Algernon Charles Swinburne famous quotes

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

#Body #Spirit #Twins

Today will die tomorrow.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Today #Tomorrow

Blossom by blossom the spring begins.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Spring

Change lays her hand not upon the truth.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Hands

I will go back to the great sweet mother, Mother and lover of men, the sea. I will go down to her, I and no other, Close with her, kiss her and mix her with me.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Mother #Sweet #Kissing

Thou has conquered, O pale Galilean.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Christianity #Pale

The delight that consumes the desire, The desire that outruns the delight.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Desire #Delight

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.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Wings #Goal #Heaven

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

#Running #Heart #Light

White rose in red rose-garden Is not so white; Snowdrops, that plead for pardon And pine for fright Because the hard East blows Over their maiden vows, Grow not as this face grows from pale to bright.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Blow #Garden #White

Stately, kindly, lordly friend Condescend Here to sit by me.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Friendship

The highest spiritual quality, the noblest property of mind a man can have, is this of loyalty ... a man with no loyalty in him, with no sense of love or reverence or devotion due to something outside and above his poor daily life, with its pains and pleasures, profits and losses, is as evil a case as man can be.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Loyalty #Spiritual #Pain

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

#Morning #Cheer #Eye

Hope thou not much, and fear thou not at all.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

Love, till dawn sunder night from day with fire Dividing my delight and my desire...
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Romantic Love #Night #Fire

Fear that makes faith may break faith.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Fear #May #Break

There grows No herb of help to heal a coward heart.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Heart #Coward #Herbs

To wipe off the froth of falsehood from the foaming lips of inebriated virtue, when fresh from the sexless orgies of morality and reeling from the delirious riot of religion, may doubtless be a charitable office.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Office #Wipe #May

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.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Lying #Laughing #Rose

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.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Weed #Hands #Weather

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

#Wind #Water #Sun

Time stoops to no man's lure.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Men

The sun is all about the world we see, the breath and strength of every spring.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Spring #World #Sun

A young man with a very good past. [Fr., Un jeune homme d'un bien beau passe.]
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Past #Men #Young

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.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Fate #Men #Compensation

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

#Sweet #Rain #Autumn

The beast faith lives on its own dung.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Atheism #Beast

As a god self-slain on his own strange altar, Death lies dead.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Lying #Self #Strange

I shall sleep, and move with the moving ships, Change as the winds change, veer in the tide.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Moving #Sleep #Wind

In hawthorn-time the heart grows light.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Heart #Light #Grows

Love is more cruel than lust.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Love Is #Lust

His speech is a burning fire.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Fire #Burning #Speech

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

#Dream #Song #Art

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.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Hands #Issues #Deeds

The tadpole poet will never grow into anything bigger than a frog.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Tadpoles #Frogs #Poet

Fate is a sea without a shore, and the soul is a rock that abides.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Fate #Rocks #Sea

For winter's rains and ruins are over... And in Green under wood and cover Blossum by blossom the spring begins.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Spring #Rain #Winter

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

#Sleep #Vision #Watches

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

#Motivational #Success #Thanksgiving

If love were what the rose is, And I were like the leaf, Our lives would grow together In sad or singing weather.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Life #Weather #Rose

Our way is where God knows And Love knows where: We are in Love's hand to-day.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Life #Hands #And Love

We, drinking love at the furthest springs, Covered with love as a covering tree, We had grown as gods, as the gods above, Filled from the heart to the lips with love, Held fast in his hands, clothed warm with his wings, O love, my love, had you loved but me!
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Life #Spring #Drinking

The loves and hours of the life of a man, They are swift and sad, being born of the sea.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Life #Men #Sea

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.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Love #Life #Butterfly

O Love, O great god Love, what have I done, That thou shouldst hunger so after my death? My heart is harmless as my life's first day: Seek out some false fair woman, and plague her Till her tears even as my tears fill her bed.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Life #Heart #Tears

Love laid his sleepless head On a thorny rose bed: And his eyes with tears were red, And pale his lips as the dead.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Life #Eye #Rose

Change lays not her hand upon truth.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Truth #Hands

Yet leave me not; yet, if thou wilt, be free; love me no more, but love my love of thee.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Broken Heart #Free Love #Thee

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.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Mother #Spring #Rain

Hope knows not if fear speaks truth, nor fear whether hope be blind as she.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Hope #Speak #Blind

For the crown of our life as it closes Is darkness, the fruit thereof dust; No thorns go as deep as a rose's, And love is more cruel than lust. Time turns the old days to derision, Our loves into corpses or wives; And marriage and death and division Make barren our lives.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Time #Love Is #Dust

If you were Queen of pleasure And I were King of pain We'd hunt down Love together, Pluck out his flying-feather, And teach his feet a measure, And find his mouth a rein; If you were Queen of pleasure And I were King of pain.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Kings #Queens #Pain

