Algernon Charles Swinburne
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Algernon Charles Swinburnewas an English poet, playwright, novelist, and critic. He wrote several novels and collections of poetry such as Poems and Ballads, and contributed to the famous Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. A controversial figure at the time, Swinburne was a sado-masochist and alcoholic and was obsessed with the Middle Ages and lesbianism...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth5 April 1837
sleep light heaven
Who knows but on their sleep may rise Such light as never heaven let through To lighten earth from Paradise?
dark light lust
Life is the lust of a lamp for the light that is dark till the dawn of the day that we die.
running heart light
No blast of air or fire of sun Puts out the light whereby we run With girdled loins our lamplit race, And each from each takes heart of grace And spirit till his turn be done.
heart light grows
In hawthorn-time the heart grows light.
night light one-day
And lo, between the sundawn and the sun His day's work and his night's work are undone: And lo, between the nightfall and the light, He is not, and none knoweth of such an one.
moving sleep wind
I shall sleep, and move with the moving ships, Change as the winds change, veer in the tide.
dream song art
In the world of dreams, I have chosen my part. To sleep for a season and hear no word Of true love's truth or of light love's art, Only the song of a secret bird.
fate sea rocks
Fate is a sea without a shore, and the soul is a rock that abides.
spring rain winter
For winter's rains and ruins are over... And in Green under wood and cover Blossum by blossom the spring begins.
desire delight outrun
The delight that consumes the desire, The desire that outruns the delight.
time wife our-love
Time turns the old days to derision, Our loves into corpses or wives.
memories eye past
On the mountains of memory by the world's wellsprings, in all man's eyes, where the light of life of him is on all past things, death only dies.
song failure vines
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.
kings men precedent
Is not Precedent indeed a King of men? A Word from the Psalmist.