Algernon Charles Swinburne Quotes

Ask nothing more of me sweet;
All I can give you I give;
Heart of my heart were it more,
More would be laid at your feet..

Before the beginning of years
There came to the making of man
Time, with a gift of tears;
Grief, with a glass that ran;
Pleasure, with pain for leaven;
Summer, with flowers that fell;
Remembrance, fallen from heaven,
And madness risen from hell;
Strength without hands to smite;
Love that endures for a breath;
Night, the shadow of light,
And Life, the shadow of death.

By Heaven, had I the teeth of Caucasus
Red-hot from Promethean agonies,
And tusks more lucid than the lunar snows,
On those jagged lawns of Asia, cavernous
With many a dragon banquet-eyes like those
Minerva made of flint to shatter Jove — I'd hurl their hate upon thee, and myself
Die in a red parabola of Fate! — Ernest Wheldrake, The Monomaniac's Tragedy

If you were Queen of pleasure
And I were King of pain
We'd hunt down Love together,
Pluck out his flying-feather,
And teach his feet a measure,
And find his mouth a rein;
If you were Queen of pleasure
And I were King of pain.

Change lays not her hand upon truth.

In a land of sand and ruin and gold
There shone one woman, and none but she

I can truly say with Shelley I have been fortunate in friendships: that I have been no less fortunate in my enemies than in my friends.

God's own hand Holds fast all issues of our deeds: with him The end of all our ends is, but with us Our ends are, just or unjust: though our works Find righteous or unrighteous judgment, this At least is ours, to make them righteous. Go.

Before Parting

A MONTH or twain to live on honeycomb
Is pleasant; but one tires of scented time,
Cold sweet recurrence of accepted rhyme,
And that strong purple under juice and foam
Where the wine’s heart has burst;
Nor feel the latter kisses like the first.

Once yet, this poor one time; I will not pray
Even to change the bitterness of it,
The bitter taste ensuing on the sweet,
To make your tears fall where your soft hair lay
All blurred and heavy in some perfumed wise
Over my face and eyes.

And yet who knows what end the scythèd wheat
Makes of its foolish poppies’ mouths of red?
These were not sown, these are not harvested,
They grow a month and are cast under feet
And none has care thereof,
As none has care of a divided love.

I know each shadow of your lips by rote,
Each change of love in eyelids and eyebrows;
The fashion of fair temples tremulous
With tender blood, and colour of your throat;
I know not how love is gone out of this,
Seeing that all was his.

Love’s likeness there endures upon all these:
But out of these one shall not gather love.
Day hath not strength nor the night shade enough
To make love whole and fill his lips with ease,
As some bee-builded cell
Feels at filled lips the heavy honey swell.

I know not how this last month leaves your hair
Less full of purple colour and hid spice,
And that luxurious trouble of closed eyes
Is mixed with meaner shadow and waste care;
And love, kissed out by pleasure, seems not yet
Worth patience to regret.

His life is a watch or a vision Between a sleep and a sleep.

A baby's feet, like sea-shells pink Might tempt, should heaven see meet,
An angel's lips to kiss, we think, A baby's feet.

Not with dreams, but with blood and with iron, Shall a nation be moulded at last.

We are not sure of sorrow,
And joy was never sure;
To-day will die to-morrow;
Time stoops to no man's lure;
And love, grown faint and fretful,
With lips but half regretful
Sighs, and with eyes forgetful
Weeps that no loves endure.

From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no life lives for ever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.

That no life lives forever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.

For the worst is this after all; if they knew me, not a soul upon earth would pity me.