Algernon Charles Swinburne Quotes

125 Sourced Quotes

O splendid and sterile Dolores,
Our Lady of Pain.

Algernon Charles Swinburne
For life is sweet, but after life is death.
This is the end of every man's desire.

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

Algernon Charles Swinburne
Villon, our sad bad glad mad brother's name.

Algernon Charles Swinburne
Not from without us, only from within,
Comes or can ever come upon us light
Whereby the soul keeps ever truth in sight.
No truth, no strength, no comfort man may win,
No grace for guidance, no release from sin,
Save of his own soul's giving.

Algernon Charles Swinburne
All our past proclaims our future: Shakespeare's voice and Nelson's hand,
Milton's faith and Wordsworth's trust in this our chosen and chainless land,
Bear us witness: come the world against her, England yet shall stand.

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
I have lived long enough, having seen one thing, that love hath an end.

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
Sleep; and if life was bitter to thee, pardon,
If sweet, give thanks; thou hast no more to live;
And to give thanks is good, and to forgive.

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
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
The small slain body, the flowerlike face,
Can I remember if thou forget?
O sister, sister, thy first-begotten!
The hands that cling and the feet that follow,
The voice of the child's blood crying yet
Who hath remembered me? Who hath forgotten?
Thou hast forgotten, O summer swallow,
But the world shall end when I forget.

Algernon Charles Swinburne
I. But he hears not. Now, my warrior guests,
I drink to the onward passage of his soul
Death. Had my hand turned coward or played me false,
This man that is my hand, and less than I
And less than he bloodguilty, this my death
Had been my husband's: now he has left it me.
[Drinks]
How innocent are all but he and I
No time is mine to tell you. Truth shall tell.
I pardon thee, my husband: pardon me. [Dies]

Algernon Charles Swinburne
Before our lives divide for ever,
While time is with us and hands are free,
(Time, swift to fasten and swift to sever
Hand from hand, as we stand by the sea)
I will say no word that a man might say
Whose whole life's love goes down in a day;
For this could never have been; and never,
Though the gods and the years relent, shall be. Is it worth a tear, is it worth an hour,
To think of things that are well outworn?
Of fruitless husk and fugitive flower,
The dream foregone and the deed forborne?
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.

Algernon Charles Swinburne
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.

Algernon Charles Swinburne
I am that which began;
Out of me the years roll;
Out of me God and man;
I am equal and whole;
God changes, and man, and the form of them
bodily; I am the soul.

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
So be it the wind and sun
That reared thy limbs and lit thy veins with life
Have blown and shone upon thee not for nought—
If these have fed and fired thy spirit as mine
With love, with faith that casts out fear, with joy,
With trust in truth and pride in trust — if thou
Be theirs indeed as theirs am I, with me
Shalt thou take part and with my sea-folk — aye,
Make thine eyes wide and give God wondering thanks
That grace like ours is given thee — thou shalt bear
Part of our praise for ever.

Algernon Charles Swinburne
I can truly say with Shelley I have been fortunate in friendships: that I have been no less fortunate in my enemies than in my friends.

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
It is long since Mr. Carlyle expressed his opinion that if any poet or other literary creature could really be "killed off by one critique" or many, the sooner he was so despatched the better; a sentiment in which I for one humbly but heartily concur.

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
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
Wherever there is a grain of loyalty there is a glimpse of freedom.

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
The tadpole poet will never grow into anything bigger than a frog; not though in that stage of development he should puff and blow himself till he bursts with windy adulation at the heels of the laureled ox.

Algernon Charles Swinburne
And lo, between the sundawn and the sun His day's work and his night's work are undone: And lo, between the nightfall and the light, He is not, and none knoweth of such an one.

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