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diff --git a/18210.txt b/18210.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..be25567 --- /dev/null +++ b/18210.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1836 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Heptalogia, by Algernon Charles Swinburne + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Heptalogia + +Author: Algernon Charles Swinburne + +Release Date: April 19, 2006 [EBook #18210] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HEPTALOGIA *** + + + + +Produced by Paul Murray, Diane Monico, and the Project +Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + +THE HEPTALOGIA + +By Algernon Charles Swinburne + +Taken from THE COLLECTED POETICAL WORKS +OF ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE, VOL. V + + + + +SWINBURNE'S POETICAL WORKS + + +I. POEMS AND BALLADS (First Series). + +II. SONGS BEFORE SUNRISE, and SONGS OF TWO NATIONS. + +III. POEMS AND BALLADS (Second and Third Series), and SONGS OF THE + SPRINGTIDES. + +IV. TRISTRAM OF LYONESSE, THE TALE OF BALEN, ATALANTA IN CALYDON, + ERECHTHEUS. + +V. STUDIES IN SONG, A CENTURY OF ROUNDELS, SONNETS ON ENGLISH DRAMATIC + POETS, THE HEPTALOGIA, ETC. + +VI. A MIDSUMMER HOLIDAY, ASTROPHEL, A CHANNEL PASSAGE AND OTHER POEMS. + + +LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN + + + + +THE +HEPTALOGIA + +By + +Algernon Charles Swinburne + +1917 + +LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN + + + + +_First printed (Chatto), 1904 +Reprinted 1904, '09, '10, '12 +(Heinemann), 1917_ + +_London: William Heinemann, 1917_ + + * * * * * + + + + +THE HEPTALOGIA + +THE HIGHER PANTHEISM IN A NUTSHELL 373 + +JOHN JONES'S WIFE 375 + +THE POET AND THE WOODLOUSE 396 + +THE PERSON OF THE HOUSE 400 + +LAST WORDS OF A SEVENTH-RATE POET 406 + +SONNET FOR A PICTURE 421 + +NEPHELIDIA 422 + + * * * * * + + + + +SPECIMENS OF MODERN POETS + +THE HEPTALOGIA + +OR + +THE SEVEN AGAINST SENSE + +A CAP WITH SEVEN BELLS + + + + +THE HIGHER PANTHEISM +IN A NUTSHELL + + +One, who is not, we see: but one, whom we see not, is: +Surely this is not that: but that is assuredly this. + +What, and wherefore, and whence? for under is over and under: +If thunder could be without lightning, lightning could be without thunder. + +Doubt is faith in the main: but faith, on the whole, is doubt: +We cannot believe by proof: but could we believe without? + +Why, and whither, and how? for barley and rye are not clover: +Neither are straight lines curves: yet over is under and over. + +Two and two may be four: but four and four are not eight: +Fate and God may be twain: but God is the same thing as fate. + +Ask a man what he thinks, and get from a man what he feels: +God, once caught in the fact, shows you a fair pair of heels. + +Body and spirit are twins: God only knows which is which: +The soul squats down in the flesh, like a tinker drunk in a ditch. + +More is the whole than a part: but half is more than the whole: +Clearly, the soul is the body: but is not the body the soul? + +One and two are not one: but one and nothing is two: +Truth can hardly be false, if falsehood cannot be true. + +Once the mastodon was: pterodactyls were common as cocks: +Then the mammoth was God: now is He a prize ox. + +Parallels all things are: yet many of these are askew: +You are certainly I: but certainly I am not you. + +Springs the rock from the plain, shoots the stream from the rock: +Cocks exist for the hen: but hens exist for the cock. + +God, whom we see not, is: and God, who is not, we see: +Fiddle, we know, is diddle: and diddle, we take it, is dee. + + * * * * * + + + + +JOHN JONES'S WIFE + + +I + +AT THE PIANO + + +I + +Love me and leave me; what love bids retrieve me? can June's fist + grasp May? +Leave me and love me; hopes eyed once above me like spring's sprouts + decay; +Fall as the snow falls, when summer leaves grow false--cards packed + for storm's play! + + +II + +Nay, say Decay's self be but last May's elf, wing shifted, eye sheathed-- +Changeling in April's crib rocked, who lets 'scape rills locked fast + since frost breathed-- +Skin cast (think!) adder-like, now bloom bursts bladder-like,--bloom + frost bequeathed? + + +III + +Ah, how can fear sit and hear as love hears it grief's heart's cracked + grate's screech? +Chance lets the gate sway that opens on hate's way and shews on shame's + beach +Crouched like an imp sly change watch sweet love's shrimps lie, a + toothful in each. + +IV + +Time feels his tooth slip on husks wet from Truth's lip, which drops + them and grins-- +Shells where no throb stirs of life left in lobsters since joy thrilled + their fins-- +Hues of the prawn's tail or comb that makes dawn stale, so red for our + sins! + + +V + +Years blind and deaf use the soul's joys as refuse, heart's peace as + manure, +Reared whence, next June's rose shall bloom where our moons rose last + year, just as pure: +Moons' ends match roses' ends: men by beasts' noses' ends mete sin's + stink's cure. + + +VI + +Leaves love last year smelt now feel dead love's tears melt--flies + caught in time's mesh! +Salt are the dews in which new time breeds new sin, brews blood and + stews flesh; +Next year may see dead more germs than this weeded and reared them + afresh. + + +VII + +Old times left perish, there's new time to cherish; life just shifts + its tune; +As, when the day dies, earth, half afraid, eyes the growth of the moon; +Love me and save me, take me or waive me; death takes one so soon! + + + + +II + +BY THE CLIFF + + +I + +Is it daytime (guess), + You that feed my soul + To excess +With that light in those eyes + And those curls drawn like a scroll +In that round grave guise? + No or yes? + + +II + +Oh, the end, I'd say! + Such a foolish thing + (Pure girls' play!) +As a mere mute heart, + Was it worth a kiss, a ring, +This? for two must part-- + Not to-day. + + +III + +Look, the whole sand crawls, + Hums, a heaving hive, + Scrapes and scrawls-- +Such a buzz and burst! + Here just one thing's not alive, +One that was at first-- + But life palls. + + +IV + +Yes, my heart, I know, + Just my heart's stone dead-- + Yes, just so. +Sick with heat, those worms + Drop down scorched and overfed-- +No more need of germs! + Let them go. + + +V + +Yes, but you now, look, + You, the rouged stage female + With a crook, +Chalked Arcadian sham, + You that made my soul's sleep's dream ail-- +Your soul fit to damn? + Shut the book. + + + + +III + +ON THE SANDS + + +I + +There was nothing at all in the case (conceive) + But love; being love, it was not (understand) +Such a thing as the years let fall (believe) + Like the rope's coil dropt from a fisherman's hand +When the boat's hauled up--"by your leave!" + + +II + +So--well! How that crab writhes--leg after leg + Drawn, as a worm draws ring upon ring +Gradually, not gladly! Chicken or egg, + Is it more than the ransom (say) of a king +(Take my meaning at least) that I beg? + + +III + +Not so! You were ready to learn, I think, + What the world said! "He loves you too well (suppose) +For such leanings! These poets, their love's mere ink-- + Like a flower, their flame flashes--a rosebud, blows-- +Then it all drops down at a wink! + + +IV + +"Ah, the instance! A curl of a blossomless vine + The vinedresser passing it sickens to see +And mutters 'Much hope (under God) of His wine + From the branch and the bark of a barren tree +Spring reared not, and winter lets pine-- + + +V + +"'His wine that should glorify (saith He) the cup + That a man beholding (not tasting) might say +"Pour out life at a draught, drain it dry, drink it up, + Give this one thing, and huddle the rest away-- +Save the bitch, and be hanged to the pup!" + + +VI + +"'Let it rot then!' which saying, he leaves it--we'll guess, + Feels (if the sap move at all) thus much-- +Yearns, and would blossom, would quicken no less, + Bud at an eye's glance, flower at a touch-- +'Die, perhaps, would you not, for her?'--'Yes!' + + +VII + +"Note the hitch there! That's piteous--so much being done, + (He'll think some day, your lover) so little to do! +Such infinite days to wear out, once begun! + Since the hand its glove holds, and the footsole its shoe-- +Overhead too there's always the sun!" + + +VIII + +Oh, no doubt they had said so, your friends--been profuse + Of good counsel, wise hints--"where the trap lurks, walk warily-- +Squeeze the fruit to the core ere you count on the juice! + For the graft may fail, shift, wax, change colour, wane, vary, lie--" +You were cautious, God knows--to what use? + + +IX + +This crab's wiser, it strikes me--no twist but implies life-- + Not a curl but's so fit you could find none fitter-- +For the brute from its brutehood looks up thus and eyes life-- + Stoop your soul down and listen, you'll hear it twitter, +Laughing lightly,--my crab's life's the wise life! + + +X + +Those who've read S. T. Coleridge remember how Sammy sighs + To his pensive (I think he says) Sara--"most soothing-sweet"-- +Crab's bulk's less (look!) than man's--yet (quoth Cancer) I am my size, + And my bulk's girth contents me! Man's maw (see?) craves two things-- + wheat +And flesh likewise--man's gluttonous--damn his eyes! + + +XI + +Crab's content with crab's provender: crab's love, if soothing, + Is no sweeter than pincers are soft--and a new sickle +Cuts no sharper than crab's claws nip, keen as boar's toothing! + Yet crab's love's no less fervent than bard's, if less musical-- +'Tis a new thing I'd lilt--but a true thing. + + +XII + +Old songs tell us, of all drinks for Englishmen fighting, ale's + Out and out best: salt water contents crab, it seems to me, +Though pugnacious as sailors, and skilled to steer right in gales + That craze pilots, if slow to sing--"Sleep'st thou? thou dream'st + o' me!" +In such love-strains as mine--or a nightingale's. + + +XIII + +Ah, now, look you--tail foremost, the beast sets seaward-- + The sea draws it, sand sucks it--he's wise, my crab! +From the napkin out jumps his one talent--good steward, + Just judge! So a man shirks the smile or the stab, +And sets his sail duly to leeward! + + +XIV + +Trust me? Hardly! I bid you not lean (remark) + On my spirit, your spirit--my flesh, your flesh-- +Hold my hand, and tread safe through the horrible dark-- + Quench my soul as with sprinklings of snow, then refresh +With some blast of new bellows the spark! + + +XV + +By no means! This were easy (men tell me) to say-- + "Give her all, throw your chance up, fall back on her heart!" +(Say my friends) "she must change! after night follows day--" + No such fool! I am safe set in hell, for my part-- +So let heaven do the worst now he may! + + +XVI + +What they bid me? Well, this, nothing more--"Tell her this-- + 'You are mine, I yours, though the whole world fail-- +Though things are not, I know there is one thing which is-- + Though the oars break, there's hope for us yet--hoist the sail! +Oh, your heart! what's the heart? but your kiss!' + + +XVII + +"Then she breaks, she drops down, she lies flat at your feet-- + Take her then!" Well, I knew it--what fools are men! +Take the bee by her horns, will your honey prove sweet? + Sweet is grass--will you pasture your cows in a fen? +Oh, if contraries could but once meet! + + +XVIII + +Love you call it? Some twitch in the moon's face (observe), + Wet blink of her eyelid, tear dropt about dewfall, +Cheek flushed or obscured--does it make the sky swerve? + Fetch the test, work the question to rags, bring to proof all-- +Find what souls want and bodies deserve! + + +XIX + +Ah, we know you! Your soul works to infinite ends, + Frets, uses life up for death's sake, takes pains, +Flings down love's self--"but you, bear me witness, my friends! + Have I lost spring? count up (see) the winter's fresh gains! +Is the shrub spoilt? the pine's hair impends!" + + +XX + +What, you'd say--"Mark how God works! Years crowd, time wears thin, + Earth keeps good yet, the sun goes on, stars hold their own, +And you'll change, climb past sight of the world, shift your skin, + Never heeding how life moans--'more flesh now, less bone!' +For that cheek's worn waste outline (death's grin) + + +XXI + +"Pleads with time still--'what good if I lose this? but see--'" + (There's the crab gone!) "'I said, "Though earth sinks,"'" (you perceive? +Ah, true, back there!) your soul now--"'"yet some vein might be + (Could one find it alive in the heart's core's pulse, cleave +Through the life-springs where "you" melts in "me")-- + + +XXII + +"'"Some true vein of the absolute soul, which survives + All that flesh runs to waste through"--and lo, this fails! +Here's death close on us! One life? a million of lives! + Why choose one sail to watch of these infinite sails? +Time's a tennis-play? thank you, no, fives! + + +XXIII + +"'Stop life's ball then!' Such folly! melt earth down for that, + Till the pure ore eludes you and leaves you raw scoriae? +Pish, the vein's wrong!" But you, friends--come, what were you at + When God spat you out suddenly? what was the story He +Cut short thus, the growth He laid flat? + + +XXIV + +Wait! the crab's twice alive, mark! Oh, worthy, your soul, + Of strange ends, great results, novel labours! Take note, +I reject this for one! (ay, now, straight to the hole! + Safe in sand there--your skirts smooth out all as they float!) +I, shirk drinking through flaws in the bowl? + + +XXV + +Or suppose now that rock's cleft--grim, scored to the quick, + As a man's face kept fighting all life through gets scored, +Mossed and marked with grey purulent leprosies, sick, + Flat and foul as man's life here (be swift with your sword-- +Cut the soul out, stuck fast where thorns prick!) + + +XXVI + +--Say it let the rock's heart out, its meaning, the thing + All was made for, devised, ruled out gradually, planned-- +Ah, that sea-shell, perhaps--since it lies, such a ring + Of pure colour, a cup full of sunbeams, to stand +(Say, in Lent) at the priest's hand--(no king!) + + +XXVII + +Blame the cleft then? Praise rather! So--just a chance gone! + Had you said--"Save the seed and secure souls in flower"-- +Ah, how time laughs, years palpitate, pro grapples con, + Till one day you shrug shoulders--"Well, gone, the good hour!" +Till one night--"Is God off now? or on?" + + + + +IV + +UP THE SPOUT + + +I + +Hi! Just you drop that! Stop, I say! + Shirk work, think slink off, twist friend's wrist? +Where that spined sand's lined band's the bay-- + Lined blind with true sea's blue, as due-- +Promising--not to pay? + + +II + +For the sea's debt leaves wet the sand; + Burst worst fate's weights in one burst gun? +A man's own yacht, blown--What? off land? + Tack back, or veer round here, then--queer! +Reef points, though--understand? + + +III + +I'm blest if I do. Sigh? be blowed! + Love's doves make break life's ropes, eh? Tropes! +Faith's brig, baulked, sides caulked, rides at road; + Hope's gropes befogged, storm-dogged and bogged-- +Clogged, water-logged, her load! + + +IV + +Stowed, by Jove, right and tight, away! + No show now how best plough sea's brow, +Wrinkling--breeze quick, tease thick, ere day, + Clear sheer wave's sheen of green, I mean, +With twinkling wrinkles--eh? + + +V + +Sea sprinkles winkles, tinkles light + Shells' bells--boy's joys that hap to snap! +It's just sea's fun, breeze done, to spite + God's rods that scourge her surge, I'd urge-- +Not proper, is it--quite? + + +VI + +See, fore and aft, life's craft undone! + Crank plank, split spritsail--mark, sea's lark! +That grey cold sea's old sprees, begun + When men lay dark i' the ark, no spark, +All water--just God's fun! + + +VII + +Not bright, at best, his jest to these + Seemed--screamed, shrieked, wreaked on kin for sin! +When for mirth's yell earth's knell seemed please + Some dumb new grim great whim in him +Made Jews take chalk for cheese. + + +VIII + +Could God's rods bruise God's Jews? Their jowls + Bobbed, sobbed, gaped, aped the plaice in face: +None heard, 'tis odds, his--God's--folk's howls. + Now, how must I apply, to try +This hookiest-beaked of owls? + + +IX + +Well, I suppose God knows--I don't. + Time's crimes mark dark men's types, in stripes +Broad as fen's lands men's hands were wont + Leave grieve unploughed, though proud and loud +With birds' words--No! he won't! + + +X + +One never should think good impossible. + Eh? say I'd hide this Jew's oil's cruse-- +His shop might hold bright gold, engrossible + By spy--spring's air takes there no care +To wave the heath-flower's glossy bell! + + +XI + +But gold bells chime in time there, coined-- + Gold! Old Sphinx winks there--"Read my screed!" +Doctrine Jews learn, use, burn for, joined + (Through new craft's stealth) with health and wealth-- +At once all three purloined! + + +XII + +I rose with dawn, to pawn, no doubt, + (Miss this chance, glance untried aside?) +John's shirt, my--no! Ay, so--the lout! + Let yet the door gape, store on floor +And not a soul about? + + +XIII + +Such men lay traps, perhaps--and I'm + Weak--meek--mild--child of woe, you know! +But theft, I doubt, my lout calls crime. + Shrink? Think! Love's dawn in pawn--you spawn +Of Jewry! Just in time! + + + + +V + +OFF THE PIER + + +I + +One last glance at these sands and stones! + Time goes past men, and lives to his liking, +Steals, and ruins, and sometimes atones. + Why should he be king, though, and why not I king? +There now, that wind, like a swarm of sick drones! + + +II + +Is it heaven or mere earth (come!) that moves so and moans? + Oh, I knew, when you loved me, my soul was in flowerage-- +Now the frost comes; from prime, though, I watched through to nones, + Read love's litanies over--his age was not our age! +No more flutes in this world for me now, dear! trombones. + + +III + +All that youth once denied and made mouths at, age owns. + Facts put fangs out and bite us; life stings and grows viperous; +And time's fugues are a hubbub of meaningless tones. + Once we followed the piper; now why not the piper us? +Love, grown grey, plays mere solos; we want antiphones. + + +IV + +And we sharpen our wits up with passions for hones, + Melt down loadstars for magnets, use women for whetstones, +Learn to bear with dead calms by remembering cyclones, + Snap strings short with sharp thumbnails, till silence begets tones, +Burn our souls out, shift spirits, turn skins and change zones; + + +V + +Then the heart, when all's done with, wakes, whimpers, intones + Some lost fragment of tune it thought sweet ere it grew sick; +(Is it life that disclaims this, or death that disowns?) + Mere dead metal, scrawled bars--ah, one touch, you make music! +Love's worth saving, youth doubts, but experience depones. + + +VI + +In the darkness (right Dickens) of Tom-All-Alone's + Or the Morgue out in Paris, where tragedy centuples +Life's effects by Death's algebra, Shakespeare (Malone's) + Might have said sleep was murdered--new scholiasts have sent you pills +To purge text of him! Bread? give me--Scottice--scones! + + +VII + +Think, what use, when youth's saddle galls bay's back or roan's, + To seek chords on love's keys to strike, other than his chords? +There's an error joy winks at and grief half condones, + Or life's counterpoint grates the C major of discords-- +'Tis man's choice 'twixt sluts rose-crowned and queens age dethrones. + + +VIII + +I for instance might groan as a bag-pipe groans, + Give the flesh of my heart for sharp sorrows to flagellate, +Grief might grind my cheeks down, age make sticks of my bones, + (Though a queen drowned in tears must be worth more than Madge elate)[1] +Rose might turn burdock, and pine-apples cones; + + +IX + +My skin might change to a pitiful crone's, + My lips to a lizard's, my hair to weed, +My features, in fact, to a series of loans; + Thus much is conceded; now, you, concede +You would hardly salute me by choice, John Jones? + +[Footnote 1: First edition:-- +And my face bear his brand--mine, that once bore Love's badge elate!] + + * * * * * + + + + +THE POET AND THE WOODLOUSE + + +Said a poet to a woodlouse--"Thou art certainly my brother; + I discern in thee the markings of the fingers of the Whole; +And I recognize, in spite of all the terrene smut and smother, + In the colours shaded off thee, the suggestions of a soul. + +"Yea," the poet said, "I smell thee by some passive divination, + I am satisfied with insight of the measure of thine house; +What had happened I conjecture, in a blank and rhythmic passion, + Had the aeons thought of making thee a man, and me a louse. + +"The broad lives of upper planets, their absorption and digestion, + Food and famine, health and sickness, I can scrutinize and test; +Through a shiver of the senses comes a resonance of question, + And by proof of balanced answer I decide that I am best." + +"Man, the fleshly marvel, alway feels a certain kind of awe stick + To the skirts of contemplation, cramped with nympholeptic weight: +Feels his faint sense charred and branded by the touch of solar caustic, + On the forehead of his spirit feels the footprint of a Fate." + +"Notwithstanding which, O poet," spake the woodlouse, very blandly, + "I am likewise the created,--I the equipoise of thee; +I the particle, the atom, I behold on either hand lie + The inane of measured ages that were embryos of me. + +"I am fed with intimations, I am clothed with consequences, + And the air I breathe is coloured with apocalyptic blush: +Ripest-budded odours blossom out of dim chaotic stenches, + And the Soul plants spirit-lilies in sick leagues of human slush. + +"I am thrilled half cosmically through by cryptophantic surgings, + Till the rhythmic hills roar silent through a spongious kind of blee: +And earth's soul yawns disembowelled of her pancreatic organs, + Like a madrepore if mesmerized, in rapt catalepsy. + +"And I sacrifice, a Levite--and I palpitate, a poet;-- + Can I close dead ears against the rush and resonance of things? +Symbols in me breathe and flicker up the heights of the heroic; + Earth's worst spawn, you said, and cursed me? look! approve me! I + have wings. + +"Ah, men's poets! men's conventions crust you round and swathe you + mist-like, + And the world's wheels grind your spirits down the dust ye overtrod: +We stand sinlessly stark-naked in effulgence of the Christlight, + And our polecat chokes not cherubs; and our skunk smells sweet to God. + +"For He grasps the pale Created by some thousand vital handles, + Till a Godshine, bluely winnowed through the sieve of thunderstorms, +Shimmers up the non-existent round the churning feet of angels; + And the atoms of that glory may be seraphs, being worms. + +"Friends, your nature underlies us and your pulses overplay us; + Ye, with social sores unbandaged, can ye sing right and steer wrong? +For the transient cosmic, rooted in imperishable chaos, + Must be kneaded into drastics as material for a song. + +"Eyes once purged from homebred vapours through humanitarian passion + See that monochrome a despot through a democratic prism; +Hands that rip the soul up, reeking from divine evisceration, + Not with priestlike oil anoint him, but a stronger-smelling chrism. + +"Pass, O poet, retransfigured! God, the psychometric rhapsode, + Fills with fiery rhythms the silence, stings the dark with stars + that blink; +All eternities hang round him like an old man's clothes collapsed, + While he makes his mundane music--AND HE WILL NOT STOP, I THINK." + + * * * * * + + + + +THE PERSON OF THE HOUSE + +IDYL CCCLXVI + +THE ACCOMPANIMENTS + +1. THE MONTHLY NURSE +2. THE CAUDLE +3. THE SENTENCES + +THE KID + + +1. THE MONTHLY NURSE + +The sickly airs had died of damp; + Through huddling leaves the holy chime +Flagged; I, expecting Mrs. Gamp, + Thought--"Will the woman come in time?" +Upstairs I knew the matron bed + Held her whose name confirms all joy +To me; and tremblingly I said, + "Ah! will it be a girl or boy?" +And, soothed, my fluttering doubts began + To sift the pleasantness of things; +Developing the unshapen man, + An eagle baffled of his wings; +Considering, next, how fair the state + And large the license that sublimes +A nineteenth-century female fate-- + Sweet cause that thralls my liberal rhymes! +And Chastities and colder Shames, + Decorums mute and marvellous, +And fair Behaviour that reclaims + All fancies grown erroneous, +Moved round me musing, till my choice + Faltered. A female in a wig +Stood by me, and a drouthy voice + Announced her--Mrs. Betsy Prig. + + +2. THE CAUDLE + +Sweet Love that sways the reeling years, + The crown and chief of certitudes, +For whose calm eyes and modest ears + Time writes the rule and text of prudes-- +That, surpliced, stoops a nuptial head, + Nor chooses to live blindly free, +But, with all pulses quieted, + Plays tunes of domesticity-- +That Love I sing of and have sung + And mean to sing till Death yawn sheer, +He rules the music of my tongue, + Stills it or quickens, there or here. +I say but this: as we went up + I heard the Monthly give a sniff +And "_if_ the big dog makes the pup--" + She murmured--then repeated "if!" +The caudle on a slab was placed; + She snuffed it, snorting