Poems and Ballads and Atalanta in Calydon

by Algernon Swinburne

  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.

  Ah yet would God that stems and roots were bred

  Out of my weary body and my head,

  That sleep were sealed upon me with a seal,

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  And I were as the least of all his dead.

  Would God my blood were dew to feed the grass,

  Mine ears made deaf and mine eyes blind as glass,

  My body broken as a turning wheel,

  And my mouth stricken ere it saith Alas!

  Ah God, that love were as a flower or flame,

  That life were as the naming of a name,

  That death were not more pitiful than desire,

  That these things were not one thing and the same!

  Behold now, surely somewhere there is death:

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  For each man hath some space of years, he saith,

  A little space of time ere time expire,

  A little day, a little way of breath.

  And lo, between the sundawn and the sun,

  His day’s work and his night’s work are undone;

  And lo, between the nightfall and the light,

  He is not, and none knoweth of such an one.

  Ah God, that I were as all souls that be,

  As any herb or leaf of any tree,

  As men that toil through hours of labouring night,

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  As bones of men under the deep sharp sea.

  Outside it must be winter among men;

  For at the gold bars of the gates again

  I heard all night and all the hours of it

  The wind’s wet wings and fingers drip with rain.

  Knights gather, riding sharp for cold; I know

  The ways and woods are strangled with the snow;

  And with short song the maidens spin and sit

  Until Christ’s birthnight, lily-like, arow.

  The scent and shadow shed about me make

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  The very soul in all my senses ache;

  The hot hard night is fed upon my breath,

  And sleep beholds me from afar awake.

  Alas, but surely where the hills grow deep,

  Or where the wild ways of the sea are steep,

  Or in strange places somewhere there is death,

  And on death’s face the scattered hair of sleep.

  There lover-like with lips and limbs that meet

  They lie, they pluck sweet fruit of life and eat;

  But me the hot and hungry days devour,

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  And in my mouth no fruit of theirs is sweet.

  No fruit of theirs, but fruit of my desire,

  For her love’s sake whose lips through mine respire;

  Her eyelids on her eyes like flower on flower,

  Mine eyelids on mine eyes like fire on fire.

  So lie we, not as sleep that lies by death,

  With heavy kisses and with happy breath;

  Not as man lies by woman, when the bride

  Laughs low for love’s sake and the words he saith.

  For she lies, laughing low with love; she lies

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  And turns his kisses on her lips to sighs,

  To sighing sound of lips unsatisfied,

  And the sweet tears are tender with her eyes.

  Ah, not as they, but as the souls that were

  Slain in the old time, having found her fair;

  Who, sleeping with her lips upon their eyes,

  Heard sudden serpents hiss across her hair.

  Their blood runs round the roots of time like rain:

  She casts them forth and gathers them again;

  With nerve and bone she weaves and multiplies

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  Exceeding pleasure out of extreme pain.

  Her little chambers drip with flower-like red,

  Her girdles, and the chaplets of her head,

  Her armlets and her anklets; with her feet

  She tramples all that winepress of the dead.

  Her gateways smoke with fume of flowers and fires,

  With loves burnt out and unassuaged desires;

  Between her lips the steam of them is sweet,

  The languor in her ears of many lyres.

  Her beds are full of perfume and sad sound,

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  Her doors are made with music, and barred round

  With sighing and with laughter and with tears,

  With tears whereby strong souls of men are bound.

  There is the knight Adonis that was slain;

  With flesh and blood she chains him for a chain;

  The body and the spirit in her ears

  Cry, for her lips divide him vein by vein.

  Yea, all she slayeth; yea, every man save me;

  Me, love, thy lover that must cleave to thee

  Till the ending of the days and ways of earth,

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  The shaking of the sources of the sea.

  Me, most forsaken of all souls that fell;

  Me, satiated with things insatiable;

  Me, for whose sake the extreme hell makes mirth,

  Yea, laughter kindles at the heart of hell.

  Alas thy beauty! for thy mouth’s sweet sake

  My soul is bitter to me, my limbs quake

  As water, as the flesh of men that weep,

  As their heart’s vein whose heart goes nigh to break.

  Ah God, that sleep with flower-sweet finger-tips

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  Would crush the fruit of death upon my lips;

  Ah God, that death would tread the grapes of sleep

  And wring their juice upon me as it drips.

  There is no change of cheer for many days,

  But change of chimes high up in the air, that sways

  Rung by the running fingers of the wind;

  And singing sorrows heard on hidden ways.

  Day smiteth day in twain, night sundereth night,

  And on mine eyes the dark sits as the light;

  Yea, Lord, thou knowest I know not, having sinned,

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  If heaven be clean or unclean in thy sight.

  Yea, as if earth were sprinkled over me,

  Such chafed harsh earth as chokes a sandy sea,

  Each pore doth yearn, and the dried blood thereof

  Gasps by sick fits, my heart swims heavily,

  There is a feverish famine in my veins;

  Below her bosom, where a crushed grape stains

  The white and blue, there my lips caught and clove

  An hour since, and what mark of me remains?

  I dare not always touch her, lest the kiss

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  Leave my lips charred. Yea, Lord, a little bliss,

  Brief bitter bliss, one hath for a great sin;

  Nathless thou knowest how sweet a thing it is.

  Sin, is it sin whereby men’s souls are thrust

  Into the pit? yet had I a good trust

  To save my soul before it slipped therein,

  Trod under by the fire-shod feet of lust.

  For if mine eyes fail and my soul takes breath,

  I look between the iron sides of death

  Into sad hell where all sweet love hath end,

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  All but the pain that never finisheth.

