A Channel Passage and Other Poems
A >> Algernon Charles Swinburne >> A Channel Passage and Other Poems[TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: Greek words in this text have been transliterated
and placed between +marks+. The word "Phoebus" was rendered with an oe
ligature in the original.]
A Channel Passage and other poems
By
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles
Swinburne--Vol VI
THE COLLECTED POETICAL WORKS OF ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
VOL. VI
A MIDSUMMER HOLIDAY: ASTROPHEL: A CHANNEL PASSAGE AND OTHER TALES
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
A MIDSUMMER HOLIDAY: ASTROPHEL: A CHANNEL PASSAGE AND OTHER POEMS
By
Algernon Charles Swinburne
1917
LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN
_First printed_ (_Chatto_), 1904
_Reprinted_ 1904, '09, '10, '12
(_Heinemann_), 1917
_London: William Heinemann_, 1917
A CHANNEL PASSAGE AND OTHER POEMS
PAGE
A CHANNEL PASSAGE 279
THE LAKE OF GAUBE 284
THE PROMISE OF THE HAWTHORN 288
HAWTHORN TIDE 289
THE PASSING OF THE HAWTHORN 296
TO A BABY KINSWOMAN 297
THE ALTAR OF RIGHTEOUSNESS 301
A NEW YEAR'S EVE 321
IN A ROSARY 324
THE HIGH OAKS 326
BARKING HALL: A YEAR AFTER 331
MUSIC: AN ODE 334
THE CENTENARY OF THE BATTLE OF THE NILE 336
TRAFALGAR DAY 338
CROMWELL'S STATUE 340
A WORD FOR THE NAVY 342
NORTHUMBERLAND 346
STRATFORD-ON-AVON 349
BURNS: AN ODE 350
THE COMMONWEAL: A SONG FOR UNIONISTS 355
THE QUESTION 359
APOSTASY 363
RUSSIA: AN ODE 366
FOR GREECE AND CRETE 370
DELPHIC HYMN TO APOLLO 372
A NEW CENTURY 374
AN EVENING AT VICHY 375
TO GEORGE FREDERICK WATTS 378
ON THE DEATH OF MRS. LYNN LINTON 379
IN MEMORY OF AURELIO SAFFI 382
CARNOT 383
AFTER THE VERDICT 384
THE TRANSVAAL 385
REVERSE 386
THE TURNING OF THE TIDE 387
ON THE DEATH OF COLONEL BENSON 388
ASTRAEA VICTRIX 389
THE FIRST OF JUNE 393
A ROUNDEL FROM VILLON 395
A ROUNDEL OF RABELAIS 396
LUCIFER 397
THE CENTENARY OF ALEXANDRE DUMAS 398
AT A DOG'S GRAVE 400
THREE WEEKS OLD 402
A CLASP OF HANDS 403
PROLOGUE TO DOCTOR FAUSTUS 405
PROLOGUE TO ARDEN OF FEVERSHAM 407
PROLOGUE TO OLD FORTUNATUS 409
PROLOGUE TO THE DUCHESS OF MALFY 411
PROLOGUE TO THE REVENGER'S TRAGEDY 413
PROLOGUE TO THE BROKEN HEART 415
PROLOGUE TO A VERY WOMAN 417
PROLOGUE TO THE SPANISH GIPSY 419
PROLOGUE TO THE TWO NOBLE KINSMEN 421
THE AFTERGLOW OF SHAKESPEARE 423
CLEOPATRA 427
DEDICATION 435
A CHANNEL PASSAGE AND OTHER POEMS
IN MEMORY
OF
WILLIAM MORRIS
AND
EDWARD BURNE JONES
A CHANNEL PASSAGE
1855
Forth from Calais, at dawn of night, when sunset summer on autumn
shone,
Fared the steamer alert and loud through seas whence only the sun
was gone:
Soft and sweet as the sky they smiled, and bade man welcome: a dim
sweet hour
Gleamed and whispered in wind and sea, and heaven was fair as a
field in flower.