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

#Kissing #Names #Blame

She knows not loves that kissed her She knows not where. Art thou the ghost, my sister, White sister there, Am I the ghost, who knows? My hand, a fallen rose, Lies snow-white on white snows, and takes no care.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Art #Lying #Hands

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

#World #Pagan #Feds

Ask nothing more of me sweet; All I can give you I give; Heart of my heart were it more, More would be laid at your feet..
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Sweet #Heart #Feet

I dore not always touch her, lest the kiss Leave my lips charred. Yea, Lord, a little bliss, Brief, bitter bliss, one hath for a great sin; Nathless thou knowest how sweet a thing it is.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Sweet #Kissing #Littles

I am tired of tears and laughter, And men that laugh and weep Of what may come hereafter For men that sow to 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

#Dream #Laughter #Flower

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

#Stars #Sleep #Night

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 isgrief forgotten, And frosts are slain and flowers begotten, And in green underwood and cover Blossom by blossom the spring begins.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Time #Spring #Flower

Before the beginning of years There came to the making of man Time with a gift of tears, Grief with a glass that ran .
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Time #Grief #Men

But now, you are twain, you are cloven apart Flesh of his flesh, but heart of my heart.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Heart #Poetry #Flesh

For words divide and rend But silence is most noble till the end.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Silence #Noble #Till The End

Faith speaks when hope is disassembled; faith lives when hope dies dead.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Hope #Expectations #Speak

In the world of dreams, I have chosen my part.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Dream #World #Awareness

In friendship's fragrant garden, There are flowers of every hue. Each with its own fair beauty And its gift of joy for you. Friendship's Garden If love were what the rose is, And I were like the leaf, Our lives would grow together In sad or singing weather.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Flower #Garden #Weather

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

#Sweet #Gratitude #Sleep

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

#Life #Sweet #Love You

Wherever there is a grain of loyalty there is a glimpse of freedom.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Loyalty #Glimpse #Grain

The highest spiritual quality, the noblest property of mind a man can have, is this of loyalty.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Loyalty #Spiritual #Men

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

#Kissing #Missing #Shame

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

#Musician #Poet #Possession

Before the beginning of years There came to the making of man Time with a gift of tears, Grief with a glass that ran, Pleasure with pain for leaven, Summer with flowers that fell, Remembrance fallen from heaven, And Madness risen from hell, Strength without hands to smite, Love that endures for a breath; Night, the shadow of light, And Life, the shadow of death.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Summer #Pain #Grief

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.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Flower #Heart #Giving

A baby's feet, like sea-shells pink Might tempt, should heaven see meet, An angel's lips to kiss, we think, A baby's feet.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Baby #Angel #Kissing

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

#Friendship #Skulls #Puff

Time turns the old days to derision, Our loves into corpses or wives.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Time #Wife #Our Love

We are not sure of sorrow, And joy was never sure; Today will die tomorrow; Time stoops to no man's lure.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Men #Joy #Sorrow

The sweetest flowers in all the world- A baby's hands.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Baby #Flower #Hands

At the door of life by the gate of breath, There are worse things waiting for men than death.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Life #Men #Doors

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.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Broken #Way #Remember

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

#Night #Light #One Day

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

#Dream #Blood #Iron

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

#Memories #Eye #Past

Who knows but on their sleep may rise Such light as never heaven let through To lighten earth from Paradise?
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Sleep #Light #Heaven

Is not Precedent indeed a King of men? A Word from the Psalmist.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Kings #Men #Precedent

Fruits fail and love dies and time ranges;Thou art fed with perpetual breath, and alive after infinite changes,And fresh from the kisses of death,Of langours rekindled and rallied, Of barren delights and unclean,Things monstrous and fruitless, a pallidAnd poisonous queen.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Art #Queens #Kissing

The more congenial page of some tenth-rate poeticule worn out with failure after failure and now squat in his hole like the tailless fox, he is curled up to snarl and whimper beneath the inaccessible vine of song.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Song #Failure #Vines

There is no God found stronger than death; and death is a sleep.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Death #Sleep #Stronger

When I hear that a friend has fallen into matrimony, I feel the same sorrow as if I had heard of his lapsing into theism.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Marriage #Sorrow #Theism

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

#Dark #Light #Lust

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

#Men #Together #Three

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

#Artist #Essence #Dumb

My loss may shine yet goodlier than your gain When Time and God give judgment.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Time #Loss #Giving

Though one were fair as roses His beauty clouds and closes.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Beauty #Clouds #Rose

Marvellous mercies and infinite love.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Love #Infinite #Mercy

Forget that I remember And dream that I forget.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Dream #Remember #Forget

Despair the twin-born of devotion.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Despair #Twins #Devotion