  There are the naked faces of great kings,

  The singing folk with all their lute-playings;

  There when one cometh he shall have to friend

  The grave that covets and the worm that clings.

  There sit the knights that were so great of hand,

  The ladies that were queens of fair green land,

  Grown grey and black now, brought unto the dust,

  Soiled, without raiment, clad about with sand.

  There is o
ne end for all of them; they sit

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  Naked and sad, they drink the dregs of it,

  Trodden as grapes in the wine-press of lust,

  Trampled and trodden by the fiery feet.

  I see the marvellous mouth whereby there fell

  Cities and people whom the gods loved well,

  Yet for her sake on them the fire gat hold,

  And for their sakes on her the fire of hell.

  And softer than the Egyptian lote-leaf is,

  The queen whose face was worth the world to kiss,

  Wearing at breast a suckling snake of gold;

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  And large pale lips of strong Semiramis,

  Curled like a tiger’s that curl back to feed;

  Red only where the last kiss made them bleed;

  Her hair most thick with many a carven gem,

  Deep in the mane, great-chested, like a steed.

  Yea, with red sin the faces of them shine;

  But in all these there was no sin like mine;

  No, not in all the strange great sins of them

  That made the wine-press froth and foam with wine.

  For I was of Christ’s choosing, I God’s knight,

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  No blinkard heathen stumbling for scant light;

  I can well see, for all the dusty days

  Gone past, the clean great time of goodly fight.

  I smell the breathing battle sharp with blows,

  With shriek of shafts and snapping short of bows;

  The fair pure sword smites out in subtle ways,

  Sounds and long lights are shed between the rows

  Of beautiful mailed men; the edged light slips,

  Most like a snake that takes short breath and dips

  Sharp from the beautifully bending head,

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  With all its gracious body lithe as lips

  That curl in touching you; right in this wise

  My sword doth, seeming fire in mine own eyes,

  Leaving all colours in them brown and red

  And flecked with death; then the keen breaths like sighs,

  The caught-up choked dry laughters following them,

  When all the fighting face is grown a flame

  For pleasure, and the pulse that stuns the ears,

  And the heart’s gladness of the goodly game.

  Let me think yet a little; I do know

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  These things were sweet, but sweet such years ago,

  Their savour is all turned now into tears;

  Yea, ten years since, where the blue ripples blow,

  The blue curled eddies of the blowing Rhine,

  I felt the sharp wind shaking grass and vine

  Touch my blood too, and sting me with delight

  Through all this waste and weary body of mine

  That never feels clear air; right gladly then

  I rode alone, a great way off my men,

  And heard the chiming bridle smite and smite,

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  And gave each rhyme thereof some rhyme again,

  Till my song shifted to that iron one;

  Seeing there rode up between me and the sun

  Some certain of my foe’s men, for his three

  White wolves across their painted coats did run.

  The first red-bearded, with square cheeks – alack,

  I made my knave’s blood turn his beard to black;

  The slaying of him was a joy to see:

  Perchance too, when at night he came not back,

  Some woman fell a-weeping, whom this thief

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  Would beat when he had drunken; yet small grief

  Hath any for the ridding of such knaves;

  Yea, if one wept, I doubt her teen was brief.

  This bitter love is sorrow in all lands,

  Draining of eyelids, wringing of drenched hands,

  Sighing of hearts and filling up of graves;

  A sign across the head of the world he stands,

  An one that hath a plague-mark on his brows;

  Dust and spilt blood do track him to his house

  Down under earth; sweet smells of lip and cheek,

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  Like a sweet snake’s breath made more poisonous

  With chewing of some perfumed deadly grass,

  Are shed all round his passage if he pass,

  And their quenched savour leaves the whole soul weak,

  Sick with keen guessing whence the perfume was.

  As one who hidden in deep sedge and reeds

  Smells the rare scent made where a panther feeds,

  And tracking ever slotwise the warm smell

  Is snapped upon by the sweet mouth and bleeds,

  His head far down the hot sweet throat of her –

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  So one tracks love, whose breath is deadlier,

  And lo, one springe and you are fast in hell,

  Fast as the gin’s grip of a wayfarer.

  I think now, as the heavy hours decease

  One after one, and bitter thoughts increase

  One upon one, of all sweet finished things;

  The breaking of the battle; the long peace

  Wherein we sat clothed softly, each man’s hair

  Crowned with green leaves beneath white hoods of vair;

  The sounds of sharp spears at great tourneyings,

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  And noise of singing in the late sweet air.

  I sang of love too, knowing nought thereof;

  ‘Sweeter,’ I said, ‘the little laugh of love

  Than tears out of the eyes of Magdalen,

  Or any fallen feather of the Dove.

  ‘The broken little laugh that spoils a kiss,

  The ache of purple pulses, and the bliss

  Of blinded eyelids that expand again –

  Love draws them open with those lips of his,

  ‘Lips that cling hard till the kissed face has grown

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  Of one same fire and colour with their own;

  Then ere one sleep, appeased with sacrifice,

  Where his lips wounded, there his lips atone.’

  I sang these things long since and knew them not;

  ‘Lo, here is love, or there is love, God wot,

  This man and that finds favour in his eyes,’

  I said, ‘but I, what guerdon have I got?

  ‘The dust of praise that is blown everywhere

  In all men’s faces with the common air;

  The bay-leaf that wants chafing to be sweet

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  Before they wind it in a singer’s hair.’

  So that one dawn I rode forth sorrowing;

  I had no hope but of some evil thing,

  And so rode slowly past the windy wheat

  And past the vineyard and the water-spring,

  Up to the Horsel. A great elder-tree

  Held back its heaps of flowers to let me see

  The ripe tall grass, and one that walked therein,

  Naked, with hair shed over to the knee.