Algernon Charles Swinburne: Five Poems

Algernon Charles Swinburne

(1837-1909)

In the water

The sea is awake, and the sound of the song

of the joy of her waking is rolled

From afar to the star that recedes, from anear

to the wastes of the wild wide shore.

Her call is a trumpet compelling us homeward:

if dawn in her east be acold,

From the sea shall we crave not her grace to rekindle

the life that it kindled before,

Her breath to requicken, her bosom to rock us,

her kisses to bless as of yore?

For the wind, with his wings half open, at pause

in the sky, neither fettered nor free,

Leans waveward and flutters the ripple to laughter

and fain would the twain of us be

Where lightly the wave yearns forward from under

the curve of the deep dawn’s dome,

And, full of the morning and fired with the pride

of the glory thereof and the glee,

Strike out from the shore as the heart in us bids

and beseeches, athirst for the foam.

Life holds not an hour that is better to live in:

the past is a tale that is told,

The future a sun-flecked shadow, alive and asleep,

with a blessing in store.

As we give us again to the waters, the rapture

of limbs that the waters enfold

Is less than the rapture of spirit whereby,

though the burden it quits were sore,

Our souls and the bodies they wield at their will

are absorbed in the life they adore–

In the life that endures no burden, and bows not

the forehead, and bends not the knee–

In the life everlasting of earth and of heaven,

in the laws that atone and agree,

In the measureless music of things, in the fervour

of forces that rest or that roam,

That cross and return and reissue, as I

after you and as you after me

Strike out from the shore as the heart in us bids

and beseeches, athirst for the foam.

For, albeit he were less than the least of them, haply

the heart of a man may be bold

To rejoice in the word of the sea as a mother’s

that saith to the son she bore,

Child, was not the life in thee mine, and my spirit

the breath in thy lips from of old?

Have I let not thy weakness exult in my strength,

and thy foolishness learn of my lore?

Have I helped not or healed not thine anguish, or made not

the might of thy gladness more?

And surely his heart should answer, The light

of the love of my life is in thee.

She is fairer than earth, and the sun is not fairer,

the wind is not blither than she:

From my youth hath she shown me the joy of her bays

that I crossed, of her cliffs that I clomb,

Till now that the twain of us here, in desire

of the dawn and in trust of the sea,

Strike out from the shore as the heart in us bids

and beseeches, athirst for the foam.

Friend, earth is a harbour of refuge for winter,

a covert whereunder to flee

When day is the vassal of night, and the strength

of the hosts of her mightier than he;

But here is the presence adored of me, here

my desire is at rest and at home.

There are cliffs to be climbed upon land, there are ways

to be trodden and ridden, but we

Strike out from the shore as the heart in us bids

and beseeches, athirst for the foam.

 

After a reading

For the seven times seventh time love would renew

the delight without end or alloy

That it takes in the praise as it takes in the presence

of eyes that fulfil it with joy;

But how shall it praise them and rest unrebuked

by the presence and pride of the boy?

Praise meet for a child is unmeet for an elder

whose winters and springs are nine

What song may have strength in its wings to expand them,

or light in its eyes to shine,

That shall seem not as weakness and darkness if matched

with the theme I would fain make mine?

The round little flower of a face that exults

in the sunshine of shadowless days

Defies the delight it enkindles to sing of it

aught not unfit for the praise

Of the sweetest of all things that eyes may rejoice in

and tremble with love as they gaze.

Such tricks and such meanings abound on the lips

and the brows that are brighter than light,

The demure little chin, the sedate little nose,

and the forehead of sun-stained white,

That love overflows into laughter and laughter

subsides into love at the sight.

Each limb and each feature has action in tune

with the meaning that smiles as it speaks

From the fervour of eyes and the fluttering of hands

in a foretaste of fancies and freaks,

When the thought of them deepens the dimples that laugh

in the corners and curves of his cheeks.

As a bird when the music within her is yet

too intense to be spoken in song,

That pauses a little for pleasure to feel

how the notes from withinwards throng,

So pauses the laugh at his lips for a little,

and waxes within more strong.

As the music elate and triumphal that bids

all things of the dawn bear part

With the tune that prevails when her passion has risen

into rapture of passionate art,

So lightens the laughter made perfect that leaps

from its nest in the heaven of his heart.

