Algernon Charles Swinburne Quotes
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.
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.
A little soul scarce fledged for earth Takes wing with heaven again for goal, Even while we hailed as fresh from birth A little soul.
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.
Love, as is told by the seers of old, Comes as a butterfly tipped with gold, Flutters and flies in sunlit skies, Weaving round hearts that were one time cold.
When I hear that a personal friend has fallen into matrimonial courses, I feel the same sorrow as if I had heard of his lapsing into theism — a holy sorrow, unmixed with anger.
Yet leave me not; yet, if thou wilt, be free; love me no more, but love my love of thee.
The highest spiritual quality, the noblest property of mind a man can have, is this of loyalty.
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.
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.
Where might is, the right is: Long purses make strong swords. Let weakness learn meekness: God save the House of Lords!
Love lies bleeding in the bed whereover Roses lean with smiling mouths or pleading: Earth lies laughing where the sun's dart clove her: Love lies bleeding.
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.
If love were what the rose is, And I were like the leaf, Our lives would grow together In sad or singing weather.
When fate has allowed to any man more than one great gift, accident or necessity seems usually to contrive that one shall encumber and impede the other.
Cold autumn, wan with wrath of wind and rain, Saw pass a soul sweet as the sovereign tune That death smote silent when he smote again.
Sorrow, on wing through the world for ever, Here and there for awhile would borrow Rest, if rest might haply deliver Sorrow.
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.
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.
We are not sure of sorrow, And joy was never sure; Today will die tomorrow; Time stoops to no man's lure.
Love laid his sleepless head On a thorny rose bed: And his eyes with tears were red, And pale his lips as the dead.
I shall sleep, and move with the moving ships, Change as the winds change, veer in the tide.
The loves and hours of the life of a man, They are swift and sad, being born of the sea.
There is no such thing as a dumb poet or a handless painter. The essence of an artist is that he should be articulate.
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.
Doubt is faith in the main: but faith, on the whole, is doubt; We cannot believe by proof: but could we believe without?
Life is the lust of a lamp for the light that is dark till the dawn of the day that we die.
Not with dreams, but with blood and with iron, Shall a nation be moulded at last.