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DRAWING NEAR THE LIGHT

(From Poems by the Way, 1892)
Lo, when we wade the tangled wood,
In haste and hurry to be there,
Nought seem its leaves and blossoms good,
For all that they be fashioned fair.

But looking up, at last we see
The glimmer of the open light,

From o'er the place where we would be:
Then grow the very brambles bright.

So now, amidst our day of strife,
With many a matter glad we play,
When once we see the light of life
Gleam through the tangle of to-day.

Algernon Charles Swinburne

1837-1909

CHORUS

(From Atalanta in Calydon, 1865)

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What hadst thou to do being born, Mother, when winds were at ease, As a flower of the springtime of corn, A flower of the foam of the seas? For bitter thou wast from thy birth, Aphrodite, a mother of strife;

For before thee some rest was on earth, A little respite from tears,

A little pleasure of life:

For life was not then as thou art,

But as one that waxeth in years
Sweet-spoken, a fruitful wife;

Earth had no thorn and desire

What hadst thou to do amongst these,

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No sting, neither death any dart;

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Her bright breast shortening into sighs; The wild vine slips with the weight of its leaves, But the berried ivy catches and cleaves To the limbs that glitter, the feet that scare 55 The wolf that follows, the fawn that flies.

CHORUS

(From the same)

We have seen thee, O Love, thou art fair; thou art goodly, O Love;

Thy wings make light in the air as the wings of a dove.

2 Bassarid (Gr. Baooápa), and Manad, are names for a bacchante,-a priestess of Bacchus, or a woman who joined in the festivals of Bacchus and who was inspired with the bacchic frenzy.

As a brand plucked forth of a pyre, As a ray shed forth of the morn, For division of soul and disease, For a dart and a sting and a thorn? What ailed thee then to be born?

Was there not evil enough,

Mother, and anguish on earth Born with a man at his birth, Wastes underfoot, and above

Storm out of heaven, and dearth Shaken down from the shining thereof,

Wrecks from afar over seas
And peril of shallow and firth,

And tears that spring and increase
In the barren places of mirth,
That thou having wings as a dove,
Being girt with desire for a girth,

That thou must come after these, That thou must lay on him love?

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Thou shouldst not so have been born: But death should have risen with thee, Mother, and visible fear,

Grief, and wringing of hands,

And noise of many that mourn;
The smitten bosom, the knee
Bowed, and in each man's ear
A cry as of perishing lands,

A moan as of people in prison,
A tumult of infinite griefs;

And thunder of storm on the sands, And wailing of wives on the shore; And under thee newly arisen

Loud shoals and shipwrecking reefs,
Fierce air and violent light;

Sail rent and sundering oar,

Darkness, and noises of night; Clashing of streams in the sea, Wave against wave as a sword,

Clamour of currents, and foam;

Rains making ruin on earth; Winds that wax ravenous and roam As wolves in a wolfish horde; Fruits growing faint in the tree,

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And blind things dead in their birth: Famine and blighting of corn, When thy time was come to be born.

THE GARDEN OF PROSERPINE1
(From Laus Veneris, 1866)
Here where the world is quiet;
Here, where all trouble seems
Dead winds' and spent waves' riot
In doubtful dream of dreams;

I watch the green field growing
For reaping folk and sowing,
For harvest time and mowing,
A sleepy world of streams.

I am tired of tears and laughter,
And men that laugh and weep,
Of what may come hereafter

For men that sow to reap:

I am weary of days and hours,
Blown buds of barren flowers,
Desires and dreams and powers
And everything but sleep.

Here life hath death for neighbour,
And far from eye or ear
Wan waves and wet winds labour,
Weak ships and spirits steer;

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1 Proserpine was the child of Demeter, the motherearth. While gathering flowers in the Sicilian fields, she was caught up and carried off by Pluto, king of the Infernal regions, who made her queen of the lower realm, of darkness and death. She was afterwards permitted to leave the Shades for a part of each year and to visit Olympus. She typifies the corn, or grain, which passes from the dark prison in the earth to light, and leaves the light to return again to darkness. In this poem, Swinburne pictures the world as her garden, a place presided over by the Queen of the kingdom of darkness, a spot from which life is continually being carried off to the dark region of oblivion.

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And love, grown faint and fretful,
With lips but half regretful
Sighs, and with eyes forgetful
Weeps that no loves endure.

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 forever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river

Winds somewhere safe to sea.

Then star nor sun shall waken,
Nor any change of light:
Nor sound of waters shaken,

Nor any sound or sight:
Nor wintry leaves nor vernal,
Nor days nor things diurnal;
Only the sleep eternal

In an eternal night.

PASTICHE1

(From Poems and Ballads, 1878)
Now the days are all gone over
Of our singing, love by lover,
Days of summer-coloured seas

Blown adrift through beam and breeze.

Now the nights are all past over
Of our dreaming, dreams that hover
In a mist of fair false things,
Nights afloat on wide wan wings.
Now the loves with faith for mother,
Now the fears with hope for brother,
Scarce are with us as strange words,
Notes from songs of last year's birds.
Now all good that comes or goes is
As the smell of last year's roses,
And the radiance in our eyes
Shot from summer's ere he dies.

Now the morning faintlier risen
Seems no god come forth of prison,
But a bird of plume plucked wing,
Pale with thought of evening.

Now hath hope, outraced in running
Given the torch up of his cunning
And the palm he thought to wear
Even to his own strong child-despair.

A FORSAKEN GARDEN1

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In a coign of the cliff between lowland and highland,

At the sea-down's edge between windward and lee

Walled round with rocks as an inland island, The ghost of a garden fronts the sea.

1 Pastiche (or pasticcio) is the French word for a medley, or a work in imitation of the style of several masters.

1 The scene of this poem is said to be East Dene, Bonchurch, in the Isle of Wight.

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For the foam-flowers endure when the roseblossoms wither,

And men that love lightly may die-But we?"

And the same wind sang, and the same waves whitened,

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And or ever the garden's last petals were shed,

In the lips that had whispered, the eyes that had lightened,

Love was dead.

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