El.

  Say now you love me, Robert; I fear God,

  Fear is more bitter than a hurt worm’s tooth,

  But if God lets one love me this side heaven

  And puts his breath not out, then shall I laugh

  I’the eyes of him for mere delight, pluck off

  Fear that ties man to patience, white regret,

  All mixture of diseasèd purpose, made

  To cut the hand at wrist; remorse and doubt

  Shall die of want in me.

  Bouch.

  Too much of this;

  Get your eyes back. Think how some ten days gone

  He drew loose hair into his either hand

  And how the speech got room between their mouths

  Only to breathe in and go out; at times,

  How she said “Eleanor” to try the name,

  Found not so sweet as Rosamond to say;

  Perhaps too, “Love, the Frenchwoman gets thin,

  Her mouth is something older than her hair;

  Count by these petals, pluck them three and three,

  What months it takes to rid the sun of her,

  And make some grave-grass wealthier;” will you bear

  This?

  Qu. El.

  Do men tie the sword this way, or that?

  Were I a knight now I would gird it on