Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III by Algernon Charles Swinburne
page 48 of 74 (64%)
page 48 of 74 (64%)
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yearned
With desirous delight of his presence and love that beholding him burned. Yea, down through the mighty twin hollows where never the sunlight shall be, Deep sunk under imminent earth, and subdued to the stress of the sea, That feel when the dim week changes by change of their tides in the dark, As the wave sinks under within them, reluctant, removed from its mark, Even there in the terror of twilight in bloom with its blossoms ablush, Did a sense of him touch not the gleam of their flowers with a fierier flush? Though the sun they behold not for ever, yet knew they not over them One Whose soul was the soul of the morning, whose song was the song of the sun? But the secrets inviolate of sunlight in hollows untrodden of day, Shall he dream what are these who beholds not? or he that hath seen, shall he say? For the path is for passage of sea-mews; and he that hath glided and leapt Over sea-grass and sea-rock, alighting as one from a citadel crept That his foemen beleaguer, descending by darkness and stealth, at the last Peers under, and all is as hollow to hellward, agape and aghast. But afloat and afar in the darkness a tremulous colour subsides [_Ant._ 8. From the crimson high crest of the purple-peaked roof to the soft-coloured sides That brighten as ever they widen till downward the level is won Of the soundless and colourless water that knows not the sense of the sun: From the crown of the culminant arch to the floor of the lakelet abloom, One infinite blossom of blossoms innumerable aflush through the gloom. All under the deeps of the darkness are glimmering; all over impends An immeasurable infinite flower of the dark that dilates and descends, That exults and expands in its breathless and blind efflorescence of heart As it broadens and bows to the wave-ward, and breathes not, and hearkens |
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