Arthur Quiller-Couch, comp. The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse. 1922.
Super Flumina BabylonisAlgernon Charles Swinburne (18371909)
B
Remembering thee,
That for ages of agony hast endured, and slept,
And wouldst not see.
Considering thee,
That a blast of deliverance in the darkness rang,
To set thee free.
Came up the light;
And thy spirit uplifted thee to forget thy wrong
As day doth night.
When thou wast shamed;
When thy lovers went heavily without heart, as men
Whose life was maim’d.
For thy love’s sake,
With our hearts going back to thee, they were fill’d with fire,
Were nigh to break.
But ye shall bend;
Ye are bondmen and bondwomen, to be scourged and smart,
To toil and tend.
And crush’d with shame;
And the summer and winter was, and the length of years,
And no change came.
By town, by tower,
There was feasting with revelling, there was sleep with dreams,
Until thine hour.
With mouths on flame,
And with love-locks vine-chapleted, and with rose-crown’d heads
And robes of shame.
And words of power,
Nor the gods that were good to them, but with songs and dreams
Fill’d up their hour.
When thy time came,
There was casting of crowns from them, from their young men’s heads,
The crowns of shame.
As thy day rose,
They arose up and girded them to the north and south,
By seas, by snows.
Thy kings bound thee;
As a water in April is, in the new-blown vines,
Thy sons made free.
For thy sake dead,
We rejoiced in the light of thee, in the signal star
Above thine head.
Loved in thy loss;
In thy shame we stood fast to thee, with thy pangs were moved,
Clung to thy cross.
Thy blood-red tears,
As a mother’s in bitterness, an unebbing flood,
Years upon years.
A garden seal’d;
And the south was Aceldama, for a sanguine fume
Hid all the field.
From far, from prison;
And the guards by it keeping it we beheld asleep,
But thou wast risen.
And by the stone:
And the voice was angelical, to whose words God gave
Strength like his own.
In the grave’s gloom!
And the guards as men wrought upon with a charmèd cup,
By the open tomb.
These are not here;
For your mother, for Italy, is not surely dead:
Have ye no fear.
Hardly took heed,
So now also she saith to you, yet another word,
Who is risen indeed.
Who hear these things,
Put no trust in men’s royalties, nor in great men’s breath,
Nor words of kings.
Nor no more known;
Nor shall any remember him if a crown hath been,
Or where a throne.
The just Fate gives;
Whoso takes the world’s life on him and his own lays down,
He, dying so, lives.
And puts it by,
It is well with him suffering, though he face man’s fate;
How should he die?
Upon his head;
He has bought his eternity with a little hour,
And is not dead.
For one hour’s space;
Then ye lift up your eyes to him and behold him crown’d,
A deathless face.
In all men’s eyes,
Where the light of the life of him is on all past things,
Death only dies.
Nor the ancient days,
Nor the sorrows not sorrowful, nor the face most fair
Of perfect praise.’
So yet he saith;
So the son of her suffering, that from breasts nigh dead
Drew life, not death.
Not red, but white;
That the waters of Babylon should no longer flow,
And men see light.