Swinburne Quotes & Sayings

Love laid his sleepless head
On a thorny rose bed:
And his eyes with tears were red,
And pale his lips as the dead. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

It is crazy to postulate a trillion (causally unconnected) universes to explain the features of one universe, when postulating one entity (God) will do the job. — Richard Swinburne

Ask nothing more of me sweet;
All I can give you I give;
Heart of my heart were it more,
More would be laid at your feet.. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

Fruits fail and love dies and time ranges;
Thou art fed with perpetual breath,
and alive after infinite changes,
And fresh from the kisses of death,
Of langours rekindled and rallied,
Of barren delights and unclean,
Things monstrous and fruitless, a pallid
And poisonous queen. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

For words divide and rend But silence is most noble till the end. — 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. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

Thou has conquered, O pale Galilean. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

Out of Dindymus heavily laden Her lions draw bound and unfed A mother, a mortal, a maiden, A queen over death and the dead. She is cold, and her habit is lowly, Her temple of branches and sods; Most fruitful and virginal, holy, A mother of gods. She hath wasted with fire thine high places, She hath hidden and marred and made sad The fair limbs of the Loves, the fair faces Of gods that were goodly and glad. She slays, and her hands are not bloody; She moves as a moon in the wane, White-robed, and thy raiment is ruddy, Our Lady of Pain. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

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. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

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

I am that which unloves me and loves; I am stricken, and I am the blow. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

Hope thou not much, and fear thou not at all. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

To wipe off the froth of falsehood from the foaming lips of inebriated virtue, when fresh from the sexless orgies of morality and reeling from the delirious riot of religion, may doubtless be a charitable office. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

Wind is lord and change is sovereign of the strand. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

The dog appeals to cheap and facile emotions; the cat to the deepest founts of imagination and cosmic perception in the human mind. It is no accident that the contemplative Egyptians, together with such later poetic spirits as Poe, Gautier, Baudelaire, and Swinburne, were all sincere worshippers of the supple grimalkin. — H.P. Lovecraft

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. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

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. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

When the hounds of Spring are on winter's traces,
The mother of months in meadow or plain
Fills the shadows and windy places
With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

In fierce March weather White waves break tether, And whirled together At either hand, Like weeds uplifted, The tree-trunks rifted In spars are drifted, Like foam or sand. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

Not with dreams, but with blood and with iron, Shall a nation be moulded at last. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

Wherever there is a grain of loyalty there is a glimpse of freedom. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

Cold eyelids that hide like a jewel
Hard eyes that grow soft for an hour;
The heavy white limbs, and the cruel
Red mouth like a venomous flower;
When these have gone by with their glories,
What shall rest of thee then, what remain,
O mystic and somber Delores,
Our Lady of Pain? — Algernon Charles Swinburne

I do not mean merely in its adding to enthusiasm that intellectual basis which in its strength, or that more obvious influence about which Wordsworth was thinking when he said very nobly that poetry was merely the impassioned expression in the face of science, and that when science would put on a form of flesh and blood the poet would lend his divine spirit to aid the transfiguration. Nor do I dwell much on the great cosmical emotion and deep pantheism of science to which Shelley has given its first and Swinburne its latest glory of song, but rather on its influence on the artistic spirit in preserving that close observation and the sense of limitation as well as of clearness of vision which are the characteristics of the real artist. — Oscar Wilde

When I hear that a friend has fallen into matrimony, I feel the same sorrow as if I had heard of his lapsing into theism. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

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. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

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

Is not Precedent indeed a King of men? A Word from the Psalmist. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

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

A baby's feet, like sea-shells pink Might tempt, should heaven see meet, An angel's lips to kiss, we think, A baby's feet. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

Nor had I any illusions about Algernon Charles Swinburne, who often used to stop my perambulator when he met it on Nurses' Walk, at the edge of Wimbledon Common, and pat me on the head and kiss me: he was an inveterate pram-stopper and patter and kisser. — Robert Graves

His life is a watch or a vision Between a sleep and a sleep. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

No blast of air or fire of sun Puts out the light whereby we run With girdled loins our lamplit race, And each from each takes heart of grace And spirit till his turn be done. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

Forget that I remember And dream that I forget. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

Before the beginning of years There came to the making of man Time with a gift of tears, Grief with a glass that ran . — Algernon Charles Swinburne

Faith speaks when hope is disassembled; faith lives when hope dies dead. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

Doubt is faith in the main: but faith, on the whole, is doubt;
We cannot believe by proof: but could we believe without? — Algernon Charles Swinburne

