Algernon Charles Swinburne Quotes

They do not ill, being lords of ours, to slay Me; nay, they could not spare: but thee to slay, To spill thy strong young life for truth to me, In all men's eyes would mark them monstrous: thou Must live, and serve my slayers, and serving them Sustain my memory by the proof — if God Shall give thee grace to prove it — that thy name, Thy father's name and mine, in true men's ears Rings truth, and means not treason.

Farewell, and peace be with you if it may. I have lost, ye have won this hazard: yet perchance My loss may shine yet goodlier than your gain When time and God give judgment. If there be Truth, true is this, that I desired the right And ye with hands as red sustain the wrong As mine had been in triumph. Have your will: And God send each no bitterer end than mine.

I believe Not more in God's word than in yours; and this Not for your station's sake, nor yet your fame's, How high soe'er the wind of war have blown The splendour of your standard: but, my lord, Your face and heart and speech, being one, require Of any not base-born and servile-souled Faith: and my faith I give you.

Friends, citizens, and brethren. This our friend Hath given you by my charge to know of me Thus much, that if your ends and mine be one, As one our wrongs are, and this people's need One, toward the goal forefelt of our desire No heart shall beat, no foot shall press, no hand Strain, strive, and strike with steadier will than mine And faith more strenuous toward the purpose. This If ye believe not, here our hope hath end; If ye believe, here under happier stars Begins the date of Venice.

So be it the wind and sun That reared thy limbs and lit thy veins with life Have blown and shone upon thee not for nought— If these have fed and fired thy spirit as mine With love, with faith that casts out fear, with joy, With trust in truth and pride in trust — if thou Be theirs indeed as theirs am I, with me Shalt thou take part and with my sea-folk — aye, Make thine eyes wide and give God wondering thanks That grace like ours is given thee — thou shalt bear Part of our praise for ever.

A poor man's wrong and mine and all the world's, Diverse and individual, many and one, Insufferable of long-suffering less than God's, Of all endurance unendurable else, Being come to flood and fullness now, the tide Is risen in mine as in the sea's own heart To tempest and to triumph. Not for nought Am I that wild wife's bridegroom — old and hoar, Not sapless yet nor soulless.

What sentence shall be given on mine? Of man, As ill or well God means me, well or ill Shall judgment pass upon me : but of God, If God himself be righteous or be God, Who being unrighteous were but god of hell, The sentence given shall judge me just...

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.

I have no remedy for fear; there grows
No herb of help to heal a coward heart.

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

Sins are sin-begotten, and their seed Bred of itself and singly procreative; Nor is God served with setting this to this For evil evidence of several shame, That one may say, Lo now! so many are they; But if one, seeing with God-illumined eyes In his full face the encountering face of sin, Smite once the one high-fronted head, and slay, His will we call good service. For myself, If ye will make a counsellor of me, I bid you set your hearts against one thing To burn it up, and keep your hearts on fire, Not seeking here a sign and there a sign, Nor curious of all casual sufferances, But steadfast to the undoing of that thing done Whereof ye know the being, however it be, And all the doing abominable of God. Who questions with a snake if the snake sting? Who reasons of the lightning if it burn? While these things are, deadly will these things be; And so the curse that comes of cursed faith.

The tadpole poet will never grow into anything bigger than a frog; not though in that stage of development he should puff and blow himself till he bursts with windy adulation at the heels of the laureled ox.

The more congenial page of some tenth-rate poeticule worn out with failure after failure and now squat in his hole like the tailless fox, he is curled up to snarl and whimper beneath the inaccessible vine of song.

To wipe off the froth of falsehood from the foaming lips of inebriated virtue, when fresh from the sexless orgies of morality and reeling from the delirious riot of religion, may doubtless be a charitable office.

A blatant Bassarid of Boston, a rampant Maenad of Massachusetts.