Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III by Algernon Charles Swinburne
page 67 of 74 (90%)
page 67 of 74 (90%)
![]() | ![]() |
|
Burnt-offering of her lure,
Divine and dark and bright and naked, strange With ravenous thirst of life reversed and change, As though the very heaven should shrivel and swell With hunger after hell, 430 Run mad for dear damnation, and desire To feel its light thrilled through with stings of fire. Above a windier sea, [_Ep._ 11. The glory of Ninety-three Fills heaven with blood-red and with rose-red beams That earth beholding grows Herself one burning rose Flagrant and fragrant with strange deeds and dreams, Dreams dyed as love's own flower, and deeds Stained as with love's own life-blood, that for love's sake bleeds. 440 And deeper than all deeps of seas and skies [_Str._ 12. Wherein the shadows are Called sun and moon and star That rapt conjecture metes with mounting eyes, Loud with strange waves and lustrous with new spheres, Shines, masked at once and manifest of years, Shakespeare, a heaven of heavenly eyes beholden; And forward years as backward years grow golden With light of deeds and words And flight of God's fleet birds, 450 Angels of wrath and love and truth and pity; And higher on exiled eyes their natural city Dawns down the depths of vision, more sublime |
|