Stars fulfilled the desire of the darkling world as with music: the
starbright air
Made the face of the sea, if aught may make the face of the sea,
more fair.
Whence came change? Was the sweet night weary of rest? What anguish
awoke in the dark?
Sudden, sublime, the strong storm spake: we heard the thunders as
hounds that bark.
Lovelier if aught may be lovelier than stars, we saw the lightnings
exalt the sky,
Living and lustrous and rapturous as love that is born but to
quicken and lighten and die.
Heaven's own heart at its highest of delight found utterance in
music and semblance in fire:
Thunder on thunder exulted, rejoicing to live and to satiate the
night's desire.
And the night was alive and anhungered of life as a tiger from
toils cast free:
And a rapture of rage made joyous the spirit and strength of the
soul of the sea.
All the weight of the wind bore down on it, freighted with death
for fraught:
And the keen waves kindled and quickened as things transfigured or
things distraught.
And madness fell on them laughing and leaping; and madness came on
the wind:
And the might and the light and the darkness of storm were as storm
in the heart of Ind.
Such glory, such terror, such passion, as lighten and harrow the
far fierce East,
Rang, shone, spake, shuddered around us: the night was an altar
with death for priest.
The channel that sunders England from shores where never was man
born free
Was clothed with the likeness and thrilled with the strength and
the wrath of a tropic sea.
As a wild steed ramps in rebellion, and rears till it swerves from
a backward fall,
The strong ship struggled and reared, and her deck was upright as a
sheer cliff's wall.
Stern and prow plunged under, alternate: a glimpse, a recoil, a
breath,
And she sprang as the life in a god made man would spring at the
throat of death.
Three glad hours, and it seemed not an hour of supreme and supernal
joy,
Filled full with delight that revives in remembrance a sea-bird's
heart in a boy.
For the central crest of the night was cloud that thundered and
flamed, sublime
As the splendour and song of the soul everlasting that quickens the
pulse of time.
The glory beholden of man in a vision, the music of light
overheard,
The rapture and radiance of battle, the life that abides in the
fire of a word,
In the midmost heaven enkindled, was manifest far on the face of
the sea,
And the rage in the roar of the voice of the waters was heard but
when heaven breathed free.
Far eastward, clear of the covering of cloud, the sky laughed out
into light
From the rims of the storm to the sea's dark edge with flames that
were flowerlike and white.
The leaping and luminous blossoms of live sheet lightning that
laugh as they fade
From the cloud's black base to the black wave's brim rejoiced in
the light they made.
Far westward, throned in a silent sky, where life was in lustrous
tune,
Shone, sweeter and surer than morning or evening, the steadfast
smile of the moon.
The limitless heaven that enshrined them was lovelier than dreams
may behold, and deep
As life or as death, revealed and transfigured, may shine on the
soul through sleep.
All glories of toil and of triumph and passion and pride that it
yearns to know
Bore witness there to the soul of its likeness and kinship, above
and below.
The joys of the lightnings, the songs of the thunders, the strong
sea's labour and rage,
Were tokens and signs of the war that is life and is joy for the
soul to wage.
No thought strikes deeper or higher than the heights and the depths
that the night made bare,
Illimitable, infinite, awful and joyful, alive in the summit of
air--
Air stilled and thrilled by the tempest that thundered between its
reign and the sea's,
Rebellious, rapturous, and transient as faith or as terror that
bows men's knees.
No love sees loftier and fairer the form of its godlike vision in
dreams
Than the world shone then, when the sky and the sea were as love
for a breath's length seems--
One utterly, mingled and mastering and mastered and laughing with
love that subsides
As the glad mad night sank panting and satiate with storm, and
released the tides.
In the dense mid channel the steam-souled ship hung hovering,
assailed and withheld
As a soul born royal, if life or if death be against it, is
thwarted and quelled.
As the glories of myriads of glowworms in lustrous grass on a
boundless lawn
Were the glories of flames phosphoric that made of the water a
light like dawn.
