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Quotes from Poems and Ballads: First Series — Algernon Charles Swinburne

1837–1909 England

← All quotes by Algernon Charles Swinburne

49 quotes

Ah, ah, thy beauty! like a beast it bites,
Stings like an adder, like an arrow smites.

Poems and Ballads: First Series (1866)

There lived a singer in France of old
By the tideless dolorous midland sea.
In a land of sand and ruin and gold
There shone one woman, and none but she.

Poems and Ballads: First Series (1866)

For in the days we know not of
Did fate begin
Weaving the web of days that wove
Your doom.

Poems and Ballads: First Series (1866)

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.

Poems and Ballads: First Series (1866)

Though one were fair as roses
His beauty clouds and closes.

Poems and Ballads: First Series (1866)

Marvellous mercies and infinite love.

Poems and Ballads: First Series (1866)

Change lays not her hand upon truth.

Poems and Ballads: First Series (1866)

Dream that the lips once breathless
Might quicken if they would;
Say that the soul is deathless;
Dream that the gods are good;
Say March may wed September,
And time divorce regret;
But not that you remember,
And not that I forget.

Poems and Ballads: First Series (1866)

Gone deeper than all plummets sound.

Poems and Ballads: First Series (1866)

Despair the twin-born of devotion.

Poems and Ballads: First Series (1866)

O bitterness of things too sweet!

Poems and Ballads: First Series (1866)

We had stood as the sure stars stand, and moved
As the moon moves, loving the world; and seen
Grief collapse as a thing disproved,
Death consume as a thing unclean.

Poems and Ballads: First Series (1866)

Though joy be done with and grief be vain,
Time shall not sever us wholly in twain;
Earth is not spoilt for a single shower;
But the rain has ruined the ungrown corn.

Poems and Ballads: First Series (1866)

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?

Poems and Ballads: First Series (1866)

From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no man lives forever,
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.

Poems and Ballads: First Series (1866)

Time found our tired love sleeping,
And kissed away his breath;
But what should we do weeping,
Though light love sleep to death?
We have drained his lips at leisure,
Till there's not left to drain
A single sob of pleasure,
A single pulse of pain.

Poems and Ballads: First Series (1866)

O splendid and sterile Dolores,
Our Lady of Pain.

Poems and Ballads: First Series (1866)

We, drinking love at the furthest springs,
Covered with love as a covering tree,
We had grown as gods, as the gods above,
Filled from the heart to the lips with love,
Held fast in his hands, clothed warm with his wings,
O love, my love, had you loved but me!

Poems and Ballads: First Series (1866)

I remember the way we parted,
The day and the way we met;
You hoped we were both broken-hearted
And knew we should both forget.

Poems and Ballads: First Series (1866)

Loves that are lost ere they come to birth,
Weeds of the wave, without fruit upon earth.
I lose what I long for, save what I can,
My love, my love, and no love for me!

Poems and Ballads: First Series (1866)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Algernon Charles Swinburne (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.