T. R. Smith, comp. Poetica Erotica: Rare and Curious Amatory Verse. 1921–22.
Hermaphroditus
By Algernon Charles Swinburne (18371909)(From Poems and Ballads, 1866) LIFT up thy lips, turn round, look back for love,I. | |
Blind love that comes by night and casts out rest; | |
Of all things tired thy lips look weariest, | |
Save the long smile that they are wearied of. | |
Ah sweet, albeit no love be sweet enough, | 5 |
Choose of two loves and cleave unto the best; | |
Two loves at either blossom of thy breast | |
Strive until one be under and one above. | |
Their breath is fire upon the amorous air, | |
Fire in thine eyes and where thy lips suspire: | 10 |
And whosoever hath seen thee, being so fair, | |
Two things turn all his life and blood to fire; | |
A strong desire begot on great despair, | |
A great despair cast out by strong desire. | |
II. Where between sleep and life some brief space is, | 15 |
With love like gold bound round about the head, | |
Sex to sweet sex with lips and limbs is wed, | |
Turning the fruitful feud of hers and his | |
To the waste wedlock of a sterile kiss; | |
Yet from them something like as fire is shed | 20 |
That shall not be assuaged till death be dead, | |
Though neither life nor sleep can find out this. | |
Love made himself of flesh that perisheth | |
A pleasure-house for all the loves his kin; | |
But on the one side sat a man like death, | 25 |
And on the other a woman sat like sin. | |
So with veiled eyes and sobs between his breath | |
Love turned himself and would not enter in. | |
III. Love, is it love or sleep or shadow or light | |
That lies between thine eyelids and thine eyes? | 30 |
Like a flower laid upon a flower it lies, | |
Or like the night’s dew laid upon the night. | |
Love stands upon thy left hand and thy right, | |
Yet by no sunset and by no moonrise | |
Shall make thee man and ease a woman’s sighs, | 35 |
Or make thee woman for a man’s delight. | |
To what strange end hath some strange god made fair | |
The double blossom of two fruitless flowers? | |
Hid love in all the folds of all thy hair, | |
Fed thee on summers, watered thee with showers, | 40 |
Given all the gold that all the seasons wear | |
To thee that art a thing of barren hours? | |
IV. Yea, love, I see; it is not love but fear. | |
Nay, sweet, it is not fear but love, I know; | |
Or wherefore should thy body’s blossom blow | 45 |
So sweetly, or thine eyelids leave so clear | |
Thy gracious eyes that never made a tear— | |
Though for their love our tears like blood should flow, | |
Though love and life and death should come and go, | |
So dreadful, so desirable, so dear? | 50 |
Yea, sweet, I know; I saw in what swift wise | |
Beneath the woman’s and the water’s kiss | |
Thy moist limbs melted into Salmacis, | |
And the large light turned tender in thine eyes, | |
And all thy boy’s breath softened into sighs; | 55 |
But Love being blind, how should he know of this? Au Musée du Louvre, Mars, 1863. | |