A thousand Phosphors, a thousand Hespers, awoke in the churning
sea,
And the swift soft hiss of them living and dying was clear as a
tune could be;
As a tune that is played by the fingers of death on the keys of
life or of sleep,
Audible alway alive in the storm, too fleet for a dream to keep:
Too fleet, too sweet for a dream to recover and thought to remember
awake:
Light subtler and swifter than lightning, that whispers and laughs
in the live storm's wake,
In the wild bright wake of the storm, in the dense loud heart of
the labouring hour,
A harvest of stars by the storm's hand reaped, each fair as a
star-shaped flower.
And sudden and soft as the passing of sleep is the passing of
tempest seemed
When the light and the sound of it sank, and the glory was gone as
a dream half dreamed.
The glory, the terror, the passion that made of the midnight a
miracle, died,
Not slain at a stroke, nor in gradual reluctance abated of power
and of pride;
With strong swift subsidence, awful as power that is wearied of
power upon earth,
As a God that were wearied of power upon heaven, and were fain of a
new God's birth,
The might of the night subsided: the tyranny kindled in darkness
fell:
And the sea and the sky put off them the rapture and radiance of
heaven and of hell.
The waters, heaving and hungering at heart, made way, and were
wellnigh fain,
For the ship that had fought them, and wrestled, and revelled in
labour, to cease from her pain.
And an end was made of it: only remembrance endures of the glad
loud strife;
And the sense that a rapture so royal may come not again in the
passage of life.
THE LAKE OF GAUBE
The sun is lord and god, sublime, serene,
And sovereign on the mountains: earth and air
Lie prone in passion, blind with bliss unseen
By force of sight and might of rapture, fair
As dreams that die and know not what they were.
The lawns, the gorges, and the peaks, are one
Glad glory, thrilled with sense of unison
In strong compulsive silence of the sun.
Flowers dense and keen as midnight stars aflame
And living things of light like flames in flower
That glance and flash as though no hand might tame
Lightnings whose life outshone their stormlit hour
And played and laughed on earth, with all their power
Gone, and with all their joy of life made long
And harmless as the lightning life of song,
Shine sweet like stars when darkness feels them strong.
The deep mild purple flaked with moonbright gold
That makes the scales seem flowers of hardened light,
The flamelike tongue, the feet that noon leaves cold,
The kindly trust in man, when once the sight
Grew less than strange, and faith bade fear take flight,
Outlive the little harmless life that shone
And gladdened eyes that loved it, and was gone
Ere love might fear that fear had looked thereon.
Fear held the bright thing hateful, even as fear,
Whose name is one with hate and horror, saith
That heaven, the dark deep heaven of water near,
Is deadly deep as hell and dark as death.
The rapturous plunge that quickens blood and breath
With pause more sweet than passion, ere they strive
To raise again the limbs that yet would dive
Deeper, should there have slain the soul alive.
As the bright salamander in fire of the noonshine exults and is
glad of his day,
The spirit that quickens my body rejoices to pass from the sunlight
away,
To pass from the glow of the mountainous flowerage, the high
multitudinous bloom,
Far down through the fathomless night of the water, the gladness of
silence and gloom.
Death-dark and delicious as death in the dream of a lover and
dreamer may be,
It clasps and encompasses body and soul with delight to be living
and free:
Free utterly now, though the freedom endure but the space of a
perilous breath,
And living, though girdled about with the darkness and coldness and
strangeness of death:
Each limb and each pulse of the body rejoicing, each nerve of the
spirit at rest,
All sense of the soul's life rapture, a passionate peace in its
blindness blest.
So plunges the downward swimmer, embraced of the water unfathomed
of man,
The darkness unplummeted, icier than seas in midwinter, for
blessing or ban;
And swiftly and sweetly, when strength and breath fall short, and
the dive is done,
Shoots up as a shaft from the dark depth shot, sped straight into
sight of the sun;
And sheer through the snow-soft water, more dark than the roof of
the pines above,
Strikes forth, and is glad as a bird whose flight is impelled and
sustained of love.
