Book Read Free

Poems and Ballads and Atalanta in Calydon

Page 19

by Algernon Swinburne

For my heart is set

  On what hurts me, I wot not why,

  But cannot forget

  40

  What I love, what I sing for and sigh.

  She is worthy of praise,

  For this grief of her giving is worth

  All the joy of my days

  That lie between death’s day and birth,

  All the lordship of things upon earth.

  Nay, what have I said?

  I would not be glad if I could;

  My dream and my dread

  Are of her, and for her sake I would

  50

  That my life were fled.

  Lo, sweet, if I durst not pray to you,

  Then were I dead;

  If I sang not a little to say to you,

  (Could it be said)

  O my love, how my heart would be fed;

  Ah sweet who hast hold of my heart,

  For thy love’s sake I live,

  Do but tell me, ere either depart,

  What a lover may give

  60

  For a woman so fair as thou art.

  The lovers that disbelieve,

  False rumours shall grieve

  And evil-speaking shall part.

  Before Parting

  A month or twain to live on honeycomb

  Is pleasant; but one tires of scented time,

  Cold sweet recurrence of accepted rhyme,

  And that strong purple under juice and foam

  Where the wine’s heart has burst;

  Nor feel the latter kisses like the first.

  Once yet, this poor one time; I will not pray

  Even to change the bitterness of it,

  The bitter taste ensuing on the sweet,

  10

  To make your tears fall where your soft hair lay

  All blurred and heavy in some perfumed wise

  Over my face and eyes.

  And yet who knows what end the scythèd wheat

  Makes of its foolish poppies’ mouths of red?

  These were not sown, these are not harvested,

  They grow a month and are cast under feet

  And none has care thereof,

  As none has care of a divided love.

  I know each shadow of your lips by rote,

  20

  Each change of love in eyelids and eyebrows;

  The fashion of fair temples tremulous

  With tender blood, and colour of your throat;

  I know not how love is gone out of this,

  Seeing that all was his.

  Love’s likeness there endures upon all these:

  But out of these one shall not gather love.

  Day hath not strength nor the night shade enough

  To make love whole and fill his lips with ease,

  As some bee-builded cell

  30

  Feels at filled lips the heavy honey swell.

  I know not how this last month leaves your hair

  Less full of purple colour and hid spice,

  And that luxurious trouble of closed eyes

  Is mixed with meaner shadow and waste care;

  And love, kissed out by pleasure, seems not yet

  Worth patience to regret.

  The Sundew

  A little marsh-plant, yellow green,

  And pricked at lip with tender red.

  Tread close, and either way you tread

  Some faint black water jets between

  Lest you should bruise the curious head.

  A live thing maybe; who shall know?

  The summer knows and suffers it;

  For the cool moss is thick and sweet

  Each side, and saves the blossom so

  10

  That it lives out the long June heat.

  The deep scent of the heather burns

  About it; breathless though it be,

  Bow down and worship; more than we

  Is the least flower whose life returns,

  Least weed renascent in the sea.

  We are vexed and cumbered in earth’s sight

  With wants, with many memories;

  These see their mother what she is,

  Glad-growing, till August leave more bright

  20

  The apple-coloured cranberries.

  Wind blows and bleaches the strong grass,

  Blown all one way to shelter it

  From trample of strayed kine, with feet

  Felt heavier than the moorhen was,

  Strayed up past patches of wild wheat.

  You call it sundew: how it grows,

  30

  If with its colour it have breath,

  If life taste sweet to it, if death

  Pain its soft petal, no man knows:

  Man has no sight or sense that saith.

  My sundew, grown of gentle days,

  In these green miles the spring begun

  Thy growth ere April had half done

  With the soft secret of her ways

  Or June made ready for the sun.

  O red-lipped mouth of marsh-flower,

  I have a secret halved with thee.

  The name that is love’s name to me

  Thou knowest, and the face of her

  40

  Who is my festival to see.

  The hard sun, as thy petals knew,

  Coloured the heavy moss-water:

  Thou wert not worth green midsummer

  Nor fit to live to August blue,

  O sundew, not remembering her.

  Félise

  Mais où sont les neiges d’antan?

  What shall be said between us here

  Among the downs, between the trees,

  In fields that knew our feet last year,

  In sight of quiet sands and seas,

  This year, Félise?

  Who knows what word were best to say?

  For last year’s leaves lie dead and red

  On this sweet day, in this green May,

  And barren corn makes bitter bread.

  10

  What shall be said?

  Here as last year the fields begin,

  A fire of flowers and glowing grass;

  The old fields we laughed and lingered in,

  Seeing each our souls in last year’s glass,

  Félise, alas!

  Shall we not laugh, shall we not weep,

  Not we, though this be as it is?

  For love awake or love asleep

  Ends in a laugh, a dream, a kiss,

  20

  A song like this.

  I that have slept awake, and you

  Sleep, who last year were well awake.

  Though love do all that love can do,

  My heart will never ache or break

  For your heart’s sake.

  The great sea, faultless as a flower,

  Throbs, trembling under beam and breeze,

  And laughs with love of the amorous hour.

  I found you fairer once, Félise,

  30

  Than flowers or seas.

  We played at bondsman and at queen;

  But as the days change men change too;

  I find the grey sea’s notes of green,

  The green sea’s fervent flakes of blue,

  More fair than you.