loud and long; +I fled--I would not stop to taste-- + And dreamed all night of things gone wrong. + + +3. THE SENTENCES + + +I + +Abortive Love is half a sin; + But Love's abortions dearer far +Than wheels without an axle-pin + Or life without a married star. + + +II + +My rules are hard to understand + For him whom sensual rules depress; +A bandbox in a midwife's hand + May hold a costlier bridal dress. + + +III + +"I like her not; in fact I loathe; + Bugs hath she brought from London beds." +Friend! wouldst thou rather bear their growth + Or have a baby with two heads? + + + + +IDYL CCCLXVI + +THE KID + +My spirit, in the doorway's pause, + Fluttered with fancies in my breast; +Obsequious to all decent laws, + I felt exceedingly distressed. +I knew it rude to enter there + With Mrs. V. in such a state; +And, 'neath a magisterial air, + Felt actually indelicate. +I knew the nurse began to grin; + I turned to greet my Love. Said she-- +"Confound your modesty, come in! + --What shall we call the darling, V.?" +(There are so many charming names! + Girls'--Peg, Moll, Doll, Fan, Kate, Blanche, Bab: +Boys'--Mahershahal-hashbaz, James, + Luke, Nick, Dick, Mark, Aminadab.) + +Lo, as the acorn to the oak, + As well-heads to the river's height, +As to the chicken the moist yolk, + As to high noon the day's first white-- +Such is the baby to the man. + There, straddling one red arm and leg, +Lay my last work, in length a span, + Half hatched, and conscious of the egg. +A creditable child, I hoped; + And half a score of joys to be +Through sunny lengths of prospect sloped + Smooth to the bland futurity. +O, fate surpassing other dooms, + O, hope above all wrecks of time! +O, light that fills all vanquished glooms, + O, silent song o'ermastering rhyme! +I covered either little foot, + I drew the strings about its waist; +Pink as the unshell'd inner fruit, + But barely decent, hardly chaste, +Its nudity had startled me; + But when the petticoats were on, +"I know," I said; "its name shall be + Paul Cyril Athanasius John." +"Why," said my wife, "the child's a girl." + My brain swooned, sick with failing sense; +With all perception in a whirl, + How could I tell the difference? +"Nay," smiled the nurse, "the child's a boy." + And all my soul was soothed to hear +That so it was: then startled Joy + Mocked Sorrow with a doubtful tear. +And I was glad as one who sees + For sensual optics things unmeet: +As purity makes passion freeze, + So faith warns science off her beat. +Blessed are they that have not seen, + And yet, not seeing, have believed: +To walk by faith, as preached the Dean, + And not by sight, have I achieved. +Let love, that does not look, believe; + Let knowledge, that believes not, look: +Truth pins her trust on falsehood's sleeve, + While reason blunders by the book. +Then Mrs. Prig addressed me thus; + "Sir, if you'll be advised by me, +You'll leave the blessed babe to us; + It's my belief he wants his tea." + + * * * * * + + + + +LAST WORDS OF A SEVENTH-RATE POET + +Bill, I feel far from quite right--if not further: already the pill +Seems, if I may say so, to bubble inside me. A poet's heart, Bill, +Is a sort of a thing that is made of the tenderest young bloom on a fruit. +You may pass me the mixture at once, if you please--and I'll thank you + to boot +For that poem--and then for the julep. This really is damnable stuff! +(Not the poem, of course.) Do you snivel, old friend? well, it's nasty + enough, +But I think I can stand it--I think so--ay, Bill, and I could were it + worse. +But I'll tell you a thing that I can't and I won't. 'Tis the old, old + curse-- +The gall of the gold-fruited Eden, the lure of the angels that fell. +'Tis the core of the fruit snake-spotted in the hush of the shadows of + hell, +Where a lost man sits with his head drawn down, and a weight on his eyes. +You know what I mean, Bill--the tender and delicate mother of lies, +Woman, the devil's first cousin--no doubt by the female side. +The breath of her mouth still moves in my hair, and I know that she lied, +And I feel her, Bill, sir, inside me--she operates there like a drug. +Were it better to live like a beetle, to wear the cast clothes of a slug, +Be the louse in the locks of the hangman, the mote in the eye of the bat, +Than to live and believe in a woman, who must one day grow aged and fat? +You must see it's preposterous, Bill, sir. And yet, how the thought of + it clings! +I have lived out my time--I have prigged lots of verse--I have kissed + (ah, that stings!) +Lips that swore I had cribbed every line that I wrote on them--cribbed-- + honour bright! +Then I loathed her; but now I forgive her; perhaps after all she was right. +Yet I swear it was shameful--unwomanly, Bill, sir--to say that I fibbed. +Why, the poems were mine, for I bought them in print. Cribbed? of course + they were cribbed. +Yet I wouldn't say, cribbed from the French--Lady Bathsheba thought it + was vulgar-- +But picked up on the banks of the Don, from the lips of a highly + intelligent Bulgar. +I'm aware, Bill, that's out of all metre--I can't help it--I'm none of + your sort +Who set metres, by Jove, above morals--not exactly. They don't go to + Court-- +As I mentioned one night to that cowslip-faced pet, Lady Rahab Redrabbit +(Whom the Marquis calls Drabby for short). Well, I say, if you want a + thing, grab it-- +That's what I did, at least, when I took that _danseuse_ to a swell + _cabaret_, +Where expense was no consideration. A poet, you see, now and then must + be gay. +(I declined to give more, I remember, than fifty centeems to the waiter; +For I asked him if that was enough; and the jackanapes answered-- + _Peut-etre_. +Ah, it isn't in you to draw up a _menu_ such as ours was, though humble: +When I told Lady Shoreditch, she thought it a regular _grand tout + ensemble_.) +She danced the heart out of my body--I can see in the glare of the lights, +I can see her again as I saw her that evening, in spangles and tights. +When I spoke to her first, her eye flashed so, I heard--as I + fancied--the spark whiz +From her eyelid--I said so next day to that jealous old fool of a Marquis. +She reminded me, Bill, of a lovely volcano, whose entrails are lava-- +Or (you know my _penchant_ for original types) of the upas in