As a sea-mew's love of the sea-wind breasted and ridden for
rapture's sake
Is the love of his body and soul for the darkling delight of the
soundless lake:
As the silent speed of a dream too living to live for a thought's
space more
Is the flight of his limbs through the still strong chill of the
darkness from shore to shore.
Might life be as this is and death be as life that casts off time
as a robe,
The likeness of infinite heaven were a symbol revealed of the lake
of Gaube.
Whose thought has fathomed and measured
The darkness of life and of death,
The secret within them treasured,
The spirit that is not breath?
Whose vision has yet beholden
The splendour of death and of life?
Though sunset as dawn be golden,
Is the word of them peace, not strife?
Deep silence answers: the glory
We dream of may be but a dream,
And the sun of the soul wax hoary
As ashes that show not a gleam.
But well shall it be with us ever
Who drive through the darkness here,
If the soul that we live by never,
For aught that a lie saith, fear.
THE PROMISE OF THE HAWTHORN
Spring sleeps and stirs and trembles with desire
Pure as a babe's that nestles toward the breast.
The world, as yet an all unstricken lyre,
With all its chords alive and all at rest,
Feels not the sun's hand yet, but feels his breath
And yearns for love made perfect. Man and bird,
Thrilled through with hope of life that casts out death,
Wait with a rapturous patience till his word
Speak heaven, and flower by flower and tree by tree
Give back the silent strenuous utterance. Earth,
Alive awhile and joyful as the sea,
Laughs not aloud in joy too deep for mirth,
Presageful of perfection of delight,
Till all the unborn green buds be born in white.
HAWTHORN TIDE
I
Dawn is alive in the world, and the darkness of heaven and of earth
Subsides in the light of a smile more sweet than the loud noon's
mirth,
Spring lives as a babe lives, glad and divine as the sun, and
unsure
If aught so divine and so glad may be worshipped and loved and
endure.
A soft green glory suffuses the love-lit earth with delight,
And the face of the noon is fair as the face of the star-clothed
night.
Earth knows not and doubts not at heart of the glories again to be:
Sleep doubts not and dreams not how sweet shall the waking beyond
her be.
A whole white world of revival awaits May's whisper awhile,
Abides and exults in the bud as a soft hushed laugh in a smile.
As a maid's mouth laughing with love and subdued for the love's
sake, May
Shines and withholds for a little the word she revives to say.
When the clouds and the winds and the sunbeams are warring and
strengthening with joy that they live,
Spring, from reluctance enkindled to rapture, from slumber to
strife,
Stirs, and repents, and is winter, and weeps, and awakes as the
frosts forgive,
And the dark chill death of the woodland is troubled, and dies
into life.
And the honey of heaven, of the hives whence night feeds full on
the springtide's breath,
Fills fuller the lips of the lustrous air with delight in the
dawn:
Each blossom enkindling with love that is life and subsides with a
smile into death
Arises and lightens and sets as a star from her sphere withdrawn.
Not sleep, in the rapture of radiant dreams, when sundawn smiles on
the night,
Shows earth so sweet with a splendour and fragrance of life that
is love:
Each blade of the glad live grass, each bud that receives or
rejects the light,
Salutes and responds to the marvel of Maytime around and above.
Joy gives thanks for the sight and the savour of heaven, and is
humbled
With awe that exults in thanksgiving: the towers of the flowers
of the trees
Shine sweeter than snows that the hand of the season has melted and
crumbled,
And fair as the foam that is lesser of life than the loveliest of
these.
But the sense of a life more lustrous with joy and enkindled of
glory
Than man's was ever or may be, and briefer than joys most brief,
Bids man's heart bend and adore, be the man's head golden or hoary,
As it leapt but a breath's time since and saluted the flower and
the leaf.
