Algernon Charles Swinburne Quotes

Today will die tomorrow.

Forget that I remember And dream that I forget.

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

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

There is no God found stronger than death; and death is a sleep.

While three men hold together, the kingdoms are less by three.

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.

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

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.

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

Let weakness learn meekness.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

In the world of dreams, I have chosen my part.

When I hear that a personal friend has fallen into matrimonial courses, I feel the same sorrow as if I had heard of his lapsing into theism — a holy sorrow, unmixed with anger.

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.

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

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.

There is no safety-net to protect against attraction.

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.

Time stoops to no man's lure.

His life is a watch or a vision Between a sleep and a sleep.

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

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.

There grows No herb of help to heal a coward heart.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Fear that makes faith may break faith.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Stately, kindly, lordly friend Condescend Here to sit by me.

Faith speaks when hope is disassembled; faith lives when hope dies dead.

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.

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.

Despair the twin-born of devotion.