Algernon Charles Swinburne

"To wipe off the froth of falsehood from the foaming lips of inebriated virtue, when fresh from the sexless orgies of morality and reeling from the delirious riot of religion, may doubtless be a charitable office."

"Fiddle, we know, is diddle: and diddle, we take it, is dee."

"The pulse of war and passion of wonder, The heavens that murmur, the sounds that shine, The stars that sing and the loves that thunder, The music burning at heart like wine, An armed archangel whose hands raise up All senses mixed in the spirit's cup Till flesh and spirit are molten in sunder — These things are over, and no more mine. These were a part of the playing I heard Once, ere my love and my heart were at strife; Love that sings and hath wings as a bird, Balm of the wound and heft of the knife. Fairer than earth is the sea, and sleep Than overwatching of eyes that weep, Now time has done with his one sweet word, The wine and leaven of lovely life."

"A blatant Bassarid of Boston, a rampant Maenad of Massachusetts."

"Villon, our sad bad glad mad brother's name."

"Life is the lust of a lamp for the light that is dark till the dawn of the day that we die."

"We had stood as the sure stars stand, and moved As the moon moves, loving the world; and seen Grief collapse as a thing disproved, Death consume as a thing unclean. Twain halves of a perfect heart, made fast Soul to soul while the years fell past; Had you loved me once, as you have not loved; Had the chance been with us that has not been. I have put my days and dreams out of mind, Days that are over, dreams that are done. Though we seek life through, we shall surely find There is none of them clear to us now, not one."

"I had grown pure as the dawn and the dew, You had grown strong as the sun or the sea. But none shall triumph a whole life through: For death is one, and the fates are three. At the door of life, by the gate of breath, There are worse things waiting for men than death; Death could not sever my soul and you, As these have severed your soul from me. You have chosen and clung to the chance they sent you, Life sweet as perfume and pure as prayer. But will it not one day in heaven repent you? Will they solace you wholly, the days that were? Will you lift up your eyes between sadness and bliss, Meet mine, and see where the great love is, And tremble and turn and be changed? Content you; The gate is strait; I shall not be there."

"O slain and spent and sacrificed People, the grey-grown speechless Christ."

"It is long since Mr. Carlyle expressed his opinion that if any poet or other literary creature could really be "killed off by one critique" or many, the sooner he was so despatched the better; a sentiment in which I for one humbly but heartily concur."

"Surely most bitter of all sweet things thou art, And sweetest thou of all things bitter, love."

"I have no remedy for fear; there grows No herb of help to heal a coward heart."

"Sleep; and if life was bitter to thee, pardon, If sweet, give thanks; thou hast no more to live; And to give thanks"

"As a god self-slain on his own strange altar, Death lies dead."

"There lived a singer in France of old By the tideless dolorous midland sea. In a land of sand and ruin and gold There shone one woman, and none but she."

"In the change of years, in the coil of things, In the clamour and rumour of life to be, We, drinking love at the furthest springs, Covered with love as a covering tree, We had grown as gods, as the gods above, Filled from the heart to the lips with love, Held fast in his hands, clothed warm with his wings, O love, my love, had you loved but me!"

"The loves and hours of the life of a man, They are swift and sad, being born of the sea. Hours that rejoice and regret for a span, Born with a man's breath, mortal as he; Loves that are lost ere they come to birth, Weeds of the wave, without fruit upon earth. I lose what I long for, save what I can, My love, my love, and no love for me!"

"It is not much that a man can save On the sands of life, in the straits of time, Who swims in sight of the great third wave That never a swimmer shall cross or climb. Some waif washed up with the strays and spars That ebb-tide shows to the shore and the stars; Weed from the water, grass from a grave, A broken blossom, a ruined rhyme. There will no man do for your sake, I think, What I would have done for the least word said. I had wrung life dry for your lips to drink, Broken it up for your daily bread: Body for body and blood for blood, As the flow of the full sea risen to flood That yearns and trembles before it sink, I had given, and lain down for you, glad and dead."

"I shall go my ways, tread out my measure, Fill the days of my daily breath With fugitive things not good to treasure, Do as the world doth, say as it saith; But if we had loved each other — O sweet, Had you felt, lying under the palms of your feet, The heart of my heart, beating harder with pleasure To feel you tread it to dust and death — Ah, had I not taken my life up and given All that life gives and the years let go, The wine and honey, the balm and leaven, The dreams reared high and the hopes brought low? Come life, come death, not a word be said; Should I lose you living, and vex you dead? I never shall tell you on earth; and in heaven, If I cry to you then, will you hear or know?"

