Algernon Charles Swinburne
Mourning
Alas my brother! the cry of the mourners of old That cried on each other, All crying aloud on the dead as the death-note rolled, Alas my brother! As flashes of dawn that mists
Birth And Death
Birth and death, twin-sister and twin-brother, Night and day, on all things that draw breath, Reign, while time keeps friends with one another Birth and death. Each brow-bound with flowers diverse of wreath, Heaven
Benediction
Blest in death and life beyond man’s guessing Little children live and die, possest Still of grace that keeps them past expressing Blest. Each least chirp that rings from every nest, Each least touch
To A Cat
STATELY, kindly, lordly friend, Condescend Here to sit by me, and turn Glorious eyes that smile and burn, Golden eyes, love’s lustrous meed, On the golden page I read. All your wondrous wealth of
Discord
Unreconciled by life’s fleet years, that fled With changeful clang of pinions wide and wild, Though two great spirits had lived, and hence had sped Unreconciled; Though time and change, harsh time’s imperious child,
Hope and Fear
Beneath the shadow of dawn’s aërial cope, With eyes enkindled as the sun’s own sphere, Hope from the front of youth in godlike cheer Looks Godward, past the shades where blind men grope Round
Hymn Of Man
In the grey beginning of years, in the twilight of things that began, The word of the earth in the ears of the world, was it God? was it man? The word of the
Tenebrae
At the chill high tide of the night, At the turn of the fluctuant hours, When the waters of time are at height, In a vision arose on my sight The kingdoms of earth
Chorus
from Atalanta in Calydon When the hounds of spring are on winter’s traces, The mother of months in meadow or plain Fills the shadows and windy places With lisp of leaves and ripple of
The Year of the Rose
From the depths of the green garden-closes Where the summer in darkness dozes Till autumn pluck from his hand An hour-glass that holds not a sand; From the maze that a flower-belt encloses To
Tiresias
PART I It is an hour before the hour of dawn. Set in mine hand my staff and leave me here Outside the hollow house that blind men fear, More blind than I who
The Song Of The Standard
Maiden most beautiful, mother most bountiful, lady of lands, Queen and republican, crowned of the centuries whose years are thy sands, See for thy sake what we bring to thee, Italy, here in our
Epilogue
Between the wave-ridge and the strand I let you forth in sight of land, Songs that with storm-crossed wings and eyes Strain eastward till the darkness dies; Let signs and beacons fall or stand,
Prelude – Lohengrin
Love, out of the depth of things, As a dewfall felt from above, From the heaven whence only springs Love, Love, heard from the heights thereof, The clouds and the watersprings, Draws close as
One Of Twain
One of twain, twin-born with flowers that waken, Now hath passed from sense of sun and rain: Wind from off the flower-crowned branch hath shaken One of twain. One twin flower must pass, and