Fierce loves, and lovely leaf-buds poisonous,
Bare to thy subtler eye, but for none other
Blowing by night in some unbreathed-in clime;
The hidden harvest of luxurious time,
Sin without shape, and pleasure without speech;
And where strange dreams in a tumultuous sleep
Make the shut eyes of stricken spirits weep;
And with each face thou sawest the shadow on each,
Seeing as men sow men reap.7 4
O sleepless heart and sombre soul unsleeping,
That were athirst for sleep and no more life
And no more love, for peace and no more strife!
Now the dim gods of death have in their keeping
Spirit and body and all the springs of song,
Is it well now where love can do no wrong,
Where stingless pleasure has no foam or fang
Behind the unopening closure of her lips?
Is it not well where soul from body slips
And flesh from bone divides without a pang
As dew from flower-bell drips? 5
It is enough; the end and the beginning
Are one thing to thee, who art past the end.
5. A voyage to the tropics in Baudelaire's youth In this section Swinburne makes allusions to made a lasting impact on his poetry. Baudelaire's 'Lesbos.' 6. According to legend, the poet Sappho, who was 7. Cf. Galatians 6.7: 'Whatsoever a man soweth, horn on the island of Lesbos, Idlled herself by leap-that shall he also reap.' ing from the rock of Leucas into the Ionian Sea.
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1 502 / ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
O hand unclasped of unbeholden friend,
For thee no fruits to pluck, no palms for winning,
No triumph and no labour and no lust,
50 Only dead yew-leaves and a little dust.
O quiet eyes wherein the light saith naught,
Whereto the day is dumb, nor any night
With obscure finger silences your sight,
Nor in your speech the sudden soul speaks thought,
55 Sleep, and have sleep for light.
6
Now all strange hours and all strange loves are over,
Dreams and desires and sombre songs and sweet,
Hast thou found place at the great knees and feet
Of some pale Titan-woman like a lover,
60 Such as thy vision here solicited,8 Under the shadow of her fair vast head,
The deep division of prodigious breasts,
The solemn slope of mighty limbs asleep,
The weight of awful tresses that still keep
65 The savor and shade of old-world pine forests
Where the wet hill-winds weep? 7
Hast thou found any likeness for thy vision?
O gardener of strange flowers, what bud, what bloom,
Hast thou found sown, what gathered in the gloom?
