Algernon Charles Swinburne

Fear that makes faith may break faith; and a fool Is but in folly stable.

Who questions with a snake if the snake sting? Who reasons of the lightning if it burn? While these things are, deadly will these things be; And so the curse that comes of cursed faith.

But if one, seeing with God-illumined eyes In his full face the encountering face of sin, Smite once the one high-fronted head, and slay, His will we call good service.

Sins are sin-begotten, and their seed Bred of itself and singly procreative

Surely most bitter of all sweet things thou art, And sweetest thou of all things bitter, love.

The tadpole poet will never grow into anything bigger than a frog; not though in that stage of development he should puff and blow himself till he bursts with windy adulation at the heels of the laureled ox.

The more congenial page of some tenth-rate poeticule worn out with failure after failure and now squat in his hole like the tailless fox, he is curled up to snarl and whimper beneath the inaccessible vine of song.

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.

A blatant Bassarid of Boston, a rampant Maenad of Massachusetts.

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 …

Glory to Man in the highest! for Man is the master of things.

But God, if a God there be, is the substance of men which is man.

O slain and spent and sacrificed People, the grey-grown speechless Christ.

Even love, the beloved Republic, that feeds upon freedom and lives.

Come life, come death, not a word be said; Should I lose you living, and vex you dead? I never shall tell you on earth; and in heaven, If I cry to you then, will you hear or know?

These were a part of the playing I heard Once, ere my love and my heart were at strife; Love that sings and hath wings as a bird, Balm of the wound and heft of the knife.

The pulse of war and passion of wonder, The heavens that murmur, the sounds that shine, The stars that sing and the loves that thunder, The music burning at heart like wine, An armed archangel whose hands raise up All senses mixed in the …

Will you lift up your eyes between sadness and bliss, Meet mine, and see where the great love is, And tremble and turn and be changed? Content you; The gate is strait; I shall not be there.

At the door of life, by the gate of breath, There are worse things waiting for men than death; Death could not sever my soul and you, As these have severed your soul from me.

There will no man do for your sake, I think, What I would have done for the least word said. I had wrung life dry for your lips to drink, Broken it up for your daily bread: Body for body and blood for blood, As the flow of the full sea …

It is not much that a man can save On the sands of life, in the straits of time, Who swims in sight of the great third wave That never a swimmer shall cross or climb.

The loves and hours of the life of a man, They are swift and sad, being born of the sea. Hours that rejoice and regret for a span, Born with a man's breath, mortal as he; Loves that are lost ere they come to birth, Weeds of the wave, …

I have put my days and dreams out of mind, Days that are over, dreams that are done. Though we seek life through, we shall surely find There is none of them clear to us now, not one.

We had stood as the sure stars stand, and moved As the moon moves, loving the world; and seen Grief collapse as a thing disproved, Death consume as a thing unclean.