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
Squares more bright and with lovelier light than heaven that
kindled it shines with shine
Warm and soft as the dome aloft, but heavenlier yet than the sun's
own shrine:
Heaven is high, but the water-sky lit here seems deeper and more
divine.
Flowers on flowers, that the whole world's bowers may show not,
here may the sunset show,
Lightly graven in the waters paven with ghostly gold by the clouds
aglow:
Bright as love is the vault above, but lovelier lightens the wave
below.
Rosy grey, or as fiery spray full-plumed, or greener than emerald,
gleams
Plot by plot as the skies allot for each its glory, divine as
dreams
Lit with fire of appeased desire which sounds the secret of all
that seems;
Dreams that show what we fain would know, and know not save by the
grace of sleep,
Sleep whose hands have removed the bands that eyes long waking and
fain to weep
Feel fast bound on them--light around them strange, and darkness
above them steep.
Yet no vision that heals division of love from love, and renews
awhile
Life and breath in the lips where death has quenched the spirit of
speech and smile,
Shows on earth, or in heaven's mid mirth, where no fears enter or
doubts defile,
Aught more fair than the radiant air and water here by the twilight
wed,
Here made one by the waning sun whose last love quickens to
rosebright red
Half the crown of the soft high down that rears to northward its
wood-girt head.
There, when day is at height of sway, men's eyes who stand, as we
oft have stood,
High where towers with its world of flowers the golden spinny that
flanks the wood,
See before and around them shore and seaboard glad as their gifts
are good.
Higher and higher to the north aspire the green smooth-swelling
unending downs;
East and west on the brave earth's breast glow girdle-jewels of
gleaming towns;
Southward shining, the lands declining subside in peace that the
sea's light crowns.
Westward wide in its fruitful pride the plain lies lordly with
plenteous grace;
Fair as dawn's when the fields and lawns desire her glitters the
glad land's face:
Eastward yet is the sole sign set of elder days and a lordlier
race.
Down beneath us afar, where seethe in wilder weather the tides
aflow,
Hurled up hither and drawn down thither in quest of rest that they
may not know,
Still as dew on a flower the blue broad stream now sleeps in the
fields below.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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