Quotes from Algernon Charles Swinburne

O all fair lovers about the world, There is none of you, none, that shall comfort me. My thoughts are as dead things, wrecked and whirled Round and round in a gulf of the sea; And still, through the sound and the straining stream, Through the coil and chafe, they gleam in a dream, The bright fine lips so cruelly curled, And strange swift eyes where the soul sits free.

Behold, when thy face is made bare, he that loved thee shall hate; Thy face shall be no more fair at the fall of thy fate For thy life shall fall as a leaf and be shed as the rain; And the veil of thine head shall be grief, and the crown shall be pain.

Save his own soul he hath no star.

But now, you are twain, you are cloven apart, Flesh of his flesh, but heart of my heart; And deep in one is the bitter root, And sweet for one is the lifelong flower.

If love were what the rose is, And I were like the leaf, Our lives would grow together, In sad or singing weather, Blown fields or flowerful closes, Green pleasure or grey grief; If love were what the rose is, And I were like the leaf.

All the world is bitter as a tear

I am that which unloves me and loves; I am stricken, and I am the blow.

I wish we were dead together to-day, Lost sight of, hidden away out of sight, Clasped and clothed in the cloven clay, Out of the world's way, out of the light, Out of the ages of worldly weather, Forgotten of all men altogether, As the world's first dead, taken wholly away, Made one with death, filled full of the night.

To sleep, to swim, and to dream, for ever.

For the crown of our life as it closes Is darkness, the fruit there of dust; No thorns go as deep as the rose's, And love is more cruel than lust. Time turns the old days to derision, Our loves into corpses or wives; And marriage and death and division Make barren our lives.

A man is not an orange. You can't eat the fruit and throw the peel away.

We are not sure of sorrow; and joy was never sure; Today will die tomorrow; Time stoops to no man's lure.

So Tristram looked on Iseult face to face and knew not, and she knew not. The last time -- The last that should be told in any rhyme Heard anywhere on mouths of singing men That ever should sing praise of them again; The last hour of their hurtless hearts at rest, The last that peace should touch them, breast to breast, The last that sorrow far from them should sit, This last was with them, and they knew not it.

For no man under the sky lives twice

You have a face that suits a woman For her soul's screen-- The sort of beauty that's called human In hell, Faustine.

For the worst is this after all; if they knew me, not a soul upon earth would pity me.

Ah, had I not taken my life up and given All that life gives and the years let go, The wind and honey, the balm and leaven, The dreams reared high and the hopes brought low? 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?

Ah God, that love were as a flower or flame, That life were as the naming of a name, That death were not more pitiful than desire, That these things were not one thing and the same!

For the crown of our life as it closes Is darkness, the fruit thereof dust; No thorns go as deep as a rose's, And love is more cruel than lust.

We are not sure of sorrow, And joy was never sure; To-day will die to-morrow; Time stoops to no man's lure; And love, grown faint and fretful, With lips but half regretful Sighs, and with eyes forgetful Weeps that no loves endure. From too much love of living, From hope and fear set free, We thank with brief thanksgiving Whatever gods may be That no life lives for ever; That dead men rise up never; That even the weariest river Winds somewhere safe to sea.

Save his own soul's light overhead, None leads him, and none ever led, Across birth's hidden harbour-bar, Past youth where shoreward shallows are, Through age that drives on toward the red Vast void of sunset hailed from far, To the equal waters of the dead; Save his own soul he hath no star, And sinks, except his own soul guide, Helmless in middle turn of tide.

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

You came, and the sun came after, And the green grew golden above; And the flag-flowers lightened with laughter, And the meadowsweet shook with love

She loved the games men played with death, Where death must win