Deep, grave and sedate is the gaze of expectant

intensity bent for awhile

And absorbed on its aim as the tale that enthralls him

uncovers the weft of its wile,

Till the goal of attention is touched, and expectancy

kisses delight in a smile.

And it seems to us here that in Paradise hardly

the spirit of Lamb or of Blake

May hear or behold aught sweeter than lightens

and rings when his bright thoughts break

In laughter that well might lure them to look,

and to smile as of old for his sake.

O singers that best loved children, and best

for their sakes are beloved of us here,

In the world of your life everlasting, where love

has no thorn and desire has no fear,

All else may be sweeter than aught is on earth,

nought dearer than these are dear.

 

Love and scorn

I

Love, loyallest and lordliest born of things,

Immortal that shouldst be, though all else end,

In plighted hearts of fearless friend with friend,

Whose hand may curb or clip thy plume-plucked wings?

Not grief’s nor time’s: though these be lords and kings

Crowned, and their yoke bid vassal passions bend,

They may not pierce the spirit of sense, or blend

Quick poison with the soul’s live watersprings.

The true clear heart whose core is manful trust

Fears not that very death may turn to dust

Love lit therein as toward a brother born,

If one touch make not all its fine gold rust,

If one breath blight not all its glad ripe corn,

And all its fire be turned to fire of scorn.

II

Scorn only, scorn begot of bitter proof

By keen experience of a trustless heart,

Bears burning in her new-born hand the dart

Wherewith love dies heart-stricken, and the roof

Falls of his palace, and the storied woof

Long woven of many a year with life’s whole art

Is rent like any rotten weed apart,

And hardly with reluctant eyes aloof

Cold memory guards one relic scarce exempt

Yet from the fierce corrosion of contempt,

And hardly saved by pity. Woe are we

That once we loved, and love not; but we know

The ghost of love, surviving yet in show,

Where scorn has passed, is vain as grief must be.

III

O sacred, just, inevitable scorn,

Strong child of righteous judgment, whom with grief

The rent heart bears, and wins not yet relief,

Seeing of its pain so dire a portent born,

Must thou not spare one sheaf of all the corn,

One doit of all the treasure? not one sheaf,

Not one poor doit of all? not one dead leaf

Of all that fell and left behind a thorn?

Is man so strong that one should scorn another?

Is any as God, not made of mortal mother,

That love should turn in him to gall and flame?

Nay: but the true is not the false heart’s brother:

Love cannot love disloyalty: the name

That else it wears is love no more, but shame.

A solitude

Sea beyond sea, sand after sweep of sand,

Here ivory smooth, here cloven and ridged with flow

Of channelled waters soft as rain or snow,

Stretch their lone length at ease beneath the bland

Grey gleam of skies whose smile on wave and strand

Shines weary like a man’s who smiles to know

That now no dream can mock his faith with show,

Nor cloud for him seem living sea or land.

Is there an end at all of all this waste,

These crumbling cliffs defeatured and defaced,

These ruinous heights of sea-sapped walls that slide

Seaward with all their banks of bleak blown flowers

Glad yet of life, ere yet their hope subside

Beneath the coil of dull dense waves and hours?

First and last

Upon the borderlands of being,

Where life draws hardly breath

Between the lights and shadows fleeing

Fast as a word one saith,

Two flowers rejoice our eyesight, seeing

The dawns of birth and death.

Behind the babe his dawn is lying

Half risen with notes of mirth

From all the winds about it flying

Through new-born heaven and earth:

Before bright age his day for dying

Dawns equal-eyed with birth.

Equal the dews of even and dawn,

Equal the sun’s eye seen

A hand’s breadth risen and half withdrawn:

But no bright hour between

Brings aught so bright by stream or lawn

To noonday growths of green.

Which flower of life may smell the sweeter

To love’s insensual sense,

Which fragrance move with offering meeter

His soothed omnipotence,

Being chosen as fairer or as fleeter,

Borne hither or borne hence,

Love’s foiled omniscience knows not: this

Were more than all he knows

With all his lore of bale and bliss,

The choice of rose and rose,

One red as lips that touch with his,

One white as moonlit snows.

No hope is half so sweet and good,

No dream of saint or sage

So fair as these are: no dark mood

But these might best assuage;

The sweet red rose of babyhood,

The white sweet rose of age.

 

Algernon Charles Swinburne: Five Poems

kempis poetry magazine

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