The Complete Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne: Prose worksW. Heinemann Limited, 1926 |
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Page 274 - I am now indebted, as being a work not to be raised from the heat of youth or the vapours of wine, like that which flows at waste from the pen of some vulgar amorist or the trencher fury of a rhyming parasite, nor to be obtained by the invocation of Dame Memory and her siren daughters...
Page 34 - Oh, dreadful is the check — intense the agony — When the ear begins to hear, and the eye begins to see; When the pulse begins to throb, the brain to think again, The soul to feel the flesh, and the flesh to feel the chain.
Page 34 - A messenger of Hope comes every night to me, And offers for short life, eternal liberty. " He comes with western winds, with evening's wandering airs, With that clear dusk of heaven that brings the thickest stars. Winds take a pensive tone, and stars a tender fire, And visions rise, and change, that kill me with desire.
Page 338 - O that it were possible we might But hold some two days conference with the dead, From them I should learn somewhat I am sure I never shall know here. I'll tell thee a miracle ; I am not mad yet, to my cause of sorrow. Th...
Page 33 - Riches I hold in light esteem, And Love I laugh to scorn; And lust of fame was but a dream, That vanished with the morn: And if I pray, the only prayer That moves my lips for me Is, "Leave the heart that now I bear, And give me liberty!
Page 258 - Nor blame it, readers, in those years to propose to themselves such a reward as the noblest dispositions above other things in this life have sometimes preferred: whereof not to be sensible when good and fair in one person meet, argues both a gross and shallow judgment, and withal an ungentle and swainish breast.
Page 215 - Will no one tell me what she sings? — Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow For old, unhappy, far-off things And battles long ago; Or is it some more humble lay, Familiar matter of today Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain, That has been, and may be again?
Page 228 - At all times of the day and night This wretched Woman thither goes ; And she is known to every star, And every wind that blows ; And there beside the Thorn she sits When the blue day-light's in the skies, And when the whirlwind's on the hill, Or frosty air is keen and still, And to herself she cries, 'Oh misery! oh misery!
Page 257 - Poesy! thou sweet'st content That e'er heaven to mortals lent: Though they as a trifle leave thee, Whose dull thoughts cannot conceive thee, Though thou be to them a scorn, That to nought but earth are born, Let my life no longer be Than I am in love with thee, Though our wise ones call thee madness, Let me never taste of gladness, If I love not thy mad'st fits More than all their greatest wits.
Page 199 - Nay, I doubt whether his delightful Essays and Letters, which deserve to be far more read than they are now, will not resist the wear and tear of time better, and finally come to stand higher, than his poetry.