Astrophel and Other Poems: Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles; Swinburne, Vol. VI — John Shaqi
Astrophel and Other Poems: Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles; Swinburne, Vol. VISwinburne, Algernon Charles
General
Astrophel and Other Poems: Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles; Swinburne, Vol. VI
Swinburne, Algernon Charles
Poetry
Love and trust that the grave's deep dust can soil not, neither may
fear put out,
Witness yet that their record set stands fast, though years be as
hosts in rout,
Spent and slain; but the signs remain that beat back darkness and
cast forth doubt.
Men that wrought by the grace of thought and toil things goodlier
than praise dare trace,
Fair as all that the world may call most fair, save only the sea's
own face,
Shrines or songs that the world's change wrongs not, live by grace
of their own gift's grace.
Dead, their names that the night reclaims--alive, their works that
the day relumes--
Sink and stand, as in stone and sand engraven: none may behold
their tombs:
Nights and days shall record their praise while here this flower of
their grafting blooms.
Flower more fair than the sun-thrilled air bids laugh and lighten
and wax and rise,
Fruit more bright than the fervent light sustains with strength
from the kindled skies,
Flower and fruit that the deathless root of man's love rears though
the man's name dies.
Stately stands it, the work of hands unknown of: statelier, afar
and near,
Rise around it the heights that bound our landward gaze from the
seaboard here;
Downs that swerve and aspire, in curve and change of heights that
the dawn holds dear.
Dawn falls fair on the grey walls there confronting dawn, on the
low green lea,
Lone and sweet as for fairies' feet held sacred, silent and strange
and free,
Wild and wet with its rills; but yet more fair falls dawn on the
fairer sea.
Eastward, round by the high green bound of hills that fold the
remote fields in,
Strive and shine on the low sea-line fleet waves and beams when the
days begin;
Westward glow, when the days burn low, the sun that yields and the
stars that win.
Rose-red eve on the seas that heave sinks fair as dawn when the
first ray peers;
Winds are glancing from sunbright Lancing to Shoreham, crowned with
the grace of years;
Shoreham, clad with the sunset, glad and grave with glory that
death reveres.
Death, more proud than the kings' heads bowed before him, stronger
than all things, bows
Here his head: as if death were dead, and kingship plucked from his
crownless brows,
Life hath here such a face of cheer as change appals not and time
avows.
Skies fulfilled with the sundown, stilled and splendid, spread as a
flower that spreads,
Pave with rarer device and fairer than heaven's the luminous
oyster-beds,
Grass-embanked, and in square plots ranked, inlaid with gems that
the sundown sheds.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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