Java. +In the curve of her sensitive nose was a singular species of dimple, +Where the flush was the mark of an angel's creased kiss--if it wasn't + a pimple. +Now I'm none of your bashful John Bulls who don't know a pilau from a + puggaree +Nor a chili, by George, from a chopstick. So, sir, I marched into her + snuggery, +And proposed a light supper by way of a finish. I treated her, Bill, +To six _entrees_ of ortolans, sprats, maraschino, and oysters. It made + her quite ill. +Of which moment of sickness I took some advantage. I held her like this, +And availed myself, sir, of her sneezing, to shut up her lips with a kiss. +The waiters, I saw, were quite struck; and I felt, I may say, _entre nous_, +Like Don Juan, Lauzun, Almaviva, Lord Byron, and old Richelieu. +(You'll observe, Bill, that rhyme's quite Parisian; a Londoner, sir, + would have cited old Q. +People tell me the French in my verses recalls that of Jeames or John + Thomas: I +Must maintain it's as good as the average accent of British diplomacy.) +These are moments that thrill the whole spirit with spasms that excite + and exalt. +I stood more than the peer of the great Casanova--you know--de Seingalt. +She was worth, sir, I say it without hesitation, two brace of her sisters. +Ah, why should all honey turn rhubarb--all cherries grow onions--all + kisses leave blisters? +Oh, and why should I ask myself questions? I've heard such before--once + or twice. +Ah, I can't understand it--but, O, I imagine it strikes me as nice. +There's a deity shapes us our ends, sir, rough-hew them, my boy, how + we will-- +As I stated myself in a poem I published last year, you know, Bill-- +Where I mentioned that that was the question--to be, or, by Jove, not + to be. +Ah, it's something--you'll think so hereafter--to wait on a poet like me. +Had I written no more than those verses on that Countess I used to + call Pussy-- +Yes, Minette or Manon--and--you'll hardly believe it--she said they + were all out of Musset. +Now I don't say they weren't--but what then? and I don't say they + were--I'll bet pounds against pennies on +The subject--I wish I may never die Laureate, if some of them weren't + out of Tennyson. +And I think--I don't like to be certain, with Death, so to speak, by + me, frowning-- +But I think there were some--say a dozen, perhaps, or a score--out of + Browning. +And--though God knows his poems are not (as all mine are, sir) perfumed + with orris-- +Or at least with patchouli--I wouldn't be sworn there were none out of + Morris. +And it's possible--only the legend of Circe is quite an old yarn--old +As the hills--that I might have been thinking, perhaps, of a poem by Arnold +When I sang how Ulysses--Odysseus I mean--would have yearned to dishevel + her +Bright hair with his kisses, and painted myself at her feet--a Strayed + Reveller. +As for poets who go on a contrary tack to what I go and you go-- +You remember my lyrics _translated_--like "sweet bully Bottom"--from Hugo? +Though I will say it's curious that simply on just that account there + should be +Men so bold as to say that not one of my poems was written by me. +It would stir the political bile or the physical spleen of a drab or a Tory +To hear critics disputing my claim to Empedocles, Maud, and the Laboratory. +Yes, it's singular--nay, I can't think of a parallel (ain't it a high lark? +As that Countess would say)--there are few men believe it was I wrote the + Ode to a Skylark. +And it often has given myself and Lord Albert no end of diversion +To hear fellows maintain to my face it was Wordsworth who wrote the + Excursion, +When they know that whole reams of the verses recur in my authorized works +Here and there, up and down! Why, such readers are infidels--heretics-- + Turks. +And the pitiful critics who think in their paltry presumption to pay me a +Pretty compliment, pairing me off, sir, with Keats--as if _he_ could + write Lamia! +While I never produced a more characteristic and exquisite book, +One that gave me more real satisfaction, than did, on the whole, Lalla + Rookh. +Was it there that I called on all debtors, being pestered myself by a + creditor, (he +Isn't paid yet) to rise, by the proud appellation of bondsmen--hereditary? +Yes--I think so. And yet, on my word, I can't think why I think it was so. +It more probably was in the poem I made a few seasons ago +On that Duchess--her name now? ah, thus one outlives a whole cycle of joys! +Fair supplants black and brown succeeds golden. The poem made rather a + noise. +And indeed I have seen worse verses; but as for the woman, my friend-- +Though his neck had been never so stiff, she'd have made a philosopher + bend. +As the broken heart of a sunset that bleeds pure purple and gold +In the shudder and swoon of the sickness of colour, the agonies old +That engirdle the brows of the day when he sinks with a spasm into rest +And the splash of his kingly blood is dashed on the skirts of the west, +Even such was my own, when I felt how much sharper than any snake's tooth +Was the passion that made me mistake Lady Eve for her niece Lady Ruth. +The whole world, colourless, lapsed. Earth fled from my feet like a dream, +And the whirl of the walls of Space was about me, and moved as a stream +Flowing and ebbing and flowing all night to a weary tune +("Such as that of my verses"? Get out!) in the face of a sick-souled moon. +The keen stars kindled and faded and fled, and the wind in my ears +Was the wail of a poet for failure--you needn't come snivelling tears +And spoiling the mixture, confound you, with dropping your tears into that! +I know I'm pathetic--I must be--and you soft-hearted and fat, +And I'm grateful of course for your kindness--there, don't come hugging + me, now-- +But because a fellow's pathetic, you needn't low like a cow. + + I should like--on my soul, I should like--to remember--but somehow I + can't-- +If the lady whose love has reduced me to this was the niece or the aunt. +But whichever it was, I feel sure, when I published my lays of last year +(You remember their title--The Tramp--only seven-and-sixpence--not dear), +I sent her a copy (perhaps her tears fell on the title-page--yes-- +I should like to imagine she wept)--and the Bride of Bulgaria (MS.) +I forwarded with it. The