The Project Gutenberg eBook ofStudies in Song

The Project Gutenberg eBook ofStudies in SongThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: Studies in SongAuthor: Algernon Charles SwinburneRelease date: October 31, 2005 [eBook #16973]Most recently updated: December 12, 2020Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Thierry Alberto, Annika Feilbach and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STUDIES IN SONG ***

This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

Title: Studies in SongAuthor: Algernon Charles SwinburneRelease date: October 31, 2005 [eBook #16973]Most recently updated: December 12, 2020Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Thierry Alberto, Annika Feilbach and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

Title: Studies in Song

Author: Algernon Charles Swinburne

Release date: October 31, 2005 [eBook #16973]Most recently updated: December 12, 2020

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Thierry Alberto, Annika Feilbach and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STUDIES IN SONG ***

LondonCHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY1880

LONDON: PRINTED BYSPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUAREAND PARLIAMENT STREET

Born January 30th, 1775

Died September 17th, 1864

There is delight in singing, though none hearBeside the singer: and there is delightIn praising, though the praiser sit aloneAnd see the praised far off him, far above.Landor.

There is delight in singing, though none hearBeside the singer: and there is delightIn praising, though the praiser sit aloneAnd see the praised far off him, far above.

Landor.

Daughter in spirit elect and consecrateBy love and reverence of the Olympian sireWhom I too loved and worshipped, seeing so great,And found so gracious toward my long desireTo bid that love in song before his gateSound, and my lute be loyal to his lyre,To none save one it now may dedicateSong's new burnt-offering on a century's pyre.And though the gift be lightAs ashes in men's sight,Left by the flame of no ethereal fire,Yet, for his worthier sakeThan words are worthless, takeThis wreath of words ere yet their hour expire:So, haply, from some heaven above,He, seeing, may set next yours my sacrifice of love.

May 24, 1880.

Five years beyond an hundred years have seenTheir winters, white as faith's and age's hue,Melt, smiling through brief tears that broke between,And hope's young conquering colours reared anew,Since, on the day whose edge for kings made keenSmote sharper once than ever storm-wind blew,A head predestined for the girdling greenThat laughs at lightning all the seasons through,Nor frost or change can sunderIts crown untouched of thunderLeaf from least leaf of all its leaves that grewAlone for brows too boldFor storm to sear of old,Elect to shine in time's eternal view,Rose on the verge of radiant lifeBetween the winds and sunbeams mingling love with strife.

The darkling day that gave its bloodred birthTo Milton's white republic undefiledThat might endure so few fleet years on earthBore in him likewise as divine a child;But born not less for crowns of love and mirth,Of palm and myrtle passionate and mild,The leaf that girds about with gentler girthThe brow steel-bound in battle, and the wildSoft spray that flowers aboveThe flower-soft hair of love;And the white lips of wayworn winter smiledAnd grew serene as spring'sWhen with stretched clouds like wingsOr wings like drift of snow-clouds massed and piledThe godlike giant, softening, spreadA shadow of stormy shelter round the new-born head.

And o'er it brightening bowed the wild-haired hour,And touched his tongue with honey and with fire,And breathed between his lips the note of powerThat makes of all the winds of heaven a lyreWhose strings are stretched from topmost peaks that towerTo softest springs of waters that suspire,With sounds too dim to shake the lowliest flowerBreathless with hope and dauntless with desire:And bright before his faceThat Hour became a Grace,As in the light of their Athenian quireWhen the Hours before the sunAnd Graces were made one,Called by sweet Love down from the aerial gyreBy one dear name of natural joy,To bear on her bright breast from heaven a heaven-born boy.

Ere light could kiss the little lids in sunderOr love could lift them for the sun to smite,His fiery birth-star as a sign of wonderHad risen, perplexing the presageful nightWith shadow and glory around her sphere and underAnd portents prophesying by sound and sight;And half the sound was song and half was thunder,And half his life of lightning, half of light:And in the soft clenched handShone like a burning brandA shadowy sword for swordless fields of fight,Wrought only for such lordAs so may wield the swordThat all things ill be put to fear and flightEven at the flash and sweep and gleamOf one swift stroke beheld but in a shuddering dream.

