Algernon Charles Swinburne Quotes

125 Sourced Quotes

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

Algernon Charles Swinburne
While three men hold together, the kingdoms are less by three.

Algernon Charles Swinburne
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.

Algernon Charles Swinburne
Glory to Man in the highest! for Man is the master of things.

Algernon Charles Swinburne
Body and spirit are twins: God only knows which is which.

Algernon Charles Swinburne
God's own hand
Holds fast all issues of our deeds: with him
The end of all our ends is, but with us
Our ends are, just or unjust: though our works
Find righteous or unrighteous judgment, this
At least is ours, to make them righteous. Go.

Algernon Charles Swinburne
No thorns go as deep as a rose's,
And love is more cruel than lust.

Algernon Charles Swinburne
Life is the lust of a lamp for the light that is dark till the dawn of the day that we die.

Algernon Charles Swinburne
Wan February with weeping cheer,
Whose cold hand guides the youngling year
Down misty roads of mire and rime,
Before thy pale and fitful face
The shrill wind shifts the clouds apace
Through skies the morning scarce may climb.
Thine eyes are thick with heavy tears,
But lit with hopes that light the year's.

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

Algernon Charles Swinburne
Change in a trice
The lilies and languors of virtue
For the raptures and roses of vice.

Algernon Charles Swinburne
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.

Algernon Charles Swinburne
A poor man's wrong and mine and all the world's,
Diverse and individual, many and one,
Insufferable of long-suffering less than God's,
Of all endurance unendurable else,
Being come to flood and fullness now, the tide
Is risen in mine as in the sea's own heart
To tempest and to triumph. Not for nought
Am I that wild wife's bridegroom — old and hoar,
Not sapless yet nor soulless.

Algernon Charles Swinburne
Mr. Whitman's Eve is a drunken apple-woman, indecently sprawling in the slush and gutter amid the rotten refuse of her overturned fruit-stall.... Mr. Whitman's Venus is a Hottentot wench under the influence of cantharides and adulterated rum.

Algernon Charles Swinburne
Swallow, my sister, O sister swallow,
How can thine heart be full of the spring?
A thousand summers are over and dead.
What hast thou found in the spring to follow?
What hast thou found in thine heart to sing?
What wilt thou do when the summer is shed?

Algernon Charles Swinburne
There was a poor poet named Clough,
Whom his friends all united to puff,
But the public, though dull,
Had not such a skull
As belonged to believers in Clough.

Algernon Charles Swinburne
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.

Algernon Charles Swinburne
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.

Algernon Charles Swinburne
The pulse of war and passion of wonder,
The heavens that murmur, the sounds that shine,
The stars that sing and the loves that thunder,
The music burning at heart like wine,
An armed archangel whose hands raise up
All senses mixed in the spirit's cup
Till flesh and spirit are molten in sunder —
These things are over, and no more mine. These were a part of the playing I heard
Once, ere my love and my heart were at strife;
Love that sings and hath wings as a bird,
Balm of the wound and heft of the knife.
Fairer than earth is the sea, and sleep
Than overwatching of eyes that weep,
Now time has done with his one sweet word,
The wine and leaven of lovely life.

Algernon Charles Swinburne
Maiden, and mistress of the months and stars
Now folded in the flowerless fields of heaven.

Algernon Charles Swinburne
I am tired of tears and laughter,
And men that laugh and weep;
Of what may come hereafter For men that sow and reap:
I am weary of days and hours,
Blown buds of barren flowers,
Desires and dreams and powers And everything but sleep.

Algernon Charles Swinburne
His life is a watch or a vision
Between a sleep and a sleep.

Algernon Charles Swinburne
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;
And the brown bright nightingale amorous
Is half assuaged for Itylus,
For the Thracian ships and the foreign faces,
The tongueless vigil and all the pain.

Algernon Charles Swinburne
For whom all winds are quiet as the sun,/ All waters as the shore.

Algernon Charles Swinburne
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.

Algernon Charles Swinburne