Rococo We have drained his lips at leisure, Till there's not left to drain A single sob of pleasure, A single pulse of pain. Dream that the lips once breathless We have