Like the sun's rays that blind the night's wild beastsThe sword of song shines as the swordsman sings;From the west wind's verge even to the arduous east'sThe splendour of the shadow that it flingsMakes fire and storm in heaven above the feastsOf men fulfilled with food of evil things;Strikes dumb the lying and hungering lips of priests,Smites dead the slaying and ravening hands of kings;Turns dark the lamp's hot light,And turns the darkness brightAs with the shadow of dawn's reverberate wings;And far before its wayHeaven, yearning toward the day,Shines with its thunder and round its lightning rings;And never hand yet earlier playedWith that keen sword whose hilt is cloud, and fire its blade.

As dropping flakes of honey-heavy dewMore soft than slumber's, fell the first note's soundFrom strings the swift young hand strayed lightlier throughThan leaves through calm air wheeling toward the groundStray down the drifting wind when skies are blueNor yet the wings of latter winds unbound,Ere winter loosen all the Æolian crewWith storm unleashed behind them like a hound.As lightly rose and sankBeside a green-flowered bankThe clear first notes his burning boyhood foundTo sing her sacred praiseWho rode her city's waysClothed with bright hair and with high purpose crowned;A song of soft presageful breath,Prefiguring all his love and faith in life and death;

Who should love two things only and only praiseMore than all else for ever: even the gloryOf goodly beauty in women, whence all daysTake light whereby death's self seems transitory;And loftier love than loveliest eyes can raise,Love that wipes off the miry stains and goryFrom Time's worn feet, besmirched on bloodred ways,And lightens with his light the night of story;Love that lifts up from dustLife, and makes darkness just,And purges as with fire of purgatoryThe dense disastrous air,To burn old falsehood bareAnd give the wind its ashes heaped and hoary;Love, that with eyes of ageless youthSees on the breast of Freedom borne her nursling Truth.

For at his birth the sistering stars were oneThat flamed upon it as one fiery star;Freedom, whose light makes pale the mounting sun,And Song, whose fires are quenched when Freedom's are.Of all that love not liberty let noneLove her that fills our lips with fire from farTo mix with winds and seas in unisonAnd sound athwart life's tideless harbour-barOut where our songs fly freeAcross time's bounded sea,A boundless flight beyond the dim sun's car,Till all the spheres of nightChime concord round their flightToo loud for blasts of warring change to mar,From stars that sang for Homer's birthTo these that gave our Landor welcome back from earth

Shine, as above his cradle, on his grave,Stars of our worship, lights of our desire!For never man that heard the world's wind raveTo you was truer in trust of heart and lyre:Nor Greece nor England on a brow more braveBeheld your flame against the wind burn higher:Nor all the gusts that blanch life's worldly waveWith surf and surge could quench its flawless fire:No blast of all that blowMight bid the torch burn lowThat lightens on us yet as o'er his pyre,Indomitable of storm,That now no flaws deformNor thwart winds baffle ere it all aspire,One light of godlike breath and flame,To write on heaven with man's most glorious names his name.

The very dawn was dashed with stormy dewAnd freaked with fire as when God's hand would marPalaces reared of tyrants, and the blueDeep heaven was kindled round her thunderous car,That saw how swift a gathering glory grewAbout him risen, ere clouds could blind or barA splendour strong to burn and burst them throughAnd mix in one sheer light things near and far.First flew before his pathLight shafts of love and wrath,But winged and edged as elder warriors' are;Then rose a light that showedAcross the midsea roadFrom radiant Calpe to revealed MasarThe way of war and love and fateBetween the goals of fear and fortune, hope and hate.

Mine own twice banished fathers' harbour-land,Their nursing-mother France, the well-beloved,By the arduous blast of sanguine sunrise fanned,Flamed on him, and his burning lips were movedAs that live statue's throned on Lybian sandWhen morning moves it, ere her light faith rovedFrom promise, and her tyrant's poisonous handFed hope with Corsic honey till she provedMore deadly than despairAnd falser even than fair,Though fairer than all elder hopes removedAs landmarks by the crimeOf inundating time;Light faith by grief too loud too long reproved:For even as in some darkling danceWronged love changed hands with hate, and turned his heart from France.

