Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne (Illustrated) (Delphi Poets Series)
Page 272
Sit libertas ipsa lux.
FALIERO.
Yea? then, God send it be so: for he knows,
Though priests and lay-folk, lords and vassals born,
Know not, that God’s omnipotence can make
No light whose fire outshines a marshlight shine
On eyes that see not freedom. Faith, whose trust
Forsakes for thirst of heaven our natural earth,
And hope that hovers out of sight, and love
Whose eyes being set against the sun are blind
And see not men that suffer, nor look back
To lift and light them up with comfort given
From brethren’s hearts to brethren, these can heal
Of all the mortal plaguesores of the world
None, and for all their wild weak will can give
Nothing; they wail and cry, they rage and rend,
Shed blood with prayer for sacrifice, and make
Day foul with fume of fires unnatural, whence
Hell risen on earth reeks heavenward: nor may man
From faith that hangs on lips whose doom feeds hell,
From hope through fear kept living, or from love
Whose breath burns up the life of pity, dream
To gather fruit, and die not. Liberty
Is no mere flower that feeds on light and air
And sweetens life and soothes it, but herself
Air, light, and life, which being withdrawn or quenched
Or choked with rank infection till it rot
Gives only place to death and darkness. I
Would fain have hewn a way for her to pass
As fire that cleaves a forest: and the flame
Takes hold on me that kindled it. My child,
Weep not for that; weep, if thou wilt, that man,
So kind and brave as good men are, so true,
So loving, yet should be so slow to love
More than the life of days and nights, fulfilled
With love and hate that flower and bear not fruit,
Pain, pleasure, fear, and hope more vain than these,
Freedom. Thou wast not wont to weep: thine eyes
Were flower-soft emeralds ever: now they turn
To cloudier change than flaws the sapphire found
Not worth a bright brow’s wearing. What is here
Allowed of God or wrought of men, that thou
Shouldst weep to see it? I have sinned, and die: if sin
It be to strike too swift and wide a stroke
At men undoomed of justice, though by truth
Long since, and witness borne of wrongdoing here,
Doomed; and if death it be for one content,
For one most tired with sight and sense of ill,
To pass, and know no more of it, but sleep
Where sleep takes heed of nothing. Ye that wake,
Forget not nor remember overmuch
Or me that loved you and was loved, or aught
Of time’s past coil or comfort: what ye will
Of what gives comfort yet, if aught there be,
Keep still in heart, and nought that gives not: life
Hath borne for me not bitter fruit alone,
But sweet as love’s own honey: nor for you,
What several ways ye walk soever, till
Night fall about them, shall not life bring forth
Comfort. And now, before the loud noon strike
Whose stroke for me sounds midnight, ere I die,
Kiss me. Live thou, and love my Venice, boy,
Not more than I, but wiselier: serve her not
For thanksgiving of men, nor fear nor heed,
Nor let it gnaw thine heart to win for wage,
Ingratitude: let them take heed and fear
Who pay thee with unthankfulness, but thou,
Seeing not for these thou fightest, but for them
That have been and that shall be, sons and sires,
Dead and unborn, men truer of heart than these,
Be constant, and be satisfied to serve,
And crave no more of any. Fare thee well.
And thou, my wife and child, all loves in one,
Sweet life, sweet heart, fare ever well, and be
Blest of God’s holier hand with happier love
Than here bids blessing on thee. Hark, the guard
Draws hither: noon is full: and where I go
Ye may not follow. Be not faint of heart:
I go not as a base man goes to death,
But great of hope: God cannot will that here
Some day shall spring not freedom: nor perchance
May we, long dead, not know it, who died of love
For dreams that were and truths that were not. Come:
Bring me but toward the landing whence my soul
Sets sail, and bid God speed her forth to sea.
[Exeunt.
LOCRINE
CONTENTS
DEDICATION TO ALICE SWINBURNE.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
ACT I.
ACT II.
ACT III.
ACT IV.
ACT V.
DEDICATION TO ALICE SWINBURNE.
I.
The love that comes and goes like wind or fire
Hath words and wings wherewith to speak and flee.
But love more deep than passion’s deep desire,
Clear and inviolable as the unsounded sea,
What wings of words may serve to set it free,
To lift and lead it homeward? Time and death
Are less than love: or man’s live spirit saith
False, when he deems his life is more than breath.
II.
No words may utter love; no sovereign song
Speak all it would for love’s sake. Yet would I
Fain cast in moulded rhymes that do me wrong
Some little part of all my love: but why
Should weak and wingless words be fain to fly?
