Christopher Marlowe
Crowned, girdled, garbed and shod with light and fire,
Son first-born of the morning, sovereign star!
Soul nearest ours of all, that wert most far.
Most far off in the abysm of time, thy lyre
Hung highest above the dawn-enkindled quire
Where all ye sang together, all that are,
And all the starry songs behind thy car
Rang sequence, all our souls acclaim thee sire.
"If all the pens that ever poets held
Had fed the feeling of their masters' thoughts,"
And as with rush of hurtling chariots
The flight of all their spirits were impelled
Toward one great end, thy glory -- nay, not then,
Not yet might'st thou be praised enough of men.
poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne
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In Sark
Abreast and ahead of the sea is a crag's front cloven asunder
With strong sea-breach and with wasting of winds whence terror is
shed
As a shadow of death from the wings of the darkness on waters that
thunder
Abreast and ahead.
At its edge is a sepulchre hollowed and hewn for a lone man's bed,
Propped open with rock and agape on the sky and the sea thereunder,
But roofed and walled in well from the wrath of them slept its dead.
Here might not a man drink rapture of rest, or delight above wonder,
Beholding, a soul disembodied, the days and the nights that fled,
With splendour and sound of the tempest around and above him and
under,
Abreast and ahead?
poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne
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In San Lorenzo
Is thine hour come to wake, O slumbering Night?
Hath not the Dawn a message in thine ear?
Though thou be stone and sleep, yet shalt thou hear
When the word falls from heaven--Let there be light.
Thou knowest we would not do thee the despite
To wake thee while the old sorrow and shame were near;
We spake not loud for thy sake, and for fear
Lest thou shouldst lose the rest that was thy right,
The blessing given thee that was thine alone,
The happiness to sleep and to be stone:
Nay, we kept silence of thee for thy sake
Albeit we knew thee alive, and left with thee
The great good gift to feel not nor to see;
But will not yet thine Angel bid thee wake?
poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne
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Anonymous Plays: XVIII
MORE yet and more, and yet we mark not all:
The Warning fain to bid fair women heed
Its hard brief note of deadly doom and deed;
The verse that strewed too thick with flowers the hall
Whence Nero watched his fiery festival;
That iron page wherein men’s eyes who read
See, bruised and marred between two babes that bleed,
A mad red-handed husband’s martyr fall;
The scene which crossed and streaked with mirth the strife
Of Henry with his sons and witchlike wife;
And that sweet pageant of the kindly fiend,
Who, seeing three friends in spirit and heart made one,
Crowned with good hap the true-love wiles he screened
In the pleached lanes of pleasant Edmonton.
poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne
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John Webster: VII
THUNDER: the flesh quails, and the soul bows down.
Night: east, west, south, and northward, very night
Star upon struggling star strives into sight,
Star after shuddering star the deep storms drown.
The very throne of night, her very crown,
A man lays hand on, and usurps her right
Song from the highest of heaven’s imperious height
Shoots, as a fire to smite some towering town.
Rage, anguish, harrowing fear, heart-crazing crime,
Make monstrous all the murderous face of Time
Shown in the spheral orbit of a glass
Revolving. Earth cries out from all her graves.
Frail, on frail rafts, across wide-wallowing waves,
Shapes here and there of child and mother pass.
poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne
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Thomas Heywood: X
TOM, if they loved thee best who called thee Tom.
What else may all men call thee, seeing thus bright
Even yet the laughing and the weeping light
That still thy kind old eyes are kindled from?
Small care was thine to assail and overcome
Time and his child Oblivion: yet of right
Thy name has part with names of lordlier might
For English love and homely sense of home,
Whose fragrance keeps thy small sweet bayleaf young
And gives it place aloft among thy peers
Whence many a wreath once higher strong Time has hurled:
And this thy praise is sweet on Shakespeare’s tongue—
‘O good old man, how well in thee appears
The constant service of the antique world!’
poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne
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George Chapman:XI
HIGH priest of Homer, not elect in vain,
Deep trumpets blow before thee, shawms behind
Mix music with the rolling wheels that wind
Slow through the labouring triumph of thy train:
Fierce history, molten in thy forging brain,
Takes form and fire and fashion from thy mind,
Tormented and transmuted out of kind:
But howsoe’er thou shift thy strenuous strain,
Like Tailor1 smooth, like Fisher2 swollen, and now
Grim Yarrington3 scarce bloodier marked than thou,
Then bluff as Mayne’s4 or broad-mouthed Barry’s5 glee ,
Proud still with hoar predominance of brow
And beard like foam swept off the broad blown sea,
Where’er thou go, men’s reverence goes with thee.
poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne
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Love and Sleep
Love and Sleep
Lying asleep between the strokes of night
I saw my love lean over my sad bed,
Pale as the duskiest lily's leaf or head,
Smooth-skinned and dark, with bare throat made to bite,
Too wan for blushing and too warm for white,
But perfect-coloured without white or red.
And her lips opened amorously, and said -
I wist not what, saving one word - Delight.
And all her face was honey to my mouth,
And all her body pasture to mine eyes;
The long lithe arms and hotter hands than fire
The quivering flanks, hair smelling of the south,
The bright light feet, the splendid supple thighs
And glittering eyelids of my soul's desire.
poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne
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Beaumont and Fletcher:IV
AN HOUR ere sudden sunset fired the west,
Arose two stars upon the pale deep east.
The hall of heaven was clear for night’s high feast,
Yet was not yet day’s fiery heart at rest
Love leapt up from his mother’s burning breast
To see those warm twin lights, as day decreased,
Wax wider, till when all the sun had ceased
As suns they shone from evening’s kindled crest
Across them and between, a quickening fire,
Flamed Venus, laughing with appeased desire.
Their dawn, scarce lovelier for the gleam of tears,
Filled half the hollow shell ’twixt heaven and earth
With sound like moonlight, mingling moan and mirth,
Which rings and glitters down the darkling years.
poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne
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Thomas Decker: VIII
OUT of the depths of darkling life where sin
Laughs piteously that sorrow should not know
Her own ill name, nor woe be counted woe;
Where hate and craft and lust make drearier din
Than sounds through dreams that grief holds revel in;
What charm of joy-bells ringing, streams that flow,
Winds that blow healing in each note they blow,
Is this that the outer darkness hears begin?
O sweetest heart of all thy time save one,
Star seen for love’s sake nearest to the sun,
Hung lamplike o’er a dense and doleful city,
Not Shakespeare’s very spirit, howe’er more great,
Than thine toward man was more compassionate,
Nor gave Christ praise from lips more sweet with pity.
poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne
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