Algernon Charles Swinburne

"Ah beautiful passionate body That never has ached with a heart!"

"Despair the twin-born of devotion."

"For the crown of our life as it closes Is darkness, the fruit thereof dust; No thorns go as deep as a rose’s, And love is more cruel than lust. Time turns the old days to derision, Our loves into corpses or wives; And marriage and death and division Make barren our lives"

"She hath wasted with fire thine high places, She hath hidden and marred and made sad The fair limbs of the Loves, the fair faces Of gods that were goodly and glad. She slays, and her hands are not bloody; She moves as a moon in the wane, White-robed, and thy raiment is ruddy, Our Lady of Pain."

"I shall remember while the light lives yet And in the night time I shall not forget."

"Forget that I remember And dream that I forget."

"Time found our tired love sleeping, And kissed away his breath; But what should we do weeping, Though light love sleep to death? We have drained his lips at leisure, Till there's not left to drain A single sob of pleasure, A single pulse of pain."

"Dream that the lips once breathless Might quicken if they would; Say that the soul is deathless; Dream that the gods are good; Say March may wed September, And time divorce regret; But not that you remember, And not that I forget."

"And lo, between the sundawn and the sun His day's work and his night's work are undone: And lo, between the nightfall and the light, He is not, and none knoweth of such an one."

"Rhyme is the native condition of lyric verse in English; a rhymeless lyric is a maimed thing."