Algernon Charles Swinburne Quotations

From too much love of living, From hope and fear set free, We thank with brief thanksgiving Whatever gods may be That no life lives for ever; That dead men rise up never; That even the weariest river Winds somewhere safe to sea.

Time turns the old days to derision, Our loves into corpses or wives; And marriage and death and division Make barren our lives.

Glory to Man in the highest! For Man is the master of things.

To say of shame - what is it? Of virtue - we can miss it; Of sin-we can kiss it, And it's no longer sin.

Body and spirit are twins: God only knows which is which.

Hope thou not much, and fear thou not at all.

While three men hold together, the kingdoms are less by three.

Today will die tomorrow.

Blossom by blossom the spring begins.

There is no God found stronger than death; and death is a sleep.

Faith speaks when hope is disassembled; faith lives when hope dies dead.

In fierce March weather White waves break tether, And whirled together At either hand, Like weeds uplifted, The tree-trunks rifted In spars are drifted, Like foam or sand.

If you were Queen of pleasure And I were King of pain We'd hunt down Love together, Pluck out his flying-feather, And teach his feet a measure, And find his mouth a rein; If you were Queen of pleasure And I were King of pain.

Sorrow, on wing through the world for ever, Here and there for awhile would borrow Rest, if rest might haply deliver Sorrow...

Where might is, the right is: Long purses make strong swords. Let weakness learn meekness: God save the House of Lords!

The sweetest flowers in all the world- A baby's hands.

Marvellous mercies and infinite love.

There is no such thing as a dumb poet or a handless painter. The essence of an artist is that he should be articulate.

For winter's rains and ruins are over, And all the season of snows and sins; The days dividing lover and lover, The light that loses, the night that wins; And time remembered isgrief forgotten, And frosts are slain and flowers begotten, And in green underwood and cover Blossom by blossom the spring begins.

Love is more cruel than lust.

Thou has conquered, O pale Galilean.

I dore not always touch her, lest the kiss 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.

Forget that I remember And dream that I forget.

Though one were fair as roses His beauty clouds and closes.

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.

Wan February with weeping cheer, Whose cold hand guides the youngling year Down misty roads of mire and rime, Before thy pale and fitful face The shrill wind shifts the clouds apace Through skies the morning scarce may climb. Thine eyes are thick with heavy tears, But lit with hopes that light the year's.

I remember the way we parted, The day and the way we met; You hoped we were both broken-hearted And knew we should both forget.

Not with dreams, but with blood and with iron, Shall a nation be moulded at last.

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.

There was a poor poet named Clough, Whom his friends all united to puff, But the public, though dull, Had not such a skull As belonged to believers in Clough.

Stately, kindly, lordly friend Condescend Here to sit by me.

The highest spiritual quality, the noblest property of mind a man can have, is this of loyalty ... a man with no loyalty in him, with no sense of love or reverence or devotion due to something outside and above his poor daily life, with its pains and pleasures, profits and losses, is as evil a case as man can be.

At the door of life by the gate of breath, There are worse things waiting for men than death.

My loss may shine yet goodlier than your gain When Time and God give judgment.

In hawthorn-time the heart grows light.

His speech is a burning fire.

I will go back to the great sweet mother, Mother and lover of men, the sea. I will go down to her, I and no other, Close with her, kiss her and mix her with me.

God's own hand Holds fast all issues of our deeds: with him The end of all our ends is, but with us Our ends are, just or unjust: though our works Find righteous or unrighteous judgment, this At least is ours, to make them righteous.

The tadpole poet will never grow into anything bigger than a frog.

The tadpole poet will never grow into anything bigger than a frog; not though in that stage of development he should puff and blow himself till he bursts with windy adulation at the heels of the laureled ox.

Love lies bleeding in the bed whereover Roses lean with smiling mouths or pleading: Earth lies laughing where the sun's dart clove her: Love lies bleeding.

No blast of air or fire of sun Puts out the light whereby we run With girdled loins our lamplit race, And each from each takes heart of grace And spirit till his turn be done.

A little soul scarce fledged for earth Takes wing with heaven again for goal, Even while we hailed as fresh from birth A little soul.

White rose in red rose-garden Is not so white; Snowdrops, that plead for pardon And pine for fright Because the hard East blows Over their maiden vows, Grow not as this face grows from pale to bright.

Fruits fail and love dies and time ranges;Thou art fed with perpetual breath, and alive after infinite changes,And fresh from the kisses of death,Of langours rekindled and rallied, Of barren delights and unclean,Things monstrous and fruitless, a pallidAnd poisonous queen.

Despair the twin-born of devotion.

When I hear that a friend has fallen into matrimony, I feel the same sorrow as if I had heard of his lapsing into theism.

As a god self-slain on his own strange altar, Death lies dead.

And the best and the worst of this is That neither is most to blame, If you have forgotten my kisses And I have forgotten your name.

I that have love and no more Give you but love of you, sweet; He that hath more, let him give; He that hath wings, let him soar; Mine is the heart at your feet Here, that must love you to live.