"Even love, the beloved Republic, that feeds upon freedom and lives."

"But God, if a God there be, is the substance of men which is man."

"Glory to Man in the highest! for Man is the master of things."

"The more congenial page of some tenth-rate poeticule worn out with failure after failure and now squat in his hole like the tailless fox, he is curled up to snarl and whimper beneath the inaccessible vine of song."

"The tadpole poet will never grow into anything bigger than a frog; not though in that stage of development he should puff and blow himself till he bursts with windy adulation at the heels of the laureled ox."

"Sins are sin-begotten, and their seed Bred of itself and singly procreative; Nor is God served with setting this to this For evil evidence of several shame, That one may say, Lo now! so many are they; But if one, seeing with God-illumined eyes In his full face the encountering face of sin, Smite once the one high-fronted head, and slay, His will we call good service. For myself, If ye will make a counsellor of me, I bid you set your hearts against one thing To burn it up, and keep your hearts on fire, Not seeking here a sign and there a sign, Nor curious of all casual sufferances, But steadfast to the undoing of that thing done Whereof ye know the being, however it be, And all the doing abominable of God. Who questions with a snake if the snake sting? Who reasons of the lightning if it burn? While these things are, deadly will these things be; And so the curse that comes of cursed faith."

"Fear that makes faith may break faith; and a fool Is but in folly stable."

"For a day and a night Love sang to us, played with us, Folded us round from the dark and the light; And our hearts were fulfilled with the music he made with us, Made with our hands and our lips while he stayed with us, Stayed in mid passage his pinions from flight For a day and a night."

"The deep division of prodigious breasts, The solemn slope of mighty limbs asleep."

"In a coign of the cliff between lowland and highland, At the sea-down's edge between windward and lee, Walled round with rocks as an inland island, The ghost of a garden fronts the sea. A girdle of brushwood and thorn encloses The steep square slope of the blossomless bed Where the weeds that grew green from the graves of its roses Now lie dead."

"The thorns he spares when the rose is taken; The rocks are left when he wastes the plain; The wind that wanders, the weeds wind-shaken, These remain."

"I will go back to the great sweet mother, Mother and lover of men, the sea. I will go down to her, I and no other, Close with her, kiss her and mix her with me."

"I shall sleep, and move with the moving ships, Change as the winds change, veer in the tide."

"Before our lives divide for ever, While time is with us and hands are free, (Time, swift to fasten and swift to sever Hand from hand, as we stand by the sea) I will say no word that a man might say Whose whole life's love goes down in a day; For this could never have been; and never, Though the gods and the years relent, shall be. Is it worth a tear, is it worth an hour, To think of things that are well outworn? Of fruitless husk and fugitive flower, The dream foregone and the deed forborne? Though joy be done with and grief be vain, Time shall not sever us wholly in twain; Earth is not spoilt for a single shower; But the rain has ruined the ungrown corn."

"Ah, yet would God this flesh of mine might be Where air might wash and long leaves cover me; Where tides of grass break into foam of flowers, Or where the wind's feet shine along the sea."

"Marvellous mercies and infinite love."

"Our way is where God knows And Love knows where: We are in Love's hand to-day."

"From too much love of living, From hope and fear set free, We thank with brief thanksgiving Whatever gods may be That no man lives forever, That dead men rise up never; That even the weariest river Winds somewhere safe to sea."

"Though one were fair as roses His beauty clouds and closes."

"Pale, beyond porch and portal, Crowned with calm leaves, she stands Who gathers all things mortal With cold immortal hands."

"For in the days we know not of Did fate begin Weaving the web of days that wove Your doom."

"I remember the way we parted, The day and the way we met; You hoped we were both broken-hearted And knew we should both forget."

"And the best and the worst of this is That neither is most to blame, If you have forgotten my kisses And I have forgotten your name."

"O bitterness of things too sweet!"

"Gone deeper than all plummets sound."

"Ah that such sweet things should be fleet, Such fleet things sweet!"

"Those eyes the greenest of things blue The bluest of things grey."

"Swallow, my sister, O sister swallow, How can thine heart be full of the spring? A thousand summers are over and dead. What hast thou found in the spring to follow? What hast thou found in thine heart to sing? What wilt thou do when the summer is shed?"

"Till life forget and death remember, Till thou remember and I forget."

"Change lays not her hand upon truth."

"Who knows but on their sleep may rise Such light as never heaven let through To lighten earth from Paradise?"