Algernon Charles Swinburne

"I.     Is the sound a trumpet blown, or a bell for burial tolled,     Whence the whole air vibrates now to the clash of words like swords     Let"

"Kind, wise, and true as truth's own heart,     A soul that here     Chose and held fast the better part     And cast out fear,     Has left us"

"I     Out of hell a word comes hissing, dark as doom,     Fierce as fire, and foul as plague-polluted gloom;     Out of hell wherein the sinless da"

"A faint sea without wind or sun;     A sky like flameless vapour dun;     A valley like an unsealed grave     That no man cares to weep upon,"

"I.     A Baby's feet, like sea-shells pink,     Might tempt, should heaven see meet,     An angel's lips to kiss, we think,     A baby's feet."

"O strong Republic of the nobler years     Whose white feet shine beside time's fairer flood     That shall flow on the clearer for our blood"

"1746     The weary day rins down and dies,     The weary night wears through:     And never an hour is fair wi' flower,     And never a flower"

"The larks are loud above our leagues of whin     Now the suns perfume fills their glorious gold     With odour like the colour: all the wold"

"(ON HIS TRANSLATION OF "THE ARABIAN NIGHTS")     Westward the sun sinks, grave and glad; but far     Eastward, with laughter and tempestuous t"

"Praise of the knights of old     May sleep: their tale is told,     And no man cares:     The praise which fires our lips is     A knights wh"

"I.     The stainless soul that smiled through glorious eyes;     The bright grave brow whereon dark fortunes blast     Might blow, but might not b"

"In the month of the long decline of roses     I, beholding the summer dead before me,     Set my face to the sea and journeyed silent,     Gazi"

"Not all disgraced, in that Italian town,     The imperial German cowered beneath thine hand,     Alone indeed imperial Hildebrand,     And felt"

""Return," we dare not as we fain     Would cry from hearts that yearn:     Love dares not bid our dead again     Return.     O hearts that str"

"Out of the golden remote wild west where the sea without shore is,     Full of the sunset, and sad, if at all, with the fulness of joy,     As a"

"All the west, whereon the sunset sealed the dead year's glorious grave     Fast with seals of light and fire and cloud that light and fire illume"

"Babe, if rhyme be none     For that sweet small word     Babe, the sweetest one     Ever heard,     Right it is and meet     Rhyme should kee"

"Mother whose womb brought forth our man of men,     Mother of Shakespeare, whom all time acclaims     Queen therefore, sovereign queen of Englis"

"'Horatio Nelson - Honor est a Nilo'     A hundred years have lightened and have waned     Since ancient Nile by grace of Nelson gained     A g"

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

"Not if mens tongues and angels all in one     Spake, might the word be said that might speak Thee,     Streams, winds, woods, flowers, fields,"

"Upon the flowery forefront of the year,     One wandering by the grey-green April sea     Found on a reach of shingle and shallower sand     In"

"All Afric, winged with death and fire,     Pants in our pleasant English air.     Each blade of grass is tense as wire,     And all the woods"

"From the depths of the green garden-closes     Where the summer in darkness dozes     Till autumn pluck from his hand     An hour-glass that ho"

"I.     Dead and gone, the days we had together,     Shadow-stricken all the lights that shone     Round them, flown as flies the blown foam's feat"

"Along these low pleached lanes, on such a day,     So soft a day as this, through shade and sun,     With glad grave eyes that scanned the glad"

"I.     If all the flowers of all the fields on earth     By wonder-working summer were made one,     Its fragrance were not sweeter in the sun,"

"TRANSLATED BY D. C. ROSSETTI FROM THE FRENCH OF VILLON I.     Death, from thy rigour a voice appealed,     And men still hear what the sweet"

"Inscribed With All Devotion and Reverence To: JOSEPH MAZZINI DIRAE     I saw the double-featured statue stand     Of Memnon or of Janus, hal"

"Far beyond the sunrise and the sunset rises     Heaven, with worlds on worlds that lighten and respond:     Thought can see not thence the goal"

"A year ago red wrath and keen despair     Spake, and the sole word from their darkness sent     Laid low the lord not all omnipotent     Who st"

"O daughter, why do ye laugh and weep,     One with another?     For woe to wake and for will to sleep,     Mother, my mother.     But weep ye"

"I     Fire out of heaven, a flower of perfect fire,     That where the roots of life are had its root     And where the fruits of time are brought"

"I     Dawn is alive in the world, and the darkness of heaven and of earth     Subsides in the light of a smile more sweet than the loud noon's mirth"

"To Victor Hugo I.     Twice twelve times have the springs of years refilled     Their fountains from the river-head of time     Since by the"

"He held no dream worth waking; so he said, He who stands now on death's triumphal steep, Awakened out of life wherein we sleep And dream of what he kn"

"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 han"

"A Baby's feet, like sea-shells pink, Might tempt, should heaven see meet, An angel's lips to kiss, we think, A baby's feet. Like rose-hued sea-flower"

"The burden of fair women. Vain delight, And love self-slain in some sweet shameful way, And sorrowful old age that comes by night As a thief comes tha"

"Back to the flower-town, side by side, The bright months bring, New-born, the bridegroom and the bride, Freedom and spring. The sweet land laughs from"

"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 bir"

"At the time when the stars are grey, And the gold of the molten moon Fades, and the twilight is thinned, And the sun leaps up, and the wind, A light r"

"Blessed was she that bare, Hidden in flesh most fair, For all men's sake the likeness of all love; Holy that virgin's womb, The old record saith, on w"

"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, pa"

"I. WINTER IN NORTHUMBERLAND OUTSIDE the garden The wet skies harden; The gates are barred on The summer side: "Shut out the flower-time, Sunbeam and s"

"Kneel down, fair Love, and fill thyself with tears, Girdle thyself with sighing for a girth Upon the sides of mirth, Cover thy lips and eyelids, let t"

"To Walter Theodore Watts.     'We are what suns and winds and waters make us.'Landor.     Sea, wind, and sun, with light and sound and breat"

"We mix from many lands,     We march for very far;     In hearts and lips and hands     Our staffs and weapons are;     The light we walk in d"

"France, cloven in twain by fire of hell and hate,     Shamed with the shame of men her meanest born,     Soldier and judge whose names, inscribe"

"Deep desire, that pierces heart and spirit to the root,     Finds reluctant voice in verse that yearns like soaring fire,     Takes exultant voi"

"Beyond the north wind lay the land of old     Where men dwelt blithe and blameless, clothed and fed     With joys bright raiment and with love"

"I.     Gone, O gentle heart and true,     Friend of hopes foregone,     Hopes and hopeful days with you     Gone?     Days of old that shone"

"In the outer world that was before this earth,     That was before all shape or space was born,     Before the blind first hour of time had birt"

"To a friend leaving England for a year's residence in Australia.     These winds and suns of spring     That warm with breath and wing     Th"

"My brother, my Valerius, dearest head     Of all whose crowning bay-leaves crown their mother     Rome, in the notes first heard of thine I read"

"Two souls diverse out of our human sight     Pass, followed one with love and each with wonder:     The stormy sophist with his mouth of thunder"

"Sweet heart, that no taint of the throne or the stage     Could touch with unclean transformation, or alter     To the likeness of courtiers who"

"Ask nothing more of me, sweet;     All I can give you I give.     Heart of my heart, were it more,     More would be laid at your feet:     Lo"

"He should have followed who goes forth before us,     Last born of us in life, in death first-born:     The last to lift up eyes against the mor"

"Upon the borderlands of being,     Where life draws hardly breath     Between the lights and shadows fleeing     Fast as a word one saith,"