Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900.
Algernon Charles Swinburne. 18371909810. Ave atque Vale (IN MEMORY OF CHARLES BAUDELAIRE)
SHALL I strew on thee rose or rue or laurel, | |
Brother, on this that was the veil of thee? | |
Or quiet sea-flower moulded by the sea, | |
Or simplest growth of meadow-sweet or sorrel, | |
Such as the summer-sleepy Dryads weave, | 5 |
Waked up by snow-soft sudden rains at eve? | |
Or wilt thou rather, as on earth before, | |
Half-faded fiery blossoms, pale with heat | |
And full of bitter summer, but more sweet | |
To thee than gleanings of a northern shore | 10 |
Trod by no tropic feet? | |
For always thee the fervid languid glories | |
Allured of heavier suns in mightier skies; | |
Thine ears knew all the wandering watery sighs | |
Where the sea sobs round Lesbian promontories, | 15 |
The barren kiss of piteous wave to wave | |
That knows not where is that Leucadian grave | |
Which hides too deep the supreme head of song. | |
Ah, salt and sterile as her kisses were, | |
The wild sea winds her and the green gulfs bear | 20 |
Hither and thither, and vex and work her wrong, | |
Blind gods that cannot spare. | |
Thou sawest, in thine old singing season, brother, | |
Secrets and sorrows unbeheld of us: | |
Fierce loves, and lovely leaf-buds poisonous, | 25 |
Bare to thy subtler eye, but for none other | |
Blowing by night in some unbreathed-in clime; | |
The hidden harvest of luxurious time, | |
Sin without shape, and pleasure without speech; | |
And where strange dreams in a tumultuous sleep | 30 |
Make the shut eyes of stricken spirits weep; | |
And with each face thou sawest the shadow on each, | |
Seeing as men sow men reap. | |
O sleepless heart and sombre soul unsleeping, | |
That were athirst for sleep and no more life | 35 |
And no more love, for peace and no more strife! | |
Now the dim gods of death have in their keeping | |
Spirit and body and all the springs of song, | |
Is it well now where love can do no wrong, | |
Where stingless pleasure has no foam or fang | 40 |
Behind the unopening closure of her lips? | |
Is it not well where soul from body slips | |
And flesh from bone divides without a pang | |
As dew from flower-bell drips? | |
It is enough; the end and the beginning | 45 |
Are one thing to thee, who art past the end. | |
O hand unclasp’d of unbeholden friend, | |
For thee no fruits to pluck, no palms for winning, | |
No triumph and no labour and no lust, | |
Only dead yew-leaves and a little dust. | 50 |
O quiet eyes wherein the light saith naught, | |
Whereto the day is dumb, nor any night | |
With obscure finger silences your sight, | |
Nor in your speech the sudden soul speaks thought, | |
Sleep, and have sleep for light. | 55 |
Now all strange hours and all strange loves are over, | |
Dreams and desires and sombre songs and sweet, | |
Hast thou found place at the great knees and feet | |
Of some pale Titan-woman like a lover, | |
Such as thy vision here solicited, | 60 |
Under the shadow of her fair vast head, | |
The deep division of prodigious breasts, | |
The solemn slope of mighty limbs asleep, | |
The weight of awful tresses that still keep | |
The savour and shade of old-world pine-forests | 65 |
Where the wet hill-winds weep? | |
Hast thou found any likeness for thy vision? | |
O gardener of strange flowers, what bud, what bloom, | |
Hast thou found sown, what gather’d in the gloom? | |
What of despair, of rapture, of derision, | 70 |
What of life is there, what of ill or good? | |
Are the fruits gray like dust or bright like blood? | |
Does the dim ground grow any seed of ours, | |
The faint fields quicken any terrene root, | |
In low lands where the sun and moon are mute | 75 |
And all the stars keep silence? Are there flowers | |
At all, or any fruit? | |
Alas, but though my flying song flies after, | |
O sweet strange elder singer, thy more fleet | |
Singing, and footprints of thy fleeter feet, | 80 |
Some dim derision of mysterious laughter | |
From the blind tongueless warders of the dead, | |
Some gainless glimpse of Proserpine’s veil’d head, | |
Some little sound of unregarded tears | |
Wept by effaced unprofitable eyes, | 85 |
And from pale mouths some cadence of dead sighs— | |
These only, these the hearkening spirit hears, | |
Sees only such things rise. | |
Thou art far too far for wings of words to follow, | |
Far too far off for thought or any prayer. | 90 |
What ails us with thee, who art wind and air? | |
What ails us gazing where all seen is hollow? | |
Yet with some fancy, yet with some desire, | |
Dreams pursue death as winds a flying fire, | |
Our dreams pursue our dead and do not find. | 95 |
Still, and more swift than they, the thin flame flies, | |
