Astrophel and Other Poems Part 1

Astrophel and Other Poems.

by Algernon Charles Swinburne.

ASTROPHEL

AFTER READING SIR PHILIP SIDNEY'S ARCADIA IN THE GARDEN OF AN OLD ENGLISH MANOR HOUSE

I

A star in the silence that follows The song of the death of the sun Speaks music in heaven, and the hollows And heights of the world are as one; One lyre that outsings and outlightens The rapture of sunset, and thrills Mute night till the sense of it brightens The soul that it fills.

The flowers of the sun that is sunken Hang heavy of heart as of head; The bees that have eaten and drunken The soul of their sweetness are fled; But a sunflower of song, on whose honey My spirit has fed as a bee, Makes sunnier than morning was sunny The twilight for me.

The letters and lines on the pages That sundered mine eyes and the flowers Wax faint as the shadows of ages That sunder their season and ours; As the ghosts of the centuries that sever A season of colourless time From the days whose remembrance is ever, As they were, sublime.

The season that bred and that cherished The soul that I commune with yet, Had it utterly withered and perished To rise not again as it set, Shame were it that Englishmen living Should read as their forefathers read The books of the praise and thanksgiving Of Englishmen dead.

O light of the land that adored thee And kindled thy soul with her breath, Whose life, such as fate would afford thee, Was lovelier than aught but thy death, By what name, could thy lovers but know it, Might love of thee hail thee afar, Philisides, Astrophel, poet Whose love was thy star?

A star in the moondawn of Maytime, A star in the cloudland of change; Too splendid and sad for the daytime To cheer or eclipse or estrange; Too sweet for tradition or vision To see but through shadows of tears Rise deathless across the division Of measureless years.

The twilight may deepen and harden As nightward the stream of it runs Till starshine transfigure a garden Whose radiance responds to the sun's: The light of the love of thee darkens The lights that arise and that set: The love that forgets thee not hearkens If England forget.

II

Bright and brief in the sight of grief and love the light of thy lifetime shone, Seen and felt by the gifts it dealt, the grace it gave, and again was gone: Ay, but now it is death, not thou, whom time has conquered as years pa.s.s on.

Ay, not yet may the land forget that bore and loved thee and praised and wept, Sidney, lord of the stainless sword, the name of names that her heart's love kept Fast as thine did her own, a sign to light thy life till it sank and slept.

Bright as then for the souls of men thy brave Arcadia resounds and shines, Lit with love that beholds above all joys and sorrows the steadfast signs, Faith, a splendour that hope makes tender, and truth, whose presage the soul divines.

All the glory that girds the story of all thy life as with sunlight round, All the spell that on all souls fell who saw thy spirit, and held them bound, Lives for all that have heard the call and cadence yet of its music sound.

Music bright as the soul of light, for wings an eagle, for notes a dove, Leaps and shines from the l.u.s.trous lines wherethrough thy soul from afar above Shone and sang till the darkness rang with light whose fire is the fount of love.

Love that led thee alive, and fed thy soul with sorrows and joys and fears, Love that sped thee, alive and dead, to fame's fair goal with thy peerless peers, Feeds the flame of thy quenchless name with light that lightens the rayless years.

Dark as sorrow though night and morrow may lower with presage of clouded fame, How may she that of old bare thee, may Sidney's England, be brought to shame?

How should this be, while England is? What need of answer beyond thy name?

III

From the love that transfigures thy glory, From the light of the dawn of thy death, The life of thy song and thy story Took subtler and fierier breath.

And we, though the day and the morrow Set fear and thanksgiving at strife, Hail yet in the star of thy sorrow The sun of thy life.

Shame and fear may beset men here, and bid thanksgiving and pride be dumb: Faith, discrowned of her praise, and wound about with toils till her life wax numb, Scarce may see if the sundawn be, if darkness die not and dayrise come.

But England, enmeshed and benetted With spiritless villainies round, With counsels of cowardice fretted, With trammels of treason enwound, Is yet, though the season be other Than wept and rejoiced over thee, Thine England, thy lover, thy mother, Sublime as the sea.

Hers wast thou: if her face be now less bright, or seem for an hour less brave, Let but thine on her darkness shine, thy saviour spirit revive and save, Time shall see, as the shadows flee, her shame entombed in a shameful grave.

