A Forsaken Garden

IN a coign of the cliff between lowland and highland,

At the sea-down's edge between windward and lea,

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 the roses

Now lie dead.

The fields fall southward, abrupt and broken,

To the low last edge of the long lone land.

If a step should sound or a word be spoken,

Would a ghost not rise at the strange guest's hand?

So long have the gray bare walks lain guestless,

Through branches and briars if a man make way,

He shall find no life but the sea-wind's, restless

Night and day.

The dense hard passage is blind and stifled

That crawls by a track none turn to climb

To the strait waste place that the years have rifled

Of all but the thorns that are touched not of time.

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.

Not a flower to be pressed of the foot that falls not,

As the heart of a dead man the seed-plots are dry;

From the thicket of thorns whence the nightingale calls not,

Could she call, there were never a rose to reply.

Over the meadows that blossom and wither

Rings but the note of a sea-bird's song;

Only the sun and the rain come hither

All year long.

The sun burns sere and the rain dishevels

One gaunt bleak blossom of scentless breath;

Only the wind here hovers and revels

In a round where life seems as barren as death;

Here, there was laughter of old, there was weeping,

Haply, of lovers none ever will know,

Whose eyes went seaward a hundred sleeping

Years ago.

Heart handfast in heart as they stood, "Look thither,"

(Did he whisper?) "look forth from the flowers to the sea,

For the foam-flowers endure while the rose-blossoms wither,

And men that love lightly may die--but we?"

And the same wind sang and the same wave whitened

And forever the garden's last petals were shed;

In the lips that had whispered, the eyes that had lightened,

Love was dead.

Or they loved their life through--and then went whither?

And were one to the end--but what end who knows?

Love as deep as the sea as a rose must wither,

As the rose-red seaweed mocks the rose.

Shall the dead take thought for the dead to love them?

What love was ever as deep as the grave?

They are loveless now as the grass above them

Or the wave.

All are at one now, roses and lovers,

Not known of the cliffs or the fields or the sea;

Not a breath of the time that has been hovers

In the air now soft with a summer to be.

Not a breath shall sweeten the seasons hereafter

Of flowers or of lovers that laugh now or weep,

When as they who are free now of weeping and laughter

We shall sleep.

Here death may deal not again for ever,

Here change may come not till all change end.

From the graves they have made they shall rise up never

Who have left nought living to ravage and rend.

Earth, stones and thorns of the wild ground growing,

While the sun and the rain live, these shall be,

Till a last wind's breath upon all these blowing

Roll the sea.

Till the slow sea rise and the sheer cliff crumble,

Till terrace and meadow the deep gulfs drink,

Till the strength of the waves of the high tides humble

The fields that lessen, the rocks that shrink;

Here now in his triumph where all things falter,

Stretched out on the spoils that his own hand spread,

Like a god self-slain on his own strange altar,

Death lies dead.

Algernon Charles Swinburne

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 the stones and sea-grass on the strand

How red was the reign of the roses

Over the rose-crowned land!

The year of the rose is brief;

From the first blade blown to the sheaf,

From the thin green leaf to the gold,

It has time to be sweet and grow old,

To triumph and leave not a leaf

For witness in winter's sight

How lovers once in the light

Would mix their breath with its breath,

And its spirit was quenched not of night,

As love is subdued not of death.

In the red-rose land not a mile

Of the meadows from stile to stile,

Of the valleys from stream to stream,

But the air was a long sweet dream

And the earth was a sweet wide smile

Red-mouthed of a goddess, returned

From the sea which had borne her and burned,

That with one swift smile of her mouth

Looked full on the north as it yearned,

And the north was more than the south.

For the north, when winter was long,

In his heart had made him a song,

And clothed it with wings of desire,

And shod it with shoon as of fire,

To carry the tale of his wrong

To the south-west wind by the sea,

That none might bear it but he

To the ear of the goddess unknown

Who waits till her time shall be

To take the world for a throne.

In the earth beneath, and above

In the heaven where her name is love,

She warms with light from her eyes

The seasons of life as they rise,

And her eyes are as eyes of a dove,

But the wings that lift her and bear

As an eagle's, and all her hair

As fire by the wind's breath curled,

And her passage is song through the air,

And her presence is spring through the world.

So turned she northward and came,

And the white-thorn land was aflame

With the fires that were shed from her feet,

That the north, by her love made sweet,

Should be called by a rose-red name;

And a murmur was heard as of doves,

And a music beginning of loves

In the light that the roses made,

Such light as the music loves,

The music of man with maid.

