Algernon Charles Swinburne: Trending quotes (page 2)

Poems and Ballads (1866-89), The Triumph of Time
Context: In the change of years, in the coil of things,
In the clamour and rumour of life to be,
We, drinking love at the furthest springs,
Covered with love as a covering tree,
We had grown as gods, as the gods above,
Filled from the heart to the lips with love,
Held fast in his hands, clothed warm with his wings,
O love, my love, had you loved but me!

"Hymn to Proserpine", line 35.
Poems and Ballads (1866-89)

Faliero, Act III, Sc. 1.
Marino Faliero (1885)

Poems and Ballads (1866-89), The Triumph of Time
Context: p>Before our lives divide for ever,
While time is with us and hands are free,
(Time, swift to fasten and swift to sever
Hand from hand, as we stand by the sea)
I will say no word that a man might say
Whose whole life's love goes down in a day;
For this could never have been; and never,
Though the gods and the years relent, shall be.Is it worth a tear, is it worth an hour,
To think of things that are well outworn?
Of fruitless husk and fugitive flower,
The dream foregone and the deed forborne?
Though joy be done with and grief be vain,
Time shall not sever us wholly in twain;
Earth is not spoilt for a single shower;
But the rain has ruined the ungrown corn.</p

Under the Microscope (1872)
Context: 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.

Poems and Ballads (1866-89), The Triumph of Time
Context: p>We had stood as the sure stars stand, and moved
As the moon moves, loving the world; and seen
Grief collapse as a thing disproved,
Death consume as a thing unclean.
Twain halves of a perfect heart, made fast
Soul to soul while the years fell past;
Had you loved me once, as you have not loved;
Had the chance been with us that has not been.I have put my days and dreams out of mind,
Days that are over, dreams that are done.
Though we seek life through, we shall surely find
There is none of them clear to us now, not one.</p

John Knox as portrayed in Bothwell : A Tragedy (1874) Act I, Sc. 2.
Bothwell : A Tragedy (1874)
Context: 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.

"Rococo", lines 25-32.
Poems and Ballads (1866-89)

"The Monument of Giordano Bruno", inspired by the statue in memory of Giordano Bruno at the place where he was burned as a heretic.
Astrophel and Other Poems (1894)
Context: Not from without us, only from within,
Comes or can ever come upon us light
Whereby the soul keeps ever truth in sight.
No truth, no strength, no comfort man may win,
No grace for guidance, no release from sin,
Save of his own soul's giving.

Poems and Ballads (1866-89), The Triumph of Time
Context: p>The pulse of war and passion of wonder,
The heavens that murmur, the sounds that shine,
The stars that sing and the loves that thunder,
The music burning at heart like wine,
An armed archangel whose hands raise up
All senses mixed in the spirit's cup
Till flesh and spirit are molten in sunder —
These things are over, and no more mine. These were a part of the playing I heard
Once, ere my love and my heart were at strife;
Love that sings and hath wings as a bird,
Balm of the wound and heft of the knife.
Fairer than earth is the sea, and sleep
Than overwatching of eyes that weep,
Now time has done with his one sweet word,
The wine and leaven of lovely life.</p

Faliero, Act III, Sc. 1.
Marino Faliero (1885)
Context: 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.

Poems and Ballads (1866-89), The Triumph of Time
Context: p>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.</p

Faliero, Act III, Sc. 1.
Marino Faliero (1885)
Context: 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.

Faliero, Act III, Sc. 1.
Marino Faliero (1885)
Context: 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...

The Age of Shakespeare (1908)
Context: Æschylus is above all things the poet of righteousness. "But in any wise, I say unto thee, revere thou the altar of righteousness": this is the crowning admonition of his doctrine, as its crowning prospect is the reconciliation or atonement of the principle of retribution with the principle of redemption, of the powers of the mystery of darkness with the coeternal forces of the spirit of wisdom, of the lord of inspiration and of light. The doctrine of Shakespeare, where it is not vaguer, is darker in its implication of injustice, in its acceptance of accident, than the impression of the doctrine of Æschylus. Fate, irreversible and inscrutable, is the only force of which we feel the impact, of which we trace the sign, in the upshot of Othello or King Lear. The last step into the darkness remained to be taken by "the most tragic" of all English poets. With Shakespeare — and assuredly not with Æschylus — righteousness itself seems subject and subordinate to the masterdom of fate: but fate itself, in the tragic world of Webster, seems merely the servant or the synonym of chance. The two chief agents in his two great tragedies pass away — the phrase was, perhaps, unconsciously repeated — "in a mist": perplexed, indomitable, defiant of hope and fear bitter and sceptical and bloody in penitence or impenitence alike. And the mist which encompasses the departing spirits of these moody and mocking men of blood seems equally to involve the lives of their chastisers and their victims. Blind accident and blundering mishap — "such a mistake", says one of the criminals, "as I have often seen in a play" — are the steersmen of their fortunes and the doomsmen of their deeds. The effect of this method or the result of this view, whether adopted for dramatic objects or ingrained in the writer's temperament, is equally fit for pure tragedy and unfit for any form of drama not purely tragic in evolution and event.

Poems and Ballads (1866-89), The Triumph of Time
Context: p>The pulse of war and passion of wonder,
The heavens that murmur, the sounds that shine,
The stars that sing and the loves that thunder,
The music burning at heart like wine,
An armed archangel whose hands raise up
All senses mixed in the spirit's cup
Till flesh and spirit are molten in sunder —
These things are over, and no more mine. These were a part of the playing I heard
Once, ere my love and my heart were at strife;
Love that sings and hath wings as a bird,
Balm of the wound and heft of the knife.
Fairer than earth is the sea, and sleep
Than overwatching of eyes that weep,
Now time has done with his one sweet word,
The wine and leaven of lovely life.</p