Studies in Song Part 1

Studies in Song.

by Algernon Charles Swinburne.

DEDICATION.

TO MRS. LYNN LINTON.

_Daughter in spirit elect and consecrate By love and reverence of the Olympian sire Whom I too loved and worshipped, seeing so great, And found so gracious toward my long desire To bid that love in song before his gate Sound, and my lute be loyal to his lyre, To none save one it now may dedicate Song's new burnt-offering on a century's pyre.

And though the gift be light As ashes in men's sight, Left by the flame of no ethereal fire, Yet, for his worthier sake Than words are worthless, take This wreath of words ere yet their hour expire: So, haply, from some heaven above, He, seeing, may set next yours my sacrifice of love._

_May 24, 1880._

_SONG FOR THE CENTENARY OF WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR._

1.

Five years beyond an hundred years have seen Their winters, white as faith's and age's hue, Melt, smiling through brief tears that broke between, And hope's young conquering colours reared anew, Since, on the day whose edge for kings made keen Smote sharper once than ever storm-wind blew, A head predestined for the girdling green That laughs at lightning all the seasons through, Nor frost or change can sunder Its crown untouched of thunder Leaf from least leaf of all its leaves that grew Alone for brows too bold For storm to sear of old, Elect to shine in time's eternal view, Rose on the verge of radiant life Between the winds and sunbeams mingling love with strife.

2.

The darkling day that gave its bloodred birth To Milton's white republic undefiled That might endure so few fleet years on earth Bore in him likewise as divine a child; But born not less for crowns of love and mirth, Of palm and myrtle pa.s.sionate and mild, The leaf that girds about with gentler girth The brow steel-bound in battle, and the wild Soft spray that flowers above The flower-soft hair of love; And the white lips of wayworn winter smiled And grew serene as spring's When with stretched clouds like wings Or wings like drift of snow-clouds ma.s.sed and piled The G.o.dlike giant, softening, spread A shadow of stormy shelter round the new-born head.

3.

And o'er it brightening bowed the wild-haired hour, And touched his tongue with honey and with fire, And breathed between his lips the note of power That makes of all the winds of heaven a lyre Whose strings are stretched from topmost peaks that tower To softest springs of waters that suspire, With sounds too dim to shake the lowliest flower Breathless with hope and dauntless with desire: And bright before his face That Hour became a Grace, As in the light of their Athenian quire When the Hours before the sun And Graces were made one, Called by sweet Love down from the aerial gyre By one dear name of natural joy, To bear on her bright breast from heaven a heaven-born boy.

4.

Ere light could kiss the little lids in sunder Or love could lift them for the sun to smite, His fiery birth-star as a sign of wonder Had risen, perplexing the presageful night With shadow and glory around her sphere and under And portents prophesying by sound and sight; And half the sound was song and half was thunder, And half his life of lightning, half of light: And in the soft clenched hand Shone like a burning brand A shadowy sword for swordless fields of fight, Wrought only for such lord As so may wield the sword That all things ill be put to fear and flight Even at the flash and sweep and gleam Of one swift stroke beheld but in a shuddering dream.

5.

Like the sun's rays that blind the night's wild beasts The sword of song shines as the swordsman sings; From the west wind's verge even to the arduous east's The splendour of the shadow that it flings Makes fire and storm in heaven above the feasts Of men fulfilled with food of evil things; Strikes dumb the lying and hungering lips of priests, Smites dead the slaying and ravening hands of kings; Turns dark the lamp's hot light, And turns the darkness bright As with the shadow of dawn's reverberate wings; And far before its way Heaven, yearning toward the day, Shines with its thunder and round its lightning rings; And never hand yet earlier played With that keen sword whose hilt is cloud, and fire its blade.

6.

As dropping flakes of honey-heavy dew More soft than slumber's, fell the first note's sound From strings the swift young hand strayed lightlier through Than leaves through calm air wheeling toward the ground Stray down the drifting wind when skies are blue Nor yet the wings of latter winds unbound, Ere winter loosen all the aeolian crew With storm unleashed behind them like a hound.

As lightly rose and sank Beside a green-flowered bank The clear first notes his burning boyhood found To sing her sacred praise Who rode her city's ways Clothed with bright hair and with high purpose crowned; A song of soft presageful breath, Prefiguring all his love and faith in life and death;

7.

