Rococo

We have drained his lips at leisure,

Till there's not left to drain A single sob of pleasure,

A single pulse of pain.

Dream that the lips once breathless
Might quicken if they would;
Say that the soul is deathless;
Dream that the gods are good;
Say March may wed September,
And time divorce regret;
But not that you remember,
And not that I forget.

We have heard from hidden places
What love scarce lives and hears:

We have seen on fervent faces

The pallor of strange tears:
We have trod the wine-vat's treasure,
Whence, ripe to steam and stain,
Foams round the feet of pleasure
The blood-red must of pain.

Remembrance may recover
And time bring back to time
The name of your first lover,
The ring of my first rhyme:
But rose-leaves of December
The frosts of June shall fret,
The day that you remember,
The day that I forget.

The snake that hides and hisses

In heaven we twain have known;

The grief of cruel kisses,

The joy whose mouth makes moan; The pulses' pause and measure,

Where in one furtive vein

Throbs through the heart of pleasure
The purpler blood of pain.

881

We have done with tears and treasons
And love for treason's sake;
Room for the swift new seasons,

The years that burn and break,
Dismantle and dismember

Men's days and dreams, Juliette;
For love may not remember,
But time will not forget.

Life treads down love in flying,
Time withers him at root;
Bring all dead things and dying,

Reaped sheaf and ruined fruit,
Where, crushed by three days' pressure
Our three days' love lies slain;
And earlier leaf of pleasure,
And latter flower of pain.

Breathe close upon the ashes,
It may be flame will leap;
Unclose the soft close lashes,
Lift up the lids and weep.
Light love's extinguished ember,
Let one tear leave it wet
For one that you remember
And ten that you forget.

Algernon Charles Swinburne [1837-1909]

RONDEL

THESE many years since we began to be,

What have the Gods done with us? what with me,

What with my love? They have shown me fates and fears, Harsh springs, and fountains bitterer than the sea,

Grief a fixed star, and joy a vane that veers,

These many years.

With her, my Love, with her have they done well?
But who shall answer for her? who shall tell

Sweet things or sad, such things as no man hears?
May no tears fall, if no tears ever fell,

The Song of the Bower

From eyes more dear to me than starriest spheres,
These many years!

But if tears ever touched, for any grief,

Those eyelids folded like a white-rose leaf,

883

Deep double shells where through the eye-flower peers,
Let them weep once more only, sweet and brief,
Brief tears and bright, for one who gave her tears
These many years!

Algernon Charles Swinburne [1837-1909]

THE OBLATION

Ask nothing more of me, sweet;
All I can give you I give.

Heart of my heart, were it more,
More would be laid at your feet:
Love that should help you to live,
Song that should spur you to soar.

All things were nothing to give
Once to have sense of you more,
Touch you and taste of you, sweet,
you and breathe you and live,
Swept of your wings as they soar,
Trodden by chance of your feet.

Think

I that have love and no more
Give you but love of you, sweet:

He that hath more, let him give;
He that hath wings, let him soar;
Mine is the heart at your feet

Here, that must love you to live.
Algernon Charles Swinburne [1837-1909]

THE SONG OF THE BOWER

From "The House of Life"

SAY, is it day, is it dusk in thy bower,

Thou whom I long for, who longest for me?
Oh! be it light, be it night, 'tis Love's hour,
Love's that is fettered as Love's that is free.

Free Love has leaped to that innermost chamber,
Oh! the last time, and the hundred before:
Fettered Love, motionless, can but remember,
Yet something that sighs from him passes the door.

Nay, but my heart when it flies to thy bower,
What does it find there that knows it again?
There it must droop like a shower-beaten flower,
Red at the rent core and dark with the rain.
Ah! yet what shelter is still shed above it,-

What waters still image its leaves torn apart?
Thy soul is the shade that clings round it to love it,
And tears are its mirror deep down in thy heart.

What were my prize, could I enter thy bower,
This day, to-morrow, at eve or at morn?
Large lovely arms and a neck like a tower,

Bosom then heaving that now lies forlorn.
Kindled with love-breath, (the sun's kiss is colder!)
Thy sweetness all near me, so distant to-day;

My hand round thy neck and thy hand on my shoulder,
My mouth to thy mouth as the world melts away.

What is it keeps me afar from thy bower,-
My spirit, my body, so fain to be there?
Waters engulfing or fires that devour?—

Earth heaped against me or death in the air?
Nay, but in day-dreams, for terror, for pity,

The trees wave their heads with an omen to tell; Nay, but in night-dreams, throughout the dark city, The hours, clashed together, lose count in the bell.

Shall I not one day remember thy bower,

One day when all days are one day to me?— Thinking, "I stirred not, and yet had the power," Yearning, "Ah God, if again it might be!"

Peace, peace! such a small lamp illumes, on this highway, So dimly so few steps in front of my feet,—

Yet shows me that her way is parted from my way.

Out of sight, beyond light, at what goal may we meet?

Dante Gabriel Rossetti [1828-1882]

Maud Muller

885

SONG

WE break the glass, whose sacred wine
To some beloved health we drain,
Lest future pledges, less divine,

Should e'er the hallowed toy profane;
And thus I broke a heart that poured
Its tide of feelings out for thee,
In draughts, by after-times deplored,
Yet dear to memory.

But still the old, impassioned ways
And habits of my mind remain,
And still unhappy light displays

Thine image chambered in my brain,
And still it looks as when the hours
Went by like flights of singing birds,
Or that soft chain of spoken flowers
And airy gems, thy words.

Edward Coate Pinkney [1802-1828]

MAUD MULLER

MAUD MULLER on a summer's day
Raked the meadow sweet with hay.

Beneath her torn hat glowed the wealth
Of simple beauty and rustic health.

Singing, she wrought, and her merry glee
The mock-bird echoed from his tree.

But when she glanced to the far-off town,
White from its hill-slope looking down,

The sweet song died, and a vague unrest
And a nameless longing filled her breast,—

A wish that she hardly dared to own,
For something better than she had known.