Algernon Charles Swinburne Quotes

125 Sourced Quotes

For words divide and rend;
But silence is most noble till the end.

Algernon Charles Swinburne
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.

Algernon Charles Swinburne
In the world of dreams, I have chosen my part. To sleep for a season and hear no word Of true love's truth or of light love's art, Only the song of a secret bird.

Algernon Charles Swinburne
Farewell, and peace be with you if it may.
I have lost, ye have won this hazard: yet perchance
My loss may shine yet goodlier than your gain
When time and God give judgment. If there be
Truth, true is this, that I desired the right
And ye with hands as red sustain the wrong
As mine had been in triumph. Have your will:
And God send each no bitterer end than mine.

Algernon Charles Swinburne
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.

Algernon Charles Swinburne
Not with dreams, but with blood and with iron, Shall a nation be moulded at last.

Algernon Charles Swinburne
What sentence shall be given on mine? Of man,
As ill or well God means me, well or ill
Shall judgment pass upon me : but of God,
If God himself be righteous or be God,
Who being unrighteous were but god of hell,
The sentence given shall judge me just...

Algernon Charles Swinburne
Then star nor sun shall waken, Nor any change of light: Nor sound of waters shaken, Nor any sound or sight: Nor wintry leaves nor vernal; Nor days nor things diurnal; Only the sleep eternal In an eternal night.

Algernon Charles Swinburne
Ah, yet would God this flesh of mine might be Where air might wash and long leaves cover me; Where tides of grass break into foam of flowers, Or where the wind's feet shine along the sea.

Algernon Charles Swinburne
Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean; the world has grown grey from thy breath;
We have drunken of things Lethean, and fed on the fullness of death.

Algernon Charles Swinburne
There is no such thing as a dumb poet or a handless painter. The essence of an artist is that he should be articulate.

Algernon Charles Swinburne
Did I bid thee
Mock, and forget me for thy friend — I say not,
King? Is thy heart so light and lean a thing,
So loose in faith and faint in love? I bade thee
Stand to me, help me, hold my hand in thine
And give my heart back answer. This it is,
Old friend and fool, that gnaws my life in twain —
The worm that writhes and feeds about my heart —
The devil and God are crying in either ear
One murderous word for ever, night and day,
Dark day and deadly night and deadly day,
Can she love thee who slewest her father? I
Love her.

Algernon Charles Swinburne
We are not sure of sorrow,
And joy was never sure.

Algernon Charles Swinburne
On the mountains of memory by the world's wellsprings, in all man's eyes, where the light of life of him is on all past things, death only dies.

Algernon Charles Swinburne
Here, where the world is quiet;
Here, where all trouble seems
Dead winds' and spent waves' riot In doubtful dreams of dreams.

Algernon Charles Swinburne
For winter's rains and ruins are over,
And all the season of snows and sins;
The days dividing lover and lover,
The light that loses, the night that wins;
And time remembered is grief forgotten,
And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,
And in green underwood and cover Blossom by blossom the spring begins.

Algernon Charles Swinburne
They do not ill, being lords of ours, to slay
Me; nay, they could not spare: but thee to slay,
To spill thy strong young life for truth to me,
In all men's eyes would mark them monstrous : thou
Must live, and serve my slayers, and serving them
Sustain my memory by the proof — if God
Shall give thee grace to prove it — that thy name,
Thy father's name and mine, in true men's ears
Rings truth, and means not treason.

Algernon Charles Swinburne
If you were April's lady,
And I were lord in May.

Algernon Charles Swinburne
For there is no God found stronger than death; and death is a sleep.

Algernon Charles Swinburne
Though before thee the throned Cytherean be fallen, and hidden her head,
Yet thy kingdom shall pass, Galilean, thy dead shall go down to thee dead.

Algernon Charles Swinburne