But past the snows and summits PyreneanLove stronger-winged held more prevailing flightThat o'er Tyrrhene, Iberian, and ÆgeanShores lightened with one storm of sound and light.From earliest even to hoariest years one pæanRang rapture through the fluctuant roar of fight,From Nestor's tongue in accents AchilleanOn death's blind verge dominant over nightFor voice as hand and handAs voice for one fair landRose radiant, smote sonorous, past the heightWhere darkling pines enrobeThe steel-cold Lake of Gaube,Deep as dark death and keen as death to smite,To where on peak or moor or plainHis heart and song and sword were one to strike for Spain.

Resurgent at his lifted voice and handPale in the light of war or treacherous fateSong bade before him all their shadows standFor whom his will unbarred their funeral grate.The father by whose wrong revenged his landWas given for sword and fire to desolateRose fire-encircled as a burning brand,Great as the woes he wrought and bore were great.Fair as she smiled and died,Death's crowned and breathless brideSmiled as one living even on craft and hate:And pity, a star unrisen,Scarce lit Ferrante's prisonEre night unnatural closed the natural gateThat gave their life and love and lightTo those fair eyes despoiled by fratricide of sight.

Tears bright and sweet as fire and incense fellIn perfect notes of music-measured painOn veiled sweet heads that heard not love's farewellSob through the song that bade them rise again;Rise in the light of living song, to dwellWith memories crowned of memory: so the strainMade soft as heaven the stream that girdles hellAnd sweet the darkness of the breathless plain,And with Elysian flowersRecrowned the wreathless hoursThat mused and mourned upon their works in vain;For all their works of deathSong filled with light and breath,And listening grief relaxed her lightening chain;For sweet as all the wide sweet southShe found the song like honey from the lion's mouth.

High from his throne in heaven Simonides,Crowned with mild aureole of memorial tearsThat the everlasting sun of all time seesAll golden, molten from the forge of years,Smiled, as the gift was laid upon his kneesOf songs that hang like pearls in mourners' ears,Mild as the murmuring of Hymettian beesAnd honied as their harvest, that endearsThe toil of flowery days;And smiling perfect praiseHailed his one brother mateless else of peers:Whom we that hear not himFor length of date grown dimHear, and the heart grows glad of grief that hears;And harshest heights of sorrowing hours,Like snows of Alpine April, melt from tears to flowers.

Therefore to him the shadow of death was none,The darkness was not, nor the temporal tomb:And multitudinous time for him was one,Who bade before his equal seat of doomRise and stand up for judgment in the sunThe weavers of the world's large-historied loom,By their own works of light or darkness doneClothed round with light or girt about with gloom.In speech of purer goldThan even they spake of oldHe bade the breath of Sidney's lips relumeThe fire of thought and loveThat made his bright life moveThrough fair brief seasons of benignant bloomTo blameless music ever, strongAs death and sweet as death-annihilating song.

Thought gave his wings the width of time to roam,Love gave his thought strength equal to releaseFrom bonds of old forgetful years, like foamVanished, the fame of memories that decrease;So strongly faith had fledged for flight from homeThe soul's large pinions till her strife should cease:And through the trumpet of a child of RomeRang the pure music of the flutes of Greece.As though some northern handReft from the Latin landA spoil more costly than the Colchian fleeceTo clothe with golden soundOf old joy newly foundAnd rapture as of penetrating peaceThe naked north-wind's cloudiest clime,And give its darkness light of the old Sicilian time.

He saw the brand that fired the towers of TroyFade, and the darkness at Œnone's prayerClose upon her that closed upon her boy,For all the curse of godhead that she bare;And the Apollonian serpent gleam and toyWith scathless maiden limbs and shuddering hair;And his love smitten in their dawn of joyLeave Pan the pine-leaf of her change to wear;And one in flowery coilsCaught as in fiery toilsSmite Calydon with mourning unaware;And where her low turf shrineShowed Modesty divineThe fairest mother's daughter far more fairHide on her breast the heavenly shameThat kindled once with love should kindle Troy with flame.

