Algernon Charles Swinburne
38 quotes
Biography
"From too much love of living, From hope and fear set free, We thank with brief thanksgiving Whatever gods may be That no life lives for ever; That dead men rise up never; That even the weariest river Winds somewhere safe to sea."
"Rhyme is the native condition of lyric verse in English; a rhymeless lyric is a maimed thing."
"Sweet Love, that art so bitter."
"I can truly say with Shelley that I have been fortunate in friendships: that I have been no less fortunate in my enemies than in my friends."
"There was a bad poet named Clough, Whom his friends all united to puff. But the public, though dull, Has not quite such a skull As belongs to believers in Clough."
"When the hounds of spring are on winter's traces, The mother of months in meadow or plain Fills the shadows and windy places With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain; And the brown bright nightingale amorous Is half assuaged for Itylus, For the Thracian ships and the foreign faces, The tongueless vigil and all the pain."
"His speech is a burning fire."
"Wilt thou fear that, and fear not my desire?"
"Ah, ah, thy beauty! like a beast it bites, Stings like an adder, like an arrow smites."
"Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean; the world has grown grey from thy breath; We have drunken of things Lethean, and fed on the fullness of death."
"If love were what the rose is, And I were like the leaf, Our lives would grow together In sad or singing weather, Blown fields or flowerful closes, Green pasture or grey grief; If love were what the rose is, And I were like the leaf."
"Despair the twin-born of devotion."
"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."
"Time found our tired love sleeping, And kissed away his breath; But what should we do weeping, Though light love sleep to death? 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."
"Marvellous mercies and infinite love."
"O bitterness of things too sweet!"
"Gone deeper than all plummets sound."
"Change lays not her hand upon truth."
"Even love, the beloved Republic, that feeds upon freedom and lives."
"But God, if a God there be, is the substance of men which is man."
"Glory to Man in the highest! for Man is the master of things."
"It is long since Mr. Carlyle expressed his opinion that if any poet or other literary creature could really be "killed off by one critique" or many, the sooner he was so despatched the better; a sentiment in which I for one humbly but heartily concur."
"A blatant Bassarid of Boston, a rampant Maenad of Massachusetts."
"To wipe off the froth of falsehood from the foaming lips of inebriated virtue, when fresh from the sexless orgies of morality and reeling from the delirious riot of religion, may doubtless be a charitable office."