But the days drop one upon one,

And a chill soft wind is begun

In the heart of the rose-red maze

That weeps for the roseleaf days

And the reign of the rose undone

That ruled so long in the light,

And by spirit, and not by sight,

Through the darkness thrilled with its breath,

Still ruled in the viewless night,

As love might rule over death.

The time of lovers is brief;

From the fair first joy to the grief

That tells when love is grown old,

From the warm wild kiss to the cold,

From the red to the white-rose leaf,

They have but a season to seem

As rose-leaves lost on a stream

That part not and pass not apart

As a spirit from dream to dream,

As a sorrow from heart to heart.

From the bloom and the gloom that encloses

The death-bed of Love where he dozes

Till a relic be left not of sand

To the hour-glass that breaks in his hand;

From the change in the grey garden-closes

To the last stray grass of the strand,

A rain and ruin of roses

Over the red-rose land.

Algernon Charles Swinburne

Music: An Ode

     WAS it light that spake from the darkness,

          or music that shone from the word,

     When the night was enkindled with sound

          of the sun or the first-born bird?

Souls enthralled and entrammelled in bondage

          of seasons that fall and rise,

Bound fast round with the fetters of flesh,

          and blinded with light that dies,

Lived not surely till music spake,

          and the spirit of life was heard.

     Music, sister of sunrise, and herald of life to be,

     Smiled as dawn on the spirit of man,

          and the thrall was free.

Slave of nature and serf of time,

          the bondman of life and death,

Dumb with passionless patience that breathed

     but forlorn and reluctant breath,

Heard, beheld, and his soul made answer,

          and communed aloud with the sea.

     Morning spake, and he heard:

          and the passionate silent noon

     Kept for him not silence:

          and soft from the mounting moon

Fell the sound of her splendour,

          heard as dawn's in the breathless night,

Not of men but of birds whose note

          bade man's soul quicken and leap to light:

And the song of it spake, and the light and the darkness

          of earth were as chords in tune.

Algernon Charles Swinburne

Sorrow

SORROW, on wing through the world for ever,

Here and there for awhile would borrow

Rest, if rest might haply deliver

               Sorrow.

One thought lies close in her heart gnawn thorough

With pain, a weed in a dried-up river,

A rust-red share in an empty furrow.

Hearts that strain at her chain would sever

The link where yesterday frets to-morrow:

All things pass in the world, but never

               Sorrow.

Algernon Charles Swinburne

Chorus

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;

And the brown bright nigthingale amorous

Is half assuaged for Itylus,

For the Thracian ships and the foreign faces,

The tongueless vigil, and all the pain.

Come with bows bent and emptying of quivers,

Maiden most perfect, lady of light,

With a noise of winds and many rivers,

With a clamour of waters, and with might;

Bind on thy sandals, O thou most fleet,

Over the splendour and speed of thy feet;

For the faint east quickens, the wan west shivers,

Round the feet of the day and the feet of the night.

Where shall we find her, how shall we sing to her,

Fold our hands round her knees, and cling?

O that man's heart were as fire and could spring to her,

Fire, or the strength of the streams that spring!

For the stars and the winds are unto her

As raiment, as songs of the harp-player;

For the risen stars and the fallen cling to her,

And the southwest-wind and the west-wind sing.

For winter's rains and ruins are over,

And all the season of snows and sins;

The days dividing lover and lover,

The light that loses, the night that wins;

And time remembered is grief forgotten,

And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,

And in green underwood and cover

Blossom by blossom the spring begins.

The full streams feed on flower of rushes,

Ripe grasses trammel a travelling foot,

The faint fresh flame of the young year flushes

From leaf to flower and flower to fruit;

And fruit and leaf are as gold and fire,

And the oat is heard above the lyre,

And the hoofed heel of a satyr crushes

The chestnut-husk at the chestnut-root.

And Pan by noon and Bacchus by night,

Fleeter of foot than the fleet-foot kid,

Follows with dancing and fills with delight

The Maenad and the Bassarid;

And soft as lips that laugh and hide

The laughing leaves of the trees divide,

And screen from seeing and leave in sight

The god pursuing, the maiden hid.

The ivy falls with the Bacchanal's hair

Over her eyebrows hiding her eyes;

The wild vine slipping down leaves bare

Her bright breast shortening with sighs;

The wild vine slips with the weight of its leaves,

But the berried ivy catches and cleaves

To the limbs that glitter, the feet that scare

The wolf that follows, the fawn that flies.

Algernon Charles Swinburne

A Match

IF love were what the rose is,

And I were like the leaf,

Our lives would grow together

In sad or singing weather,

Blown fields or flowerful closes,

Green pasture or gray grief;

If love were what the rose is,

And I were like the leaf.

