Algernon Charles Swinburne

The doctrine of Shakespeare, where it is not vaguer, is darker in its implication of injustice, in its acceptance of accident, than the impression of the doctrine of Æschylus.

Æschylus is above all things the poet of righteousness.

Though they be Ill rulers of this household, be not thou Too swift to strike ere time be ripe to strike, Nor then by darkling stroke, against them: I Have erred, who thought by wrong to vanquish wrong, To smite by violence violence, and by …

Farewell, and peace be with you if it may. I have lost, ye have won this hazard: yet perchance My loss may shine yet goodlier than your gain When time and God give judgment. If there be Truth, true is this, that I desired the right And ye …

I believe Not more in God's word than in yours; and this Not for your station's sake, nor yet your fame's, How high soe'er the wind of war have blown The splendour of your standard: but, my lord, Your face and heart and speech, being one, …

No heart shall beat, no foot shall press, no hand Strain, strive, and strike with steadier will than mine And faith more strenuous toward the purpose.

Make thine eyes wide and give God wondering thanks That grace like ours is given thee — thou shalt bear Part of our praise for ever.

A poor man's wrong and mine and all the world's, Diverse and individual, many and one, Insufferable of long-suffering less than God's, Of all endurance unendurable else, Being come to flood and fullness now, the tide Is risen in mine as in …

What sentence shall be given on mine? Of man, As ill or well God means me, well or ill Shall judgment pass upon me : but of God, If God himself be righteous or be God, Who being unrighteous were but god of hell, The sentence given shall …

God's own hand Holds fast all issues of our deeds: with him The end of all our ends is, but with us Our ends are, just or unjust: though our works Find righteous or unrighteous judgment, this At least is ours, to make them righteous. Go.

A crown and justice? Night and day Shall first be yoked together.

The sweetest flowers in all the world— A baby's hands.

Like rose-hued sea-flowers toward the heat, They stretch and spread and wink Their ten soft buds that part and meet.

A baby's feet, like sea-shells pink Might tempt, should heaven see meet, An angel's lips to kiss, we think, A baby's feet.

Who knows but on their sleep may rise Such light as never heaven let through To lighten earth from Paradise?

Fiddle, we know, is diddle: and diddle, we take it, is dee.

Life is the lust of a lamp for the light that is dark till the dawn of the day that we die.

As a god self-slain on his own strange altar, Death lies dead.

The thorns he spares when the rose is taken; The rocks are left when he wastes the plain; The wind that wanders, the weeds wind-shaken, These remain.

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. A girdle of brushwood and thorn encloses The steep …

Sleep; and if life was bitter to thee, pardon, If sweet, give thanks; thou hast no more to live; And to give thanks

The deep division of prodigious breasts, The solemn slope of mighty limbs asleep.

For a day and a night Love sang to us, played with us, Folded us round from the dark and the light; And our hearts were fulfilled with the music he made with us, Made with our hands and our lips while he stayed with us, Stayed in mid …

I have no remedy for fear; there grows No herb of help to heal a coward heart.