Nor less the light of story than of songWith graver glories girt his godlike head,Reverted alway from the temporal throngOf lives that live not toward the living dead.The shadows and the splendours of their throngMade bright and dark about his board and bedThe lines of life and vision, sweet or strongWith sound of lutes or trumpets blown, that ledForth of the ghostly gateOpening in spite of fateShapes of majestic or tumultuous tread,Divine and direful things,These foul as priests or kings,Those fair as heaven or love or freedom, redWith blood and green with palms and whiteWith raiment woven of deeds divine and words of light.

The thunder-fire of Cromwell, and the rayThat keeps the place of Phocion's name sereneAnd clears the cloud from Kosciusko's day,Alternate as dark hours with bright between,Met in the heaven of his high thought, which layFor all stars open that all eyes had seenRise on the night or twilight of the wayWhere feet of human hopes and fears had been.Again the sovereign wordOn Milton's lips was heardLiving: again the tender three days' queenDrew bright and gentle breathOn the sharp edge of death:And, staged again to show of mortal scene,Tiberius, ere his name grew dire,Wept, stainless yet of empire, tears of blood and fire.

Most ardent and most awful and most fond,The fervour of his Apollonian eyeYearned upon Hellas, yet enthralled in bondOf time whose years beheld her and past bySilent and shameful, till she rose and donnedThe casque again of Pallas; for her cryForth of the past and future, depths beyondThis where the present and its tyrants lie,As one great voice of twainFor him had pealed again,Heard but of hearts high as her own was high,High as her own and hisAnd pure as love's heart is,That lives though hope at once and memory die:And with her breath his clarion's blastWas filled as cloud with fire or future souls with past.

As a wave only obsequious to the windLeaps to the lifting breeze that bids it leap,Large-hearted, and its thickening mane be thinnedBy the strong god's breath moving on the deepFrom utmost Atlas even to extremest IndThat shakes the plain where no men sow nor reap,So, moved with wrath toward men that ruled and sinnedAnd pity toward all tears he saw men weep,Arose to take man's partHis loving lion heart,Kind as the sun's that has in charge to keepEarth and the seed thereofSafe in his lordly love,Strong as sheer truth and soft as very sleep;The mightiest heart since Milton's leapt,The gentlest since the gentlest heart of Shakespeare slept.

Like the wind's own on her divided seaHis song arose on Corinth, and aloudRecalled her Isthmian song and strife when sheWas thronged with glories as with gods in crowdAnd as the wind's own spirit her breath was freeAnd as the heaven's own heart her soul was proud,But freer and prouder stood no son than heOf all she bare before her heart was bowed;None higher than he who heardMedea's keen last wordTranspierce her traitor, and like a rushing cloudThat sundering shows a starSaw pass her thunderous carAnd a face whiter and deadlier than a shroudThat lightened from it, and the brandOf tender blood that falling seared his suppliant hand.

More fair than all things born and slain of fate,More glorious than all births of days and nights,He bade the spirit of man regenerate,Rekindling, rise and reassume the rightsThat in high seasons of his old estateClothed him and armed with majesties and mightsHeroic, when the times and hearts were greatAnd in the depths of ages rose the heightsRadiant of high deeds doneAnd souls that matched the sunFor splendour with the lightnings of their lightsWhence even their uttered namesBurn like the strong twin flamesOf song that shakes a throne and steel that smites;As on Thermopylæ when shoneLeonidas, on Syracuse Timoleon.

Or, sweeter than the breathless buds when springWith smiles and tears and kisses bids them breathe,Fell with its music from his quiring stringFragrance of pine-leaves and odorous heathTwined round the lute whereto he sighed to singOf the oak that screened and showed its maid beneath,Who seeing her bee crawl back with broken wingFaded, a fairer flower than all her wreath,And paler, though her oakStood scathless of the strokeMore sharp than edge of axe or wolfish teeth,That mixed with mortals deadHer own half heavenly headAnd life incorporate with a sylvan sheath,And left the wild rose and the doveA secret place and sacred from all guests but Love.

