Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900.
Algernon Charles Swinburne. 18371909808. Chorus from ‘Atalanta’
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; | |
And the brown bright nightingale amorous | 5 |
Is half assuaged for Itylus, | |
For the Thracian ships and the foreign faces. | |
The tongueless vigil, and all the pain. | |
Come with bows bent and with emptying of quivers, | |
Maiden most perfect, lady of light, | 10 |
With a noise of winds and many rivers, | |
With a clamour of waters, and with might; | |
Bind on thy sandals, O thou most fleet, | |
Over the splendour and speed of thy feet; | |
For the faint east quickens, the wan west shivers, | 15 |
Round the feet of the day and the feet of the night. | |
Where shall we find her, how shall we sing to her, | |
Fold our hands round her knees, and cling? | |
O that man’s heart were as fire and could spring to her, | |
Fire, or the strength of the streams that spring! | 20 |
For the stars and the winds are unto her | |
As raiment, as songs of the harp-player; | |
For the risen stars and the fallen cling to her, | |
And the southwest-wind and the west-wind sing. | |
For winter’s rains and ruins are over, | 25 |
And all the season of snows and sins; | |
The days dividing lover and lover, | |
The light that loses, the night that wins; | |
And time remember’d is grief forgotten, | |
And frosts are slain and flowers begotten, | 30 |
And in green underwood and cover | |
Blossom by blossom the spring begins. | |
The full streams feed on flower of rushes, | |
Ripe grasses trammel a travelling foot, | |
The faint fresh flame of the young year flushes | 35 |
From leaf to flower and flower to fruit; | |
And fruit and leaf are as gold and fire, | |
And the oat is heard above the lyre, | |
And the hoofèd heel of a satyr crushes | |
The chestnut-husk at the chestnut-root. | 40 |
And Pan by noon and Bacchus by night, | |
Fleeter of foot than the fleet-foot kid, | |
Follows with dancing and fills with delight | |
The Mænad and the Bassarid; | |
And soft as lips that laugh and hide | 45 |
The laughing leaves of the trees divide, | |
And screen from seeing and leave in sight | |
The god pursuing, the maiden hid. | |
The ivy falls with the Bacchanal’s hair | |
Over her eyebrows hiding her eyes; | 50 |
The wild vine slipping down leaves bare | |
Her bright breast shortening into sighs; | |
The wild vine slips with the weight of its leaves, | |
But the berried ivy catches and cleaves | |
To the limbs that glitter, the feet that scare | 55 |
The wolf that follows, the fawn that flies. |