For us the years that live not are not dead:
Past days and present in our hearts are wed:
My song can say no more than love hath said.
III.
Love needs nor song nor speech to say what love
Would speak or sing, were speech and song not weak
To bear the sense-belated soul above
And bid the lips of silence breathe and speak.
Nor power nor will has love to find or seek
Words indiscoverable, ampler strains of song
Than ever hailed him fair or shewed him strong:
And less than these should do him worse than wrong.
IV.
We who remember not a day wherein
We have not loved each other, — who can see
No time, since time bade first our days begin,
Within the sweep of memory’s wings, when we
Have known not what each other’s love must be, -
We are well content to know it, and rest on this,
And call not words to witness that it is.
To love aloud is oft to love amiss.
V.
But if the gracious witness borne of words
Take not from speechless love the secret grace
That binds it round with silence, and engirds
Its heart with memories fair as heaven’s own face,
Let love take courage for a little space
To speak and be rebuked not of the soul,
Whose utterance, ere the unwitting speech be whole,
Rebukes itself, and craves again control.
VI.
A ninefold garland wrought of song-flowers nine
Wound each with each in chance-inwoven accord
Here at your feet I lay as on a shrine
Whereof the holiest love that lives is lord.
With faint strange hues their leaves are freaked and scored:
The fable-flowering land wherein they grew
Hath dreams for stars, and gre
y romance for dew:
Perchance no flower thence plucked may flower anew.
VII.
No part have these wan legends in the sun
Whose glory lightens Greece and gleams on Rome.
Their elders live: but these — their day is done,
Their records written of the wind in foam
Fly down the wind, and darkness takes them home.
What Homer saw, what Virgil dreamed, was truth,
And dies not, being divine: but whence, in sooth,
Might shades that never lived win deathless youth?
VIII.
The fields of fable, by the feet of faith
Untrodden, bloom not where such deep mist drives.
Dead fancy’s ghost, not living fancy’s wraith,
Is now the storied sorrow that survives
Faith in the record of these lifeless lives.
Yet Milton’s sacred feet have lingered there,
His lips have made august the fabulous air,
His hands have touched and left the wild weeds fair.
IX.
So, in some void and thought-untrammelled hour,
Let these find grace, my sister, in your sight,
Whose glance but cast on casual things hath power
To do the sun’s work, bidding all be bright
With comfort given of love: for love is light.
Were all the world of song made mine to give,
The best were yours of all its flowers that live:
Though least of all be this my gift, forgive.
July 1887.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
LOCRINE, King of Britain.
CAMBER, King of Wales, brother to LOCRINE.
MADAN, son to LOCRINE and GUENDOLEN.
DEBON, Lord Chamberlain.
GUENDOLEN, Queen of Britain, cousin and wife to LOCRINE.
ESTRILD, a German princess, widow of the Scythian king HUMBER.
SABRINA, daughter to LOCRINE and ESTRILD.
Scene, BRITAIN.
ACT I.
SCENE I. — Troynovant. A Room in the Palace.
Enter GUENDOLEN and MADAN.
GUENDOLEN.
Child, hast thou looked upon thy grandsire dead?
MADAN.
Ay.
GUENDOLEN.
Then thou sawest our Britain’s heart and head
Death-stricken. Seemed not there my sire to thee
More great than thine, or all men living? We
Stand shadows of the fathers we survive:
Earth bears no more nor sees such births alive.
MADAN.
Why, he was great of thews — and wise, thou say’st:
Yet seems my sire to me the fairer-faced -
The kinglier and the kindlier.
GUENDOLEN.
Yea, his eyes
Are liker seas that feel the summering skies
In concord of sweet colour — and his brow
Shines gentler than my father’s ever: thou,
So seeing, dost well to hold thy sire so dear.
MADAN.
I said not that his love sat yet so near
My heart as thine doth: rather am I thine,
Thou knowest, than his.
GUENDOLEN.
Nay — rather seems Locrine
Thy sire than I thy mother.
MADAN.
Wherefore?
GUENDOLEN.
Boy,
Because of all our sires who fought for Troy
Most like thy father and my lord Locrine,
I think, was Paris.
MADAN.
How may man divine
Thy meaning? Blunt am I, thou knowest, of wit;
And scarce yet man — men tell me.
GUENDOLEN.
Ask not it.
I meant not thou shouldst understand — I spake
As one that sighs, to ease her heart of ache,
And would not clothe in words her cause for sighs -
Her naked cause of sorrow.