Where might is, the right is:
Long purses make strong swords.
Let weakness learn meekness:
God save the House of Lords! — Algernon Charles Swinburne

Change lays her hand not upon the truth. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

While three men hold together, the kingdoms are less by three. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

Swinburne was an absurd character. He was a bird of showy strut and plumage. One could not but admire his glorious feathers; but, as soon as he began to moult ... one saw how very little body there was underneath. — Robert Wilson Lynd

Glory to Man in the highest! For Man is the master of things. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

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. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

There was a poor poet named Clough, Whom his friends all united to puff, But the public, though dull, Had not such a skull As belonged to believers in Clough. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

The [nineteenth-century] young men who were Puritans in politics were anti-Puritans in literature. They were willing to die for the independence of Poland or the Manchester Fenians; and they relaxed their tension by voluptuous reading in Swinburne. — Rebecca West

His speech is a burning fire. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

Though one were strong as seven,
He too with death shall dwell,
Nor wake with wings in heaven,
Nor weep for pains in hell;
— Algernon Charles Swinburne

Fierce midnights and famishing morrows,
And the loves that complete and control
All the joys of the flesh, all the sorrows
That wear out the soul. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

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? — Algernon Charles Swinburne

The sun is all about the world we see, the breath and strength of every spring. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

In a land of sand and ruin and gold
There shone one woman, and none but she — Algernon Charles Swinburne

The poet Swinburne said that spring begins 'blossom by blossom. — Christina Bartolomeo

God's own hand Holds fast all issues of our deeds: with him The end of all our ends is, but with us Our ends are, just or unjust: though our works Find righteous or unrighteous judgment, this At least is ours, to make them righteous. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

She knows not loves that kissed her She knows not where. Art thou the ghost, my sister, White sister there, Am I the ghost, who knows? My hand, a fallen rose, Lies snow-white on white snows, and takes no care. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

Stately, kindly, lordly friend Condescend Here to sit by me. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

I that have love and no more
Give you but love of you, sweet;
He that hath more, let him give;
He that hath wings, let him soar;
Mine is the heart at your feet
Here, that must love you to live. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

To say of shame - what is it? Of virtue - we can miss it; Of sin-we can kiss it, And it's no longer sin. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

The more congenial page of some tenth-rate poeticule worn out with failure after failure and now squat in his hole like the tailless fox, he is curled up to snarl and whimper beneath the inaccessible vine of song. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

Wan February with weeping cheer,
Whose cold hand guides the youngling year
Down misty roads of mire and rime,
Before thy pale and fitful face
The shrill wind shifts the clouds apace
Through skies the morning scarce may climb.
Thine eyes are thick with heavy tears,
But lit with hopes that light the year's. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

Swinburne, by the way, when a very young man, had gone to Walter Savage Landor, then a very old man, and been given the poet's blessing he asked for; and Landor when a child had been patted on the head by Dr Samuel Johnson; and Johnson when a child had been taken to London to be touched by Queen Anne for scrofula, the King's evil; and Queen Anne when a child ... — Robert Graves

And a bird overhead sang Follow,
And a bird to the right sang Here;
And the arch of the leaves was hollow,
And the meaning of May was clear. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

White rose in red rose-garden Is not so white; Snowdrops, that plead for pardon And pine for fright Because the hard East blows Over their maiden vows, Grow not as this face grows from pale to bright. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

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. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

Marvellous mercies and infinite love. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

The loves and hours of the life of a man,
They are swift and sad, being born of the sea. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

The half-brained creature to whom books are other than living things may see with the eyes of a bat and draw with the fingers of a mole his dullard's distinction between books and life: those who live the fuller life of a higher animal than he know that books are to poets as much part of that life as pictures are to painters or as music is to musicians, dead matter though they may be to the spiritually still-born children of dirt and dullness who find it possible and natural to live while dead in heart and brain. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

Though one were fair as roses His beauty clouds and closes. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

There is no God found stronger than death; and death is a sleep. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

For winter's rains and ruins are over, And all the season of snows and sins; The days dividing lover and lover, The light that loses, the night that wins; And time remembered is grief forgotten, And frosts are slain and flowers begotten, And in green underwood and cover Blossom by blossom the spring begins. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

I will go back to the great sweet mother,
Mother and lover of men, the sea.
I will go down to her, I and none other,
Close with her, kiss her, and mix her with me.
Cling to her, strive with her, hold her fast;
O fair white mother, in days long passed
Born without sister, born without brother,
Set free my soul as thy soul is free. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

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. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

