A. C. Swinburne Quotes

There is no safety-net to protect against attraction.

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

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.

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

Despair the twin-born of devotion.

Let weakness learn meekness.

Change lays her hand not upon the truth.

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.

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

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

Is not Precedent indeed a King of men? A Word from the Psalmist.

Forget that I remember And dream that I forget.

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.

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

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

Though one were fair as roses His beauty clouds and closes.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

Fate is a sea without a shore, and the soul is a rock that abides.

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

Time stoops to no man's lure.

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

Fear that makes faith may break faith.

The delight that consumes the desire, The desire that outruns the delight.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Hope thou not much, and fear thou not at all.

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

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

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.

Change lays not her hand upon truth.

Villon our sad bad glad mad brother's name.

A little space of time before time expires a little way of breath.

By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept Remembering thee.

For till the thunder and trumpet be, Soul may divide from body, but not weOne from another

Here now in his triumph where all things falter, Stretched out on the spoils that his own hand spread, As a god self-slain on his own strange altar, Death lies dead.

But now, you are twain, you are cloven apartFlesh of his flesh, but heart of my heart.