The low light fails us in elusive skies, | |
Still the foil’d earnest ear is deaf, and blind | |
Are still the eluded eyes. | |
Not thee, O never thee, in all time’s changes, | 100 |
Not thee, but this the sound of thy sad soul, | |
The shadow of thy swift spirit, this shut scroll | |
I lay my hand on, and not death estranges | |
My spirit from communion of thy song— | |
These memories and these melodies that throng | 105 |
Veil’d porches of a Muse funereal— | |
These I salute, these touch, these clasp and fold | |
As though a hand were in my hand to hold, | |
Or through mine ears a mourning musical | |
Of many mourners roll’d. | 110 |
I among these, I also, in such station | |
As when the pyre was charr’d, and piled the sods. | |
And offering to the dead made, and their gods, | |
The old mourners had, standing to make libation, | |
I stand, and to the Gods and to the dead | 115 |
Do reverence without prayer or praise, and shed | |
Offering to these unknown, the gods of gloom, | |
And what of honey and spice my seed-lands bear, | |
And what I may of fruits in this chill’d air, | |
And lay, Orestes-like, across the tomb | 120 |
A curl of sever’d hair. | |
But by no hand nor any treason stricken, | |
Not like the low-lying head of Him, the King, | |
The flame that made of Troy a ruinous thing, | |
Thou liest and on this dust no tears could quicken. | 125 |
There fall no tears like theirs that all men hear | |
Fall tear by sweet imperishable tear | |
Down the opening leaves of holy poets’ pages. | |
Thee not Orestes, not Electra mourns; | |
But bending us-ward with memorial urns | 130 |
The most high Muses that fulfil all ages | |
Weep, and our God’s heart yearns. | |
For, sparing of his sacred strength, not often | |
Among us darkling here the lord of light | |
Makes manifest his music and his might | 135 |
In hearts that open and in lips that soften | |
With the soft flame and heat of songs that shine. | |
Thy lips indeed he touch’d with bitter wine, | |
And nourish’d them indeed with bitter bread; | |
Yet surely from his hand thy soul’s food came, | 140 |
The fire that scarr’d thy spirit at his flame | |
Was lighted, and thine hungering heart he fed | |
Who feeds our hearts with fame. | |
Therefore he too now at thy soul’s sunsetting, | |
God of all suns and songs, he too bends down | 145 |
To mix his laurel with thy cypress crown, | |
And save thy dust from blame and from forgetting. | |
Therefore he too, seeing all thou wert and art, | |
Compassionate, with sad and sacred heart, | |
Mourns thee of many his children the last dead, | 150 |
And hollows with strange tears and alien sighs | |
Thine unmelodious mouth and sunless eyes, | |
And over thine irrevocable head | |
Sheds light from the under skies. | |
And one weeps with him in the ways Lethean, | 155 |
And stains with tears her changing bosom chill; | |
That obscure Venus of the hollow hill, | |
That thing transform’d which was the Cytherean, | |
With lips that lost their Grecian laugh divine | |
Long since, and face no more call’d Erycine— | 160 |
A ghost, a bitter and luxurious god. | |
Thee also with fair flesh and singing spell | |
Did she, a sad and second prey, compel | |
Into the footless places once more trod, | |
And shadows hot from hell. | 165 |
And now no sacred staff shall break in blossom, | |
No choral salutation lure to light | |
A spirit sick with perfume and sweet night | |
And love’s tired eyes and hands and barren bosom. | |
There is no help for these things; none to mend, | 170 |
And none to mar; not all our songs, O friend, | |
Will make death clear or make life durable. | |
Howbeit with rose and ivy and wild vine | |
And with wild notes about this dust of thine | |
At least I fill the place where white dreams dwell | 175 |
And wreathe an unseen shrine. | |
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. | |
Out of the mystic and the mournful garden | 180 |
Where all day through thine hands in barren braid | |
Wove the sick flowers of secrecy and shade, | |
Green buds of sorrow and sin, and remnants gray, | |
Sweet-smelling, pale with poison, sanguine-hearted, | |
Passions that sprang from sleep and thoughts that started, | 185 |
Shall death not bring us all as thee one day | |
Among the days departed? | |
For thee, O now a silent soul, my brother, | |
Take at my hands this garland, and farewell. | |
Thin is the leaf, and chill the wintry smell, | 190 |
And chill the solemn earth, a fatal mother, | |
With sadder than the Niobean womb, | |
And in the hollow of her breasts a tomb. | |
Content thee, howsoe’er, whose days are done; | |
There lies not any troublous thing before, | 195 |
Nor sight nor sound to war against thee more, | |
For whom all winds are quiet as the sun, | |
All waters as the shore. |