Who should love two things only and only praise More than all else for ever: even the glory Of goodly beauty in women, whence all days Take light whereby death's self seems transitory; And loftier love than loveliest eyes can raise, Love that wipes off the miry stains and gory From Time's worn feet, besmirched on bloodred ways, And lightens with his light the night of story; Love that lifts up from dust Life, and makes darkness just, And purges as with fire of purgatory The dense disastrous air, To burn old falsehood bare And give the wind its ashes heaped and h.o.a.ry; Love, that with eyes of ageless youth Sees on the breast of Freedom borne her nursling Truth.

8.

For at his birth the sistering stars were one That flamed upon it as one fiery star; Freedom, whose light makes pale the mounting sun, And Song, whose fires are quenched when Freedom's are.

Of all that love not liberty let none Love her that fills our lips with fire from far To mix with winds and seas in unison And sound athwart life's tideless harbour-bar Out where our songs fly free Across time's bounded sea, A boundless flight beyond the dim sun's car, Till all the spheres of night Chime concord round their flight Too loud for blasts of warring change to mar, From stars that sang for Homer's birth To these that gave our Landor welcome back from earth

9.

Shine, as above his cradle, on his grave, Stars of our worship, lights of our desire!

For never man that heard the world's wind rave To you was truer in trust of heart and lyre: Nor Greece nor England on a brow more brave Beheld your flame against the wind burn higher: Nor all the gusts that blanch life's worldly wave With surf and surge could quench its flawless fire: No blast of all that blow Might bid the torch burn low That lightens on us yet as o'er his pyre, Indomitable of storm, That now no flaws deform Nor thwart winds baffle ere it all aspire, One light of G.o.dlike breath and flame, To write on heaven with man's most glorious names his name.

10.

The very dawn was dashed with stormy dew And freaked with fire as when G.o.d's hand would mar Palaces reared of tyrants, and the blue Deep heaven was kindled round her thunderous car, That saw how swift a gathering glory grew About him risen, ere clouds could blind or bar A splendour strong to burn and burst them through And mix in one sheer light things near and far.

First flew before his path Light shafts of love and wrath, But winged and edged as elder warriors' are; Then rose a light that showed Across the midsea road From radiant Calpe to revealed Masar The way of war and love and fate Between the goals of fear and fortune, hope and hate.

11.

Mine own twice banished fathers' harbour-land, Their nursing-mother France, the well-beloved, By the arduous blast of sanguine sunrise fanned, Flamed on him, and his burning lips were moved As that live statue's throned on Lybian sand When morning moves it, ere her light faith roved From promise, and her tyrant's poisonous hand Fed hope with Corsic honey till she proved More deadly than despair And falser even than fair, Though fairer than all elder hopes removed As landmarks by the crime Of inundating time; Light faith by grief too loud too long reproved: For even as in some darkling dance Wronged love changed hands with hate, and turned his heart from France.

12.

But past the snows and summits Pyrenean Love stronger-winged held more prevailing flight That o'er Tyrrhene, Iberian, and aegean Sh.o.r.es lightened with one storm of sound and light.

From earliest even to h.o.a.riest years one paean Rang rapture through the fluctuant roar of fight, From Nestor's tongue in accents Achillean On death's blind verge dominant over night For voice as hand and hand As voice for one fair land Rose radiant, smote sonorous, past the height Where darkling pines enrobe The steel-cold Lake of Gaube, Deep as dark death and keen as death to smite, To where on peak or moor or plain His heart and song and sword were one to strike for Spain.

13.

Resurgent at his lifted voice and hand Pale in the light of war or treacherous fate Song bade before him all their shadows stand For whom his will unbarred their funeral grate.

The father by whose wrong revenged his land Was given for sword and fire to desolate Rose fire-encircled as a burning brand, Great as the woes he wrought and bore were great.

Fair as she smiled and died, Death's crowned and breathless bride Smiled as one living even on craft and hate: And pity, a star unrisen, Scarce lit Ferrante's prison Ere night unnatural closed the natural gate That gave their life and love and light To those fair eyes despoiled by fratricide of sight.

14.

Tears bright and sweet as fire and incense fell In perfect notes of music-measured pain On veiled sweet heads that heard not love's farewell Sob through the song that bade them rise again; Rise in the light of living song, to dwell With memories crowned of memory: so the strain Made soft as heaven the stream that girdles h.e.l.l And sweet the darkness of the breathless plain, And with Elysian flowers Recrowned the wreathless hours That mused and mourned upon their works in vain; For all their works of death Song filled with light and breath, And listening grief relaxed her lightening chain; For sweet as all the wide sweet south She found the song like honey from the lion's mouth.

15.