lyrics, no doubt, she found bitter--and sweet; +But the Bride she rejected, you know, with expressions I will not repeat. +Well--she did no more than all publishers did. Though my prospects were + marred, +I can pity and pardon them. Blindness, mere blindness! And yet it was hard. +For a poet, Bill, is a blossom--a bird--a billow--a breeze-- +A kind of creature that moves among men as a wind among trees. +And a bard who is also the pet of patricians and dowagers doubly can +Express his contempt for canaille in his fables where beasts are + republican. +Yet with all my disdainful forgiveness for men so deficient in _ton_ +I cannot but feel it was cruel--I cannot but think it was wrong. +I with the heat of my heart still burning against all bars +As the fire of the dawn, so to speak, in the blanched blank brows of + the stars-- +I with my tremulous lips made pale by musical breath-- +I with the shade in my eyes that was left by the kisses of Death-- +(For Death came near me in youth, and touched my face with his face, +And put in my lips the songs that belong to a desolate place-- +Desolate truly, my heart and my lips, till her kiss filled them up!) +I with my soul like wine poured out with my flesh for the cup-- +It was hard for me--it was hard--Bill, Bill, you great owl, was it not? +For the day creeps in like a Fate: and I think my grand passion is rot: +And I dreamily seem to perceive, by the light of a life's dream done, +The lotion at six, and the mixture at ten, and the draught before one. + + Yes--I feel rather better. Man's life is a mull, at the best; +And the patent perturbator pills are like bullets of lead in my chest. +When a man's whole spirit is like the lost Pleiad, a blown-out star, +Is there comfort in Holloway, Bill? is there hope of salvation in Parr? +True, most things work to their end--and an end that the shroud overlaps. +Under lace, under silk, under gold, sir, the skirt of a winding-sheet + flaps-- +Which explains, if you think of it, Bill, why I can't, though my soul + thereon broodeth, +Quite make out if I loved Lady Tamar as much as I loved Lady Judith. +Yet her dress was of violet velvet, her hair was hyacinth-hued, +And her ankles--no matter. A face where the music of every mood +Was touched by the tremulous fingers of passionate feeling, and made +Strange melodies, scornful, but sweeter than strings whereon sorrow has + played +To enrapture the hearing of mirth when his garland of blossom and green +Turns to lead on the anguished forehead--"you don't understand what I + mean"? +Well, of course I knew you were stupid--you always were stupid at school-- +Now don't say you weren't--but I'm hanged if I thought you were quite + such a fool! +You don't see the point of all this? I was talking of sickness and death-- +In that poem I made years ago, I said this--"Love, the flower-time + whose breath +Smells sweet through a summer of kisses and perfumes an autumn of tears +Is sadder at root than a winter--its hopes heavy-hearted like fears. +Though I love your Grace more than I love little Letty, the maid of + the mill, +Yet the heat of your lips when I kiss them" (you see we were intimate, + Bill) +"And the beat of the delicate blood in your eyelids of azure and white +Leave the taste of the grave in my mouth and the shadow of death on my + sight. +Fill the cup--twine the chaplet--come into the garden--get out of the + house-- +Drink to _me_ with your eyes--there's a banquet behind, where worms + only carouse! +As I said to sweet Katie, who lived by the brook on the land Philip + farmed-- +Worms shall graze where my kisses found pasture!" The Duchess, I may + say, was charmed. +It was read to the Duke, and he cried like a child. If you'll give me + a pill, +I'll go on till past midnight. That poem was said to be--Somebody's, Bill. +But you see you can always be sure of my hand as the mother that bore me +By the fact that I never write verse which has never been written + before me. +Other poets--I blush for them, Bill--may adore and repudiate in turn a +Libitina, perhaps, or Pandemos; my Venus, you know, is Laverna. +Nay, that epic of mine which begins from foundations the Bible is + built on-- +"Of man's _first_ disobedience"--I've heard it attributed, dammy, to + Milton. +Well, it's lucky for them that it's not worth my while, as I may say, + to break spears +With the hirelings, forsooth, of the press who assert that Othello was + Shakespeare's. +When he that can run, sir, may read--if he borrows the book, or goes + on tick-- +In my poems the bit that describes how the Hellespont joins the Propontic. +There are men, I believe, who will tell you that Gray wrote the whole + of The Bard-- +Or that I didn't write half the Elegy, Bill, in a Country Churchyard. +When you know that my poem, The Poet, begins--"Ruin seize thee!" and ends +With recapitulations of horrors the poet invokes on his friends. +And I'll swear, if you look at the dirge on my relatives under the turf, + you +Will perceive it winds up with some lines on myself--and begins with + the curfew. +Now you'll grant it's more probable, Bill--as a man of the world, if + you please-- +That all these should have prigged from myself than that I should have + prigged from all these. +I could cry when I think of it, friend, if such tears would comport + with my dignity, +That the author of Christabel ever should smart from such vulgar malignity. +(You remember perhaps that was one of the first little things that I + carolled +After finishing Marmion, the Princess, the Song of the Shirt, and + Childe Harold.) +Oh, doubtless it always has been so--Ah, doubtless it always will be-- +There are men who would say that myself is a different person from me. +Better the porridge of patience a poor man snuffs in his plate +Than the water of poisonous laurels distilled by the fingers of hate. + + 'Tis a dark-purple sort of a moonlighted kind of a midnight, I know; +You remember those verses I wrote on Irene, from Edgar A. Poe? +It was Lady Aholibah Levison, daughter of old Lord St. Giles, +Who inspired those delectable strains, and rewarded her bard with her + smiles. +There are tasters who've sipped of Castalia, who don't look on _my_ + brew as _the_ brew: +There are fools who can't think why the names of my heroines