  Your beauty is not over fair

  Now in mine eyes, who am grown up wise.

  The smell of flowers in all your hair

  Allures not now; no sigh replies

  40

  If your heart sighs.

  But you sigh seldom, you sleep sound,

  You find love’s new name good enough.

  Less sweet I find it than I found

  The sweetest name that ever love

  Grew weary of.

  My snake with bright bland eyes, my snake

  Grown tame and glad to be caressed,

  With lips athirst for mine to slake

  Their tender fever! who had guessed

  50

&n
bsp; You loved me best?

  I had died for this last year, to know

  You loved me. Who shall turn on fate?

  I care not if love come or go

  Now, though your love seek mine for mate.

  It is too late.

  The dust of many strange desires

  Lies deep between us; in our eyes

  Dead smoke of perishable fires

  Flickers, a fume in air and skies,

  60

  A steam of sighs.

  You loved me and you loved me not;

  A little, much, and overmuch.

  Will you forget as I forgot?

  Let all dead things lie dead; none such

  Are soft to touch.

  I love you and I do not love,

  Too much, a little, not at all;

  Too much, and never yet enough.

  Birds quick to fledge and fly at call

  70

  Are quick to fall.

  And these love longer now than men,

  And larger loves than ours are these.

  No diver brings up love again

  Dropped once, my beautiful Félise,

  In such cold seas.

  Gone deeper than all plummets sound,

  Where in the dim green dayless day

  The life of such dead things lies bound

  As the sea feeds on, wreck and stray

  80

  And castaway.

  Can I forget? yea, that can I,

  And that can all men; so will you,

  Alive, or later, when you die.

  Ah, but the love you plead was true?

  Was mine not too?

  I loved you for that name of yours

  Long ere we met, and long enough.

  Now that one thing of all endures –

  The sweetest name that ever love

  90

  Waxed weary of.

  Like colours in the sea, like flowers,

  Like a cat’s splendid circled eyes

  That wax and wane with love for hours,

  Green as green flame, blue-grey like skies,

  And soft like sighs –

  And all these only like your name,

  And your name full of all of these.

  I say it, and it sounds the same –

  Save that I say it now at ease,

  100

  Your name, Félise.

  I said ‘she must be swift and white,

  And subtly warm, and half perverse,

  And sweet like sharp soft fruit to bite,

  And like a snake’s love lithe and fierce.’

  Men have guessed worse.

  What was the song I made of you

  Here where the grass forgets our feet

  As afternoon forgets the dew?

  Ah that such sweet things should be fleet,

  110

  Such fleet things sweet!

  As afternoon forgets the dew,

  As time in time forgets all men,

  As our old place forgets us two,

  Who might have turned to one thing then,

  But not again.

  O lips that mine have grown into

  Like April’s kissing May,

  O fervent eyelids letting through

  Those eyes the greenest of things blue,

  120

  The bluest of things grey,

  If you were I and I were you,

  How could I love you, say?

  How could the roseleaf love the rue,

  The day love nightfall and her dew,

  Though night may love the day?

  You loved it may be more than I;

  We know not; love is hard to seize,

  And all things are not good to try;

  And lifelong loves the worst of these

  130

  For us, Félise.

  Ah, take the season and have done,

  Love well the hour and let it go:

  Two souls may sleep and wake up one,

  Or dream they wake and find it so,

  And then – you know.

  Kiss me once hard as though a flame

  Lay on my lips and made them fire;

  The same lips now, and not the same;

  What breath shall fill and re-inspire

  140

  A dead desire?

  The old song sounds hollower in mine ear

  Than thin keen sounds of dead men’s speech –

  A noise one hears and would not hear;

  Too strong to die, too weak to reach

  From wave to beach.

  We stand on either side the sea,

  Stretch hands, blow kisses, laugh and lean

  I toward you, you toward me;

  But what hears either save the keen

  150

  Grey sea between?

  A year divides us, love from love,

  Though you love now, though I loved then.

  The gulf is strait, but deep enough;

  Who shall recross, who among men

  Shall cross again?

  Love was a jest last year, you said,

  And what lives surely, surely dies.

  Even so; but now that love is dead,

  Shall love rekindle from wet eyes,

  160

  From subtle sighs?

  For many loves are good to see;

  Mutable loves, and loves perverse;

  But there is nothing, nor shall be,

  So sweet, so wicked, but my verse

  Can dream of worse.

  For we that sing and you that love

  Know that which man may, only we.

  The rest live under us; above,

  Live the great gods in heaven, and see

  170

  What things shall be.

  So this thing is and must be so;

  For man dies, and love also dies.

  Though yet love’s ghost moves to and fro

  The sea-green mirrors of your eyes,

  And laughs, and lies.

  Eyes coloured like a water-flower,

  And deeper than the green sea’s glass;

  Eyes that remember one sweet hour –

  In vain, we swore it should not pass;

  180

  In vain, alas!

  Ah my Félise, if love or sin,

  If shame or fear could hold it fast,

  Should we not hold it? Love wears thin,

  And they laugh well who laugh the last.

  Is it not past?

  The gods, the gods are stronger; time

  Falls down before them, all men’s knees

  Bow, all men’s prayers and sorrows climb

  Like incense towards them; yea, for these

 

‹ Prev