But now, you are twain, you are cloven apart
Flesh of his flesh, but heart of my heart. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

For till the thunder and trumpet be,
Soul may divide from body, but not we
One from another — Algernon Charles Swinburne

Then star nor sun shall waken, Nor any change of light: Nor sound of waters shaken, Nor any sound or sight: Nor wintry leaves nor vernal; Nor days nor things diurnal; Only the sleep eternal In an eternal night. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

The tadpole poet will never grow into anything bigger than a frog; not though in that stage of development he should puff and blow himself till he bursts with windy adulation at the heels of the laureled ox. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

For whom all winds are quiet as the sun,/ All waters as the shore. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

O brother, the gods were good to you.
Sleep, and be glad while the world
endures.
Be well content as the years wear
through;
Give thanks for life, and the loves and
lures;
Give thanks for life, O brother, and
death,
For the sweet last sound of her feet, her
breath,
For gifts she gave you, gracious and
few,Tears and kisses, that lady of yours. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

In the world of dreams, I have chosen my part. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

To have read the greatest works of any great poet, to have beheld or heard the greatest works of any great painter or musician, is a possession added to the best things of life. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

Life is the lust of a lamp for the light that is dark till the dawn of the day that we die. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

Sleep; and if life was bitter to thee, pardon, If sweet, give thanks; thou hast no more to live; And to give thanks is good, and to forgive. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

I am tired of tears and laughter,
And men that laugh and weep
Of what may come hereafter
For men that sow to reap:
I am weary of days and hours,
Blown buds of barren flowers,
Desires and dreams and powers
And everything but sleep. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

Body and spirit are twins: God only knows which is which. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

O Love, O great god Love, what have I done,
That thou shouldst hunger so after my death?
My heart is harmless as my life's first day:
Seek out some false fair woman, and plague her
Till her tears even as my tears fill her bed. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

That to the adolescent is the authentic poetic note and whoever is the first in his life to strike it, whether Tennyson, Keats, Swinburne, Housman or another, awakens a passion of imitation and an affectation which no subsequent refinement or sophistication of his taste can entirely destroy. In my own case it was Hardy in the summer of 1923; for more than a year I read no one else and I do not think that I was ever without one volume or another or the beautifully produced Wessex edition in my hands: I smuggled them into class, carried them about on Sunday walks, and took them up to the dormitory to read in the early morning, though they were far too unwieldy to be read in bed with comfort. In the autumn of 1924 there was a palace revolution after which he had to share his kingdom with Edward Thomas, until finally they were both defeated by Elliot at the battle of Oxford in 1926. — W. H. Auden

Fate is a sea without a shore, and the soul is a rock that abides. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

The sweetest flowers in all the world- A baby's hands. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

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

Fear that makes faith may break faith. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

Heart's ease of pansy, pleasure or thought, Which would the picture give us of these? Surely the heart that conceived it sought Heart's ease. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

Time stoops to no man's lure. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

When I see imposters like ... Swinburne, [and] Fleay, who know as much early English as my dog, & who fancy they can settle Chaucer difficulties as they blow their noses, then I ridicule or kick them. But earnest students I treat with respect, & am only too glad to learn from them. — James Turner

Yet leave me not; yet, if thou wilt, be free; love me no more, but love my love of thee. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

If you were Queen of pleasure
And I were King of pain
We'd hunt down Love together,
Pluck out his flying-feather,
And teach his feet a measure,
And find his mouth a rein;
If you were Queen of pleasure
And I were King of pain. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

Before I met Maria, I was your basic craven hermit. I spent most of my time in my room, in love with my walls, hiding out from the world with my
fanzines and my records. I thought I was happier that way. I had developed these monastic habits to protect myself from something, probably, but
whatever it was, the monastic habits had turned into the bigger problem. In my headphones, I led a life of romance and incident and intrigue, none
of which had anything to do with the world outside my Walkman. I was an English major, obsessed with Oscar Wilde and Walter Pater and Algernon
Swinburne, thrilling to the exploits of my decadent aesthete poet idols, even though my only experience with decadence was reading about it. — Rob Sheffield

Time turns the old days to derision, Our loves into corpses or wives; And marriage and death and division Make barren our lives. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

All the world is bitter as a tear — Algernon Charles Swinburne

Sorrow, on wing through the world for ever, Here and there for awhile would borrow Rest, if rest might haply deliver Sorrow ... — Algernon Charles Swinburne

Despair the twin-born of devotion. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

Who knows but on their sleep may rise Such light as never heaven let through To lighten earth from Paradise? — Algernon Charles Swinburne

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