of title + should always be Hebrew. +'Twas my comrade, Sir Alister Knox, said, "Noo, dinna ye fash wi' + Apollo, mon; +Gang to Jewry for wives and for concubines, lad--look at David and + Solomon. +And it gives an erotico-scriptural twang," said that high-born young + man, "--tickles +The lug" (he meant ear) "of the reader--to throw in a touch of the + Canticles." +So I versified half of The Preacher--it took me a week, working slowly. + Bah! +You don't half know the sex, Bill--they like it. And what if her name + was Aholibah? +I recited her charms, in conjunction with those of a girl at the _cafe_, +In a poem I published in collaboration with Templeton (Taffy). +There are prudes in a world full of envy--and some of them thought it + too strong +To compare an earl's daughter by name with a girl at a French _restaurant_. +I regarded her, though, with the chivalrous eyes of a knight-errant on + quest; +I may say I don't know that I ever felt prouder, old friend, of a conquest. +And when _I_'ve been made happy, I never have cared a brass farthing who + knew it; I +Thank my stars I'm as free from mock-modesty, friend, as from vulgar + fatuity. +I can't say if my spirit retains--for the subject appears to me misty--any + tie +To such associations as Poesy weaves round the records of Christianity. +There are bards--I may be one myself--who delight in their skill to unlock + a lip's +Rosy secrets by kisses and whispers of texts from the charming Apocalypse. +It was thus that I won, by such biblical pills of poetical manna, +From two elders--Sir Seth and Lord Isaac--the liking of Lady Susanna. +But I left her--a woman to me is no more than a match, sir, at tennis is-- +When I heard she'd gone off with my valet, and burnt my rhymed version + of Genesis. +You may see by my shortness of speech that my time's almost up: I perceive +That my new-fangled brevity strikes you: but don't--though the public + will--grieve. +As it's sometimes my whim to be vulgar, it's sometimes my whim to be brief; +As when once I observed, after Heine, that "she was a harlot, and I" (which + is true) "was a thief." +(Though you hardly should cite this particular line, by the way, as an + instance of absolute brevity: +I'm aware, man, of that; so you needn't disgrace yourself, sir, by such + grossly mistimed and impertinent levity.) +I don't like to break off, any more than you wish me to stop: but my + fate is +Not to vent half a million such rhymes without blockheads exclaiming-- + + JAM SATIS. + + +_Specimen from the speaker's original poems._ + +Come into the orchard, Anne, + For the dark owl, Night, has fled, +And Phosphor slumbers, as well as he can + With a daffodil sky for a bed: +And the musk of the roses perplexes a man, + And the pimpernel muddles his head. + + * * * * * + + + + +SONNET FOR A PICTURE + + +That nose is out of drawing. With a gasp, + She pants upon the passionate lips that ache + With the red drain of her own mouth, and make +A monochord of colour. Like an asp, +One lithe lock wriggles in his rutilant grasp. + Her bosom is an oven of myrrh, to bake + Love's white warm shewbread to a browner cake. +The lock his fingers clench has burst its hasp. +The legs are absolutely abominable. + Ah! what keen overgust of wild-eyed woes + Flags in that bosom, flushes in that nose? +Nay! Death sets riddles for desire to spell, + Responsive. What red hem earth's passion sews, +But may be ravenously unripped in hell? + + * * * * * + + + + +NEPHELIDIA + + +From the depth of the dreamy decline of the dawn through a notable nimbus + of nebulous noonshine, + Pallid and pink as the palm of the flag-flower that flickers with fear + of the flies as they float, +Are they looks of our lovers that lustrously lean from a marvel of mystic + miraculous moonshine, + These that we feel in the blood of our blushes that thicken and threaten + with throbs through the throat? +Thicken and thrill as a theatre thronged at appeal of an actor's appalled + agitation, + Fainter with fear of the fires of the future than pale with the promise + of pride in the past; +Flushed with the famishing fullness of fever that reddens with radiance + of rathe recreation, + Gaunt as the ghastliest of glimpses that gleam through the gloom of + the gloaming when ghosts go aghast? +Nay, for the nick of the tick of the time is a tremulous touch on the + temples of terror, + Strained as the sinews yet strenuous with strife of the dead who is + dumb as the dust-heaps of death: +Surely no soul is it, sweet as the spasm of erotic emotional exquisite + error, + Bathed in the balms of beatified bliss, beatific itself by beatitude's + breath. +Surely no spirit or sense of a soul that was soft to the spirit and soul + of our senses + Sweetens the stress of suspiring suspicion that sobs in the semblance + and sound of a sigh; +Only this oracle opens Olympian, in mystical moods and triangular tenses-- + "Life is the lust of a lamp for the light that is dark till the dawn + of the day when we die." +Mild is the mirk and monotonous music of memory, melodiously mute as + it may be, + While the hope in the heart of a hero is bruised by the breach of + men's rapiers, resigned to the rod; +Made meek as a mother whose bosom-beats bound with the bliss-bringing + bulk of a balm-breathing baby, + As they grope through the grave-yard of creeds, under skies growing + green at a groan for the grimness of God. +Blank is the book of his bounty beholden of old, and its binding is + blacker than bluer: + Out of blue into black is the scheme of the skies, and their dews + are the wine of the bloodshed of things; +Till the darkling desire of delight shall be free as a fawn that is + freed from the fangs that pursue her, + Till the heart-beats of hell shall be hushed by a hymn from the hunt + that has harried the kennel of kings. + + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Heptalogia, by Algernon Charles Swinburne + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HEPTALOGIA *** + +***** This file should be named 18210.txt or 18210.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/1/8/2/1/18210/ + +Produced by Paul Murray, Diane Monico, and the Project +Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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