T. R. Smith, comp. Poetica Erotica: Rare and Curious Amatory Verse. 1921–22.
King David
By Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909)(From The Masque of Queen Bersabe; from Poems and Ballads, 1866) |
LORD GOD, alas, what shall I sain? | |
| Lo, thou art as an hundred men | |
| Both to break and build again: | |
| The wild ways thou makest plain, | |
| Thine hands hold the hail and rain, | 5 |
| And thy fingers both grape and grain; | |
| Of their largess we be all well fain, | |
| And of their great pity: | |
| The sun thou madest of good gold, | |
| Of clean silver the moon cold, | 10 |
| All the great stars thou hast told | |
| As thy cattle in thy fold | |
| Every one by his name of old; | |
| Wind and water thou hast in hold, | |
| Both the land and the long sea; | 15 |
| Both the green sea and the land, | |
| Lord God, thou hast in hand, | |
| Both white water and grey sand; | |
| Upon thy right or thy left hand | |
| There is no man that may stand; | 20 |
| Lord, thou rue on me. | |
| O wise Lord, if thou be keen | |
| To note things amiss that been, | |
| I am not worth a shell of bean | |
| More than an old mare meagre and lean; | 25 |
| For all my wrong-doing with my queen, | |
| It grew not of our heartès clean, | |
| But it began of her body. | |
| For it fell in the hot May | |
| I stood within a paven way | 30 |
| Built of fair bright stone, perfay, | |
| That is as fire of night and day | |
| And lighteth all my house. | |
| Therein be neither stones nor sticks, | |
| Neither red nor white bricks, | 35 |
| But for cubits five or six | |
| There is most goodly sardonyx | |
| And amber laid in rows. | |
| It goes round about my roofs, | |
| (If ye list ye shall have proofs) | 40 |
| There is good space for horse and hoofs, | |
| Plain and nothing perilous. | |
| For the fair green weather’s heat, | |
| And for the smell of leavès sweet, | |
| It is no marvel, will ye weet, | 45 |
| A man to waxen amorous. | |
| This I say now by my case | |
| That spied forth of that royal place; | |
| There I saw in no great space | |
| Mine own sweet, both body and face, | 50 |
| Under the fresh boughs. | |
| In a water that was there | |
| She wesshe her goodly body bare | |
| And dried it with her own hair: | |
| Both her arms and her knees fair, | 55 |
| Both bosom and brows; | |
| Both shoulders and eke thighs | |
| Tho she wesshe upon this wise; | |
| Ever she sighed with little sighs, | |
| And ever she gave God thank. | 60 |
| Yea, God wot I can well see yet | |
| Both her breast and her sides all wet | |
| And her long hair withouten let | |
| Spread sideways like a drawing net; | |
| Full dear bought and full far fet | 65 |
| Was that sweet thing there y-set; | |
| It were a hard thing to forget | |
| How both lips and eyen met, | |
| Breast and breath sank. | |
| So goodly a sight as there she was, | 70 |
| Lying looking on her glass | |
| By wan water in green grass, | |
| Yet saw never man. | |
| So soft and great she was and bright | |
| With all her body waxen white, | 75 |
| I woxe nigh blind to see the light | |
| Shed out of it to left and right; | |
| This bitter sin from that sweet sight | |
| Between us twain began. | |