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DRAWING NEAR THE LIGHT

(From Poems by the Way, 1892)
Lo, when we wade the tangled wood,
In haste and hurry to be there,
Nought seem its leaves and blossoms good,
For all that they be fashioned fair.

But looking up, at last we see
The glimmer of the open light,
From o'er the place where we would be:
Then grow the very brambles bright.

So now, amidst our day of strife,
With many a matter glad we play,
When once we see the light of life
Gleam through the tangle of to-day.

Algernon Charles Swinburne

1837-1909

CHORUS

(From Atalanta in Calydon, 1865)

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THE GARDEN OF PROSERPINE1
(From Laus Veneris, 1866)
Here where the world is quiet;
Here, where all trouble seems
Dead winds' and spent waves' riot
In doubtful dream of dreams;

I watch the green field growing
For reaping folk and sowing,
For harvest time and mowing,
A sleepy world of streams.

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.

Here life hath death for neighbour,
And far from eye or ear
Wan waves and wet winds labour,
Weak ships and spirits steer;

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The old loves with wearier wings; And all dead years draw thither; And all disastrous things; Dead dreams of things forsaken, Blind buds that snows have shaken, Wild leaves that winds have taken, Red strays of ruined springs.

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1 Proserpine was the child of Demeter, the motherearth. While gathering flowers in the Sicilian fields, she was caught up and carried off by Pluto, king of the Infernal regions, who made her queen of the lower realm, of darkness and death. She was afterwards permitted to leave the Shades for a part of each year and to visit Olympus. She typifies the corn, or grain, which passes from the dark prison in the earth to light, and leaves the light to return again to darkness. In this poem, Swinburne pictures the world as her garden, a place presided over by the Queen of the kingdom of darkness, a spot from which life is continually being carried off to the dark region of oblivion.

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And love, grown faint and fretful,
With lips but half regretful
Sighs, and with eyes forgetful
Weeps that no loves endure.

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 forever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river

Winds somewhere safe to sea.

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.

PASTICHE1

(From Poems and Ballads, 1878) Now the days are all gone over Of our singing, love by lover, Days of summer-coloured seas

Blown adrift through beam and breeze.

Now the nights are all past over
Of our dreaming, dreams that hover
In a mist of fair false things,
Nights afloat on wide wan wings.

Now the loves with faith for mother,
Now the fears with hope for brother,
Scarce are with us as strange words,
Notes from songs of last year's birds.
Now all good that comes or goes is
As the smell of last year's roses,
And the radiance in our eyes
Shot from summer's ere he dies.

Now the morning faintlier risen
Seems no god come forth of prison,
But a bird of plume plucked wing,
Pale with thought of evening.
Now hath hope, outraced in running
Given the torch up of his cunning
And the palm he thought to wear
Even to his own strong child-despair.

A FORSAKEN GARDEN1

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In a coign of the cliff between lowland and highland,

At the sea-down's edge between windward and lee

Walled round with rocks as an inland island, The ghost of a garden fronts the sea.

1 Pastiche (or pasticcio) is the French word for a medley, or a work in imitation of the style of several masters.

1 The scene of this poem is said to be East Dene, Bonchurch, in the Isle of Wight.

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ON THE DEATHS OF THOMAS CARLYLE AND GEORGE ELIOT

Two souls diverse out of our human sight Pass, followed one with love and each with wonder:

The stormy sophist with his mouth d thunder,

Clothed with loud words and mantled in the might

Of darkness and magnificence of night; And one whose eye could smite the night sunder,

Searching if light or no light were there under,

And found in love of loving-kindness light. Duty divine and Thought with eyes of fire Still following Righteousness with deep de sire

Shone stern and firm before her and above Sure stars and sole to steer by; but more sweet Shone lower the loveliest lamp for earths

feet,

The light of little children and their love.

&

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