Love laid his sleepless head On a thorny rose bed: And his eyes with tears were red, And pale his lips as the dead.

O Love, O great god Love, what have I done, That thou shouldst hunger so after my death? My heart is harmless as my life's first day: Seek out some false fair woman, and plague her Till her tears even as my tears fill her bed.

Love, as is told by the seers of old, Comes as a butterfly tipped with gold, Flutters and flies in sunlit skies, Weaving round hearts that were one time cold.

The loves and hours of the life of a man, They are swift and sad, being born of the sea.

We, drinking love at the furthest springs, Covered with love as a covering tree, We had grown as gods, as the gods above, Filled from the heart to the lips with love, Held fast in his hands, clothed warm with his wings, O love, my love, had you loved but me!

Our way is where God knows And Love knows where: We are in Love's hand to-day.

If love were what the rose is, And I were like the leaf, Our lives would grow together In sad or singing weather.

Hope knows not if fear speaks truth, nor fear whether hope be blind as she.

For the crown of our life as it closes Is darkness, the fruit thereof dust; No thorns go as deep as a rose's, And love is more cruel than lust. Time turns the old days to derision, Our loves into corpses or wives; And marriage and death and division Make barren our lives.

Before the beginning of years There came to the making of man Time with a gift of tears, Grief with a glass that ran .

Then star nor sun shall waken, Nor any change of light: Nor sound of waters shaken, Nor any sound or sight: Nor wintry leaves nor vernal; Nor days nor things diurnal; Only the sleep eternal In an eternal night.

I am tired of tears and laughter, And men that laugh and weep Of what may come hereafter For men that sow to reap: I am weary of days and hours, Blown buds of barren flowers, Desires and dreams and powers And everything but sleep.

But now, you are twain, you are cloven apart Flesh of his flesh, but heart of my heart.

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..

Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean; the world has grown grey from thy breath;/ We have drunken of things Lethean, and fed on the fullness of death

She knows not loves that kissed her She knows not where. Art thou the ghost, my sister, White sister there, Am I the ghost, who knows? My hand, a fallen rose, Lies snow-white on white snows, and takes no care.

Change lays not her hand upon truth.

When the hounds of Spring are on winter's traces, The mother of months in meadow or plain Fills the shadows and windy places With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain.

Sleep; and if life was bitter to thee, pardon, If sweet, give thanks; thou hast no more to live; And to give thanks is good, and to forgive.

Wherever there is a grain of loyalty there is a glimpse of freedom.

To have read the greatest works of any great poet, to have beheld or heard the greatest works of any great painter or musician, is a possession added to the best things of life.

For words divide and rend But silence is most noble till the end.

His life is a watch or a vision Between a sleep and a sleep.

To wipe off the froth of falsehood from the foaming lips of inebriated virtue, when fresh from the sexless orgies of morality and reeling from the delirious riot of religion, may doubtless be a charitable office.

There grows No herb of help to heal a coward heart.

Fear that makes faith may break faith.

In the world of dreams, I have chosen my part.

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

Yet leave me not; yet, if thou wilt, be free; love me no more, but love my love of thee.

Love, till dawn sunder night from day with fire Dividing my delight and my desire...

In friendship's fragrant garden, There are flowers of every hue. Each with its own fair beauty And its gift of joy for you. Friendship's Garden If love were what the rose is, And I were like the leaf, Our lives would grow together In sad or singing weather.

Change lays her hand not upon the truth.

For whom all winds are quiet as the sun,/ All waters as the shore.

When fate has allowed to any man more than one great gift, accident or necessity seems usually to contrive that one shall encumber and impede the other.

There is no safety-net to protect against attraction.

There lived a singer in France of old By the tideless dolorous midland sea. In a land of sand and rain and gold There shone one woman, and none but she.

A young man with a very good past. [Fr., Un jeune homme d'un bien beau passe.]

The sun is all about the world we see, the breath and strength of every spring.

Time stoops to no man's lure.

I have lived long enough, having seen one thing, that love hath an end

Doubt is faith in the main: but faith, on the whole, is doubt; We cannot believe by proof: but could we believe without?

Let weakness learn meekness.

Cold autumn, wan with wrath of wind and rain, Saw pass a soul sweet as the sovereign tune That death smote silent when he smote again.

The beast faith lives on its own dung.

Is not Precedent indeed a King of men? A Word from the Psalmist.

The more congenial page of some tenth-rate poeticule worn out with failure after failure and now squat in his hole like the tailless fox, he is curled up to snarl and whimper beneath the inaccessible vine of song.

On the mountains of memory by the world's wellsprings, in all man's eyes, where the light of life of him is on all past things, death only dies.

We are not sure of sorrow, And joy was never sure; Today will die tomorrow; Time stoops to no man's lure.

Time turns the old days to derision, Our loves into corpses or wives.

Life is the lust of a lamp for the light that is dark till the dawn of the day that we die.