The rapture that springs into love at the sight of the world's
exultation
Takes not a sense of rebuke from the sense of triumphant awe:
But the spirit that quickens the body fulfils it with mute
adoration,
And the knees would fain bow down as the eyes that rejoiced and
saw.
II
Fair and sublime as the face of the dawn is the splendour of May,
But the sky's and the sea's joy fades not as earth's pride passes
away.
Yet hardly the sun's first lightning or laughter of love on the sea
So humbles the heart into worship that knows not or doubts if it be
As the first full glory beholden again of the life new-born
That hails and applauds with inaudible music the season of morn.
A day's length since, and it was not: a night's length more, and
the sun
Salutes and enkindles a world of delight as a strange world won.
A new life answers and thrills to the kiss of the young strong
year,
And the glory we see is as music we hear not, and dream that we
hear.
From blossom to blossom the live tune kindles, from tree to tree,
And we know not indeed if we hear not the song of the life we see.
For the first blithe day that beholds it and worships and cherishes
cannot but sing
With a louder and lustier delight in the sun and the sunlit earth
Than the joy of the days that beheld but the soft green dawn of the
slow faint spring
Glad and afraid to be glad, and subdued in a shamefast mirth.
When the first bright knoll of the woodland world laughs out into
fragrant light,
The year's heart changes and quickens with sense of delight in
desire,
And the kindling desire is one with thanksgiving for utter fruition
of sight,
For sight and for sense of a world that the sun finds meet for
his lyre.
Music made of the morning that smites from the chords of the mute
world song
Trembles and quickens and lightens, unfelt, unbeholden, unheard,
From blossom on blossom that climbs and exults in the strength of
the sun grown strong,
And answers the word of the wind of the spring with the sun's own
word.
Hard on the skirt of the deep soft copses that spring refashions,
Triumphs and towers to the height of the crown of a wildwood tree
One royal hawthorn, sublime and serene as the joy that impassions
Awe that exults in thanksgiving for sight of the grace we see,
The grace that is given of a god that abides for a season,
mysterious
And merciful, fervent and fugitive, seen and unknown and adored:
His presence is felt in the light and the fragrance, elate and
imperious,
His laugh and his breath in the blossom are love's, the beloved
soul's lord.
For surely the soul if it loves is beloved of the god as a lover
Whose love is not all unaccepted, a worship not utterly vain:
So full, so deep is the joy that revives for the soul to recover
Yearly, beholden of hope and of memory in sunshine and rain.
III
Wonder and love stand silent, stricken at heart and stilled.
But yet is the cup of delight and of worship unpledged and
unfilled.
A handsbreadth hence leaps up, laughs out as an angel crowned,
A strong full fountain of flowers overflowing above and around.
The boughs and the blossoms in triumph salute with adoring mirth
The womb that bare them, the glad green mother, the sunbright
earth.
Downward sweeping, as song subsides into silence, none
May hear what sound is the word's they speak to the brooding sun.
None that hearken may hear: man may but pass and adore,
And humble his heart in thanksgiving for joy that is now no more.
And sudden, afront and ahead of him, joy is alive and aflame
On the shrine whose incense is given of the godhead, again the
same.
Pale and pure as a maiden secluded in secret and cherished with
fear,
One sweet glad hawthorn smiles as it shrinks under shelter,
screened
By two strong brethren whose bounteous blossom outsoars it, year
after year,
While earth still cleaves to the live spring's breast as a babe
unweaned.
Never was amaranth fairer in fields where heroes of old found rest,
Never was asphodel sweeter: but here they endure not long,
Though ever the sight that salutes them again and adores them
awhile is blest,
And the heart is a hymn, and the sense is a soul, and the soul is
a song.
Alone on a dyke's trenched edge, and afar from the blossoming
wildwood's verge,
Laughs and lightens a sister, triumphal in love-lit pride;
Clothed round with the sun, and inviolate: her blossoms exult as
the springtide surge,
When the wind and the dawn enkindle the snows of the shoreward
tide.