Algernon Charles Swinburne Quotes

It is not much that a man can save On the sands of life, in the straits of time, Who swims in sight of the great third wave That never a swimmer shall cross or climb. Some waif washed up with the strays and spars That ebb-tide shows to the shore and the stars; Weed from the water, grass from a grave, A broken blossom, a ruined rhyme. There will no man do for your sake, I think, What I would have done for the least word said. I had wrung life dry for your lips to drink, Broken it up for your daily bread: Body for body and blood for blood, As the flow of the full sea risen to flood That yearns and trembles before it sink, I had given, and lain down for you, glad and dead.

I dore not always touch her, lest the kiss
Leave my lips charred. Yea, Lord, a little bliss,
Brief, bitter bliss, one hath for a great sin;
Nathless thou knowest how sweet a thing it is.

She loved the games men played with death,
Where death must win

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

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 forever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.

Fear that makes faith may break faith; and a fool Is but in folly stable.

Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean; the world has grown grey from thy breath;

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.

If love were what the rose is,
And I were like the leaf,
Our lives would grow together
In sad or singing weather,
Blown fields or flowerful closes,
Green pasture or gray grief;
If love were what the rose is,
And I were like the leaf.

His speech is a burning fire.

Despair the twin-born of devotion.

God by God flits past in thunder, till His glories turn to shades; God to God bears wondering witness how His gospel flames and fades. More was each of these, yet they were, than man their servant seemed: Dead are all of these, and man survives who made them while he dreamed.

For in the days we know not of
Did fate begin
Weaving the web of days that wove
Your doom.

Miłość, sen i śmierć nadchodzą pomału
Schwyć mnie za włosy i mocno pocałuj.

Ah, had I not taken my life up and given
All that life gives and the years let go,
The wind and honey, the balm and leaven,
The dreams reared high and the hopes brought low?
Come life, come death, not a word be said;
Should I lose you living, and vex you dead?
I never shall tell you on earth; and in heaven,
If I cry to you then, will you hear or know?