Algernon Charles Swinburne

In the change of years, in the coil of things, In the clamour and rumour of life to be, We, drinking love at the furthest springs, Covered with love as a covering tree, We had grown as gods, as the gods above, Filled from the heart to the …

Though joy be done with and grief be vain, Time shall not sever us wholly in twain; Earth is not spoilt for a single shower; But the rain has ruined the ungrown corn.

I will say no word that a man might say Whose whole life's love goes down in a day; For this could never have been; and never, Though the gods and the years relent, shall be.

There lived a singer in France of old By the tideless dolorous midland sea. In a land of sand and ruin and gold There shone one woman, and none but she.

I shall sleep, and move with the moving ships, Change as the winds change, veer in the tide.

I will go back to the great sweet mother, Mother and lover of men, the sea. I will go down to her, I and no other, Close with her, kiss her and mix her with me.

Change lays not her hand upon truth.

Till life forget and death remember, Till thou remember and I forget.

Swallow, my sister, O sister swallow, How can thine heart be full of the spring? A thousand summers are over and dead. What hast thou found in the spring to follow? What hast thou found in thine heart to sing? What wilt thou do when the …

Those eyes the greenest of things blue The bluest of things grey.

Ah that such sweet things should be fleet, Such fleet things sweet!

Gone deeper than all plummets sound.

O bitterness of things too sweet!

And the best and the worst of this is That neither is most to blame, If you have forgotten my kisses And I have forgotten your name.

I remember the way we parted, The day and the way we met; You hoped we were both broken-hearted And knew we should both forget.

For in the days we know not of Did fate begin Weaving the web of days that wove Your doom.

Pale, beyond porch and portal, Crowned with calm leaves, she stands Who gathers all things mortal With cold immortal hands.

Though one were fair as roses His beauty clouds and closes.

From too much love of living, From hope and fear set free, We thank with brief thanksgiving Whatever gods may be That no man lives forever, That dead men rise up never;

Our way is where God knows And Love knows where: We are in Love's hand to-day.

Marvellous mercies and infinite love.

Ah, yet would God this flesh of mine might be Where air might wash and long leaves cover me; Where tides of grass break into foam of flowers, Or where the wind's feet shine along the sea.

And lo, between the sundawn and the sun His day's work and his night's work are undone: And lo, between the nightfall and the light, He is not, and none knoweth of such an one.

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;