MADAN.
Wert thou wise,
Mother, thy tongue had chosen of two things one -
Silence, or speech.
GUENDOLEN.
Speech had I chosen, my son,
I had wronged thee — yea, perchance I have wronged thine ears
Too far, to say so much.
MADAN.
Nay, these are tears
That gather toward thine eyelids now. Thou hast broken
Silence — if now thy speech die down unspoken,
Thou dost me wrong indeed — but more than mine
The wrong thou dost thyself is.
GUENDOLEN.
And Locrine -
Were not thy sire wronged likewise of me?
MADAN.
Yea.
GUENDOLEN.
Yet — I may choose yet — nothing will I say
More.
MADAN.
Choose, and have thy choice; it galls not me.
GUENDOLEN.
Son, son! thy speech is bitterer than the sea.
MADAN.
Yet, were the gulfs of hell not bitterer, thine
Might match thy son’s, who hast called my sire — Locrine -
Thy lord, and lord of all this land — the king
Whose name is bright and sweet as earth in spring,
Whose love is mixed with Britain’s very life
As heaven with earth at sunrise — thou, his wife,
Hast called him — and the poison of the word
Set not thy tongue on fire — I lived and heard -
Coward.
GUENDOLEN.
Thou liest.
MADAN.
If then thy speech rang true,
Why, now it rings not false.
GUENDOLEN.
Thou art treacherous too -
His heart, thy father’s very heart is thine -
O, well beseems it, meet it is, Locrine,
That liar and traitor and changeling he should be
Who, though I bare him, was begot by thee.
MADAN.
How have I lied, mother? Was this the lie,
That thou didst call my father coward, and I
Heard?
GUENDOLEN.
Nay — I did but liken him with one
Not all unlike him; thou, my child, his son,
Art more unlike thy father.
MADAN.
Was not then,
Of all our fathers, all recorded men,
The man whose name, thou sayest, is like his name -
Paris — a sign in all men’s mouths of shame?
GUENDOLEN.
Nay, save when heaven would cross him in the fight,
He bare him, say the minstrels, as a knight -
Yea, like thy father.
MADAN.
Shame then were it none
Though men should liken me to him?
GUENDOLEN.
My son,
I had rather see thee — see thy brave bright head,
Strong limbs, clear eyes — drop here before me dead.
MADAN.
If he were true man, wherefore?
GUENDOLEN.
False was he;
No coward indeed, but faithless, trothless — we
Hold therefore, as thou sayest, his princely name
Unprincely — dead in honour — quick in shame.
MADAN.
And his to mine thou likenest?
GUENDOLEN.
Thine? to thine?
God rather strike thy life as dark as mine
Than tarnish thus thine honour! For to me
Shameful it seems — I know not if it be -
For men to lie, and smile, and swear, and lie,
And bear the gods of heaven false witness. I
Can hold not this but shameful.
MADAN.
Thou dost well.
I had liefer cast my soul alive to hell
/>
Than play a false man false. But were he true
And I the traitor — then what heaven should do
I wot not, but myself, being once awake
Out of that treasonous trance, were fain to slake
With all my blood the fire of shame wherein
My soul should burn me living in my sin.
GUENDOLEN.
Thy soul? Yea, there — how knowest thou, boy, so well? -
The fire is lit that feeds the fires of hell.
Mine is aflame this long time now — but thine -
O, how shall God forgive thee this, Locrine,
That thou, for shame of these thy treasons done,
Hast rent the soul in sunder of thy son?
MADAN.
My heart is whole yet, though thy speech be fire
Whose flame lays hold upon it. Hath my sire
Wronged thee?
GUENDOLEN.
Nay, child, I lied — I did but rave -
I jested — was my face, then, sad and grave,
When most I jested with thee? Child, my brain
Is wearied, and my heart worn down with pain:
I thought awhile, for very sorrow’s sake,
To play with sorrow — try thy spirit, and take
Comfort — God knows I know not what I said,
My father, whom I loved, being newly dead.
MADAN.
I pray thee that thou jest with me no more
Thus.
GUENDOLEN.
Dost thou now believe me?
MADAN.
No.
GUENDOLEN.
I bore
A brave man when I bore thee.
MADAN.
I desire
No more of laud or leasing. Hath my sire
Wronged thee?
GUENDOLEN.
Never. But wilt thou trust me now?
MADAN.
As trustful am I, mother of mine, as thou.