Algernon Charles Swinburne Quotes - Page 4

Before the beginning of years There came to the making of man Time with a gift of tears, Grief with a glass that ran, Pleasure with pain for leaven, Summer with flowers that fell, Remembrance fallen from heaven, And Madness risen from hell, Strength without hands to smite, Love that endures for a breath; Night, the shadow of light, And Life, the shadow of death.

Not with dreams, but with blood and with iron, Shall a nation be moulded at last.

Cold autumn, wan with wrath of wind and rain, Saw pass a soul sweet as the sovereign tune That death smote silent when he smote again.

Heart's ease of pansy, pleasure or thought, Which would the picture give us of these? Surely the heart that conceived it sought Heart's ease.

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 rain.

Change lays not her hand upon truth.

O Love, O great god Love, what have I done, That thou shouldst hunger so after my death? My heart is harmless as my life's first day: Seek out some false fair woman, and plague her Till her tears even as my tears fill her bed.

While three men hold together, the kingdoms are less by three.

God's own hand Holds fast all issues of our deeds: with him The end of all our ends is, but with us Our ends are, just or unjust: though our works Find righteous or unrighteous judgment, this At least is ours, to make them righteous.

Love lies bleeding in the bed whereover Roses lean with smiling mouths or pleading: Earth lies laughing where the sun's dart clove her: Love lies bleeding.

There was a poor poet named Clough, Whom his friends all united to puff, But the public, though dull, Had not such a skull As belonged to believers in Clough.

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

Love, till dawn sunder night from day with fire Dividing my delight and my desire.

A little soul scarce fledged for earth Takes wing with heaven again for goal, Even while we hailed as fresh from birth A little soul.

No blast of air or fire of sun Puts out the light whereby we run With girdled loins our lamplit race, And each from each takes heart of grace And spirit till his turn be done.

White rose in red rose-garden Is not so white; Snowdrops, that plead for pardon And pine for fright Because the hard East blows Over their maiden vows, Grow not as this face grows from pale to bright.

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.

For winter's rains and ruins are over... And in Green under wood and cover Blossum by blossom the spring begins.

She knows not loves that kissed her She knows not where. Art thou the ghost, my sister, White sister there, Am I the ghost, who knows? My hand, a fallen rose, Lies snow-white on white snows, and takes no care.

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

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.

Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean; the world has grown grey from thy breath;/ We have drunken of things Lethean, and fed on the fullness of death

Doubt is faith in the main: but faith, on the whole, is doubt; We cannot believe by proof: but could we believe without?

But now, you are twain, you are cloven apart Flesh of his flesh, but heart of my heart.

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