If death and not life were the portal That opens on life at the last, If the spirit of Sidney were mortal And the past of it utterly past, Fear stronger than honour was ever, Forgetfulness mightier than fame, Faith knows not if England should never Subside into shame.

Yea, but yet is thy sun not set, thy sunbright spirit of trust withdrawn: England's love of thee burns above all hopes that darken or fears that fawn: Hers thou art: and the faithful heart that hopes begets upon darkness dawn.

The sunset that sunrise will follow Is less than the dream of a dream: The starshine on height and on hollow Sheds promise that dawn shall redeem: The night, if the daytime would hide it, Shows lovelier, aflame and afar, Thy soul and thy Stella's beside it, A star by a star.

A NYMPHOLEPT

Summer, and noon, and a splendour of silence, felt, Seen, and heard of the spirit within the sense.

Soft through the frondage the shades of the sunbeams melt, Sharp through the foliage the shafts of them, keen and dense, Cleave, as discharged from the string of the G.o.d's bow, tense As a war-steed's girth, and bright as a warrior's belt.

Ah, why should an hour that is heaven for an hour pa.s.s hence?

I dare not sleep for delight of the perfect hour, Lest G.o.d be wroth that his gift should be scorned of man.

The face of the warm bright world is the face of a flower, The word of the wind and the leaves that the light winds fan As the word that quickened at first into flame, and ran, Creative and subtle and fierce with invasive power, Through darkness and cloud, from the breath of the one G.o.d, Pan.

The perfume of earth possessed by the sun pervades The chaster air that he soothes but with sense of sleep.

Soft, imminent, strong as desire that prevails and fades, The pa.s.sing noon that beholds not a cloudlet weep Imbues and impregnates life with delight more deep Than dawn or sunset or moonrise on lawns or glades Can shed from the skies that receive it and may not keep.

The skies may hold not the splendour of sundown fast; It wanes into twilight as dawn dies down into day.

And the moon, triumphant when twilight is overpast, Takes pride but awhile in the hours of her stately sway.

But the might of the noon, though the light of it pa.s.s away, Leaves earth fulfilled of desires and of dreams that last; But if any there be that hath sense of them none can say.

For if any there be that hath sight of them, sense, or trust Made strong by the might of a vision, the strength of a dream, His lips shall straiten and close as a dead man's must, His heart shall be sealed as the voice of a frost-bound stream.

For the deep mid mystery of light and of heat that seem To clasp and pierce dark earth, and enkindle dust, Shall a man's faith say what it is? or a man's guess deem?

Sleep lies not heavier on eyes that have watched all night Than hangs the heat of the noon on the hills and trees.

Why now should the haze not open, and yield to sight A fairer secret than hope or than slumber sees?

I seek not heaven with submission of lips and knees, With worship and prayer for a sign till it leap to light: I gaze on the G.o.ds about me, and call on these.

I call on the G.o.ds hard by, the divine dim powers Whose likeness is here at hand, in the breathless air, In the pulseless peace of the fervid and silent flowers, In the faint sweet speech of the waters that whisper there.

Ah, what should darkness do in a world so fair?

The bent-gra.s.s heaves not, the couch-gra.s.s quails not or cowers; The wind's kiss frets not the rowan's or aspen's hair.

But the silence trembles with pa.s.sion of sound suppressed, And the twilight quivers and yearns to the sunward, wrung With love as with pain; and the wide wood's motionless breast Is thrilled with a dumb desire that would fain find tongue And palpitates, tongueless as she whom a man-snake stung, Whose heart now heaves in the nightingale, never at rest Nor satiated ever with song till her last be sung.

Is it rapture or terror that circles me round, and invades Each vein of my life with hope--if it be not fear?

Each pulse that awakens my blood into rapture fades, Each pulse that subsides into dread of a strange thing near Requickens with sense of a terror less dread than dear.

Is peace not one with light in the deep green glades Where summer at noonday slumbers? Is peace not here?

The tall thin stems of the firs, and the roof sublime That screens from the sun the floor of the steep still wood, Deep, silent, splendid, and perfect and calm as time, Stand fast as ever in sight of the night they stood, When night gave all that moonlight and dewfall could.