But in the sweet clear fields beyond the riverDividing pain from peace and man from shadeHe saw the wings that there no longer quiverSink of the hours whose parting footfalls fadeOn ears which hear the rustling amaranth shiverWith sweeter sound of wind than ever madeMusic on earth: departing, they deliverThe soul that shame or wrath or sorrow swayed;And round the king of menClash the clear arms again,Clear of all soil and bright as laurel braid,That rang less high for joyThrough the gates fallen of TroyThan here to hail the sacrificial maid,Iphigeneia, when the fordFast-flowing of sorrows brought her father and their lord.

And in the clear gulf of the hollow seaHe saw light glimmering through the grave green gloomThat hardly gave the sun's eye leave to seeCymodameia; but nor tower nor tomb,No tower on earth, no tomb of waves may be,That may not sometime by diviner doomBe plain and pervious to the poet; heBids time stand back from him and fate make roomFor passage of his feet,Strong as their own are fleet,And yield the prey no years may reassumeThrough all their clamorous track,Nor night nor day win backNor give to darkness what his eyes illumeAnd his lips bless for ever: heKnows what earth knows not, sings truth sung not of the sea.

Before the sentence of a curule chairMore sacred than the Roman, rose and stoodTo take their several doom the imperial pairDiversely born of Venus, and in moodDiverse as their one mother, and as fair,Though like two stars contrasted, and as good,Though different as dark eyes from golden hair;One as that iron planet red like bloodThat bears among the starsFierce witness of her MarsIn bitter fire by her sweet light subdued;One, in the gentler skiesSweet as her amorous eyes:One proud of worlds and seas and darkness rudeComposed and conquered; one contentWith lightnings from loved eyes of lovers lightly sent.

And where Alpheus and where Ladon ranRadiant, by many a rushy and rippling coveMore known to glance of god than wandering man,He sang the strife of strengths divine that strove,Unequal, one with other, for a span,Who should be friends for ever in heaven aboveAnd here on pastoral earth: Arcadian Pan,And the awless lord of kings and shepherds, Love:All the sweet strife and strangeWith fervid counterchangeTill one fierce wail through many a glade and groveRang, and its breath made shiverThe reeds of many a river,And the warm airs waxed wintry that it clove,Keen-edged as ice-retempered brand;Nor might god's hurt find healing save of godlike hand.

As when the jarring gates of thunder opeLike earthquake felt in heaven, so dire a cry,So fearful and so fierce—'Give the sword scope!'—Rang from a daughter's lips, darkening the skyTo the extreme azure of all its cloudless copeWith starless horror: nor the God's own eyeWhose doom bade smite, whose ordinance bade hope,Might well endure to see the adulteress die,The husband-slayer fordoneBy swordstroke of her son,Unutterable, unimaginable on high,On earth abhorrent, fellBeyond all scourge of hell,Yet righteous as redemption: Love stood nigh,Mute, sister-like, and closer clungThan all fierce forms of threatening coil and maddening tongue.

All these things heard and seen and sung of old,He heard and saw and sang them. Once againMight foot of man tread, eye of man beholdThings unbeholden save of ancient men,Ways save by gods untrodden. In his holdThe staff that stayed through some Ætnean glenThe steps of the most highest, most awful-souledAnd mightiest-mouthed of singers, even as thenBecame a prophet's rod,A lyre on fire of God,Being still the staff of exile: yea, as whenThe voice poured forth on usWas even of Æschylus,And his one word great as the crying of ten,Crying in men's ears of wrath toward wrong,Of love toward right immortal, sanctified with song.

Him too whom none save one before him everBeheld, nor since hath man again beholden,Whom Dante seeing him saw not, nor the giverOf all gifts back to man by time withholden,Shakespeare—him too, whom sea-like ages sever,As waves divide men's eyes from lights upholdenTo landward, from our songs that find him never,Seeking, though memory fire and hope embolden—Him too this one song found,And raised at its sole soundUp from the dust of darkling dreams and oldenLegends forlorn of breath,Up from the deeps of death,Ulysses: him whose name turns all songs golden,The wise divine strong soul, whom fateCould make no less than change and chance beheld him great.

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