Algernon Charles Swinburne: Trending quotes (page 3)

“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.”

“Though one were fair as roses
His beauty clouds and closes.”

“Is not Precedent indeed a King of men?”

“Stately, kindly, lordly friend
Condescend
Here to sit by me.”

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

“Villon, our sad bad glad mad brother's name.”

“Those eyes the greenest of things blue
The bluest of things grey.”

“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.”

“Ah, ah, thy beauty! like a beast it bites,
Stings like an adder, like an arrow smites.”

“The thorns he spares when the rose is taken;
The rocks are left when he wastes the plain;
The wind that wanders, the weeds wind-shaken,
These remain.”

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

“I remember the way we parted,
The day and the way we met;
You hoped we were both broken-hearted
And knew we should both forget.”

“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.”

“I. But he hears not. Now, my warrior guests,
I drink to the onward passage of his soul
Death. Had my hand turned coward or played me false,
This man that is my hand, and less than I
And less than he bloodguilty, this my death
Had been my husband's: now he has left it me.
[Drinks]
How innocent are all but he and I
No time is mine to tell you. Truth shall tell.
I pardon thee, my husband: pardon me. [Dies]”

“She hath wasted with fire thine high places,
She hath hidden and marred and made sad
The fair limbs of the Loves, the fair faces
Of gods that were goodly and glad.
She slays, and her hands are not bloody;
She moves as a moon in the wane,
White-robed, and thy raiment is ruddy,
Our Lady of Pain.”

“A crown and justice? Night and day
Shall first be yoked together.”

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

“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.”

“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.”