If I were what the words are,

And love were like the tune,

With double sound and single

Delight our lips would mingle,

With kisses glad as birds are

That get sweet rain at noon;

If I were what the words are,

And love were like the tune.

If you were life, my darling,

And I your love were death,

We'd shine and snow together

Ere March made sweet the weather

With daffodil and starling

And hours of fruitful breath;

If you were life, my darling,

And I your love were death.

If you were thrall to sorrow,

And I were page to joy,

We'd play for lives and seasons

With loving looks and treasons

And tears of night and morrow

And laughs of maid and boy;

If you were thrall to sorrow,

And I were page to joy.

If you were April's lady,

And I were lord in May,

We'd throw with leaves for hours

And draw for days with flowers,

Till day like night were shady

And night were bright like day;

If you were April's lady,

And I were lord in May.

If you were queen of pleasure,

And I were king of pain,

We'd hunt down love together,

Pluck out his flying-feather,

And teach his feet a measure,

And find his mouth a rein;

If you were queen of pleasure,

And I were king of pain.

Algernon Charles Swinburne

The Higher Pantheism in a Nutshell

ONE, who is not, we see; but one, whom we see not, is;

Surely this is not that; but that is assuredly this.

What, and wherefore, and whence? for under is over and under;

If thunder could be without lightning, lightning could be without thunder.

Doubt is faith in the main; but faith, on the whole, is doubt;

We cannot believe by proof; but could we believe without?

Why, and whither, and how? for barley and rye are not clover;

Neither are straight lines curves; yet over is under and over.

Two and two may be four; but four and four are not eight;

Fate and God may be twain; but God is the same as fate.

Ask a man what he thinks, and get from a man what he feels;

God, once caught in the fact, shows you a fair pair of heels.

Body and spirit are twins; God only knows which is which;

The soul squats down in the flesh, like a tinker drunk in a ditch.

More is the whole than a part; but half is more than the whole;

Clearly, the soul is the body; but is not the body the soul?

One and two are not one; but one and nothing is two;

Truth can hardly be false, if falsehood cannot be true.

Once the mastodon was; pterodactyls were common as cocks;

Then the mammoth was God; now is He a prize ox.

Parallels all things are; yet many of these are askew;

You are certainly I; but certainly I am not you.

Springs the rock from the plain, shoots the stream from the rock;

Cocks exist for the hen; but hens exist for the cock.

God, whom we see not, is; and God, who is not, we see;

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

Algernon Charles Swinburne

Nephelidia

[Ed. Note: "Nephelidia" means "Cloudlets"; the poem is Swinburne's parody of his own style.]

FROM the depth of the dreamy decline of the dawn through a notable nimbus of nebulous noonshine,

  Pallid and pink as the palm of the flag-flower that flickers with fear of the flies as they float,

Are the looks of our lovers that lustrously lean from a marvel of mystic miraculous moonshine,

  These that we feel in the blood of our blushes that thicken and threaten with throbs through the throat?

Thicken and thrill as a theatre thronged at appeal of an actor's appalled agitation,

  Fainter with fear of the fires of the future than pale with the promise of pride in the past;

Flushed with the famishing fullness of fever that reddens with radiance and rathe* recreation,           [speedy]

  Gaunt as the ghastliest of glimpses that gleam through the gloom of the gloaming when ghosts go aghast?

Nay, for the nick of the tick of the time is a tremulous touch on the temples of terror,

  Strained as the sinews yet strenuous with strife of the dead who is dumb as the dust-heaps of death;

Surely no soul is it, sweet as the spasm of erotic emotional exquisite error,

  Bathed in the balms of beatified bliss, beatific itself by beatitude's breath.

Surely no spirit or sense of a soul that was soft to the spirit and soul of our senses

  Sweetens the stress of suspiring suspicion that sobs in the semblance and sound of a sigh;

Only this oracle opens Olympian, in mystical moods and triangular tenses--

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

Mild is the mirk and monotonous music of memory, melodiously mute as it may be,

  While the hope in the heart of a hero is bruised by the breach of men's rapiers, resigned to the rod;

Made meek as a mother whose bosom-beats bound with the bliss-bringing bulk of a balm-breathing baby,

  As they grope through the graveyard of creeds, under skies growing green at a groan for the grimness of God.

Blank is the book of his bounty beholden of old, and its binding is blacker than bluer;

  Out of blue into black is the scheme of the skies, and their dews are the wine of the bloodshed of things;

Till the darkling desire of delight shall be free as a fawn that is freed from the fangs that pursue her,

  Till the heartbeats of hell shall be hushed by a hymn from that hunt that has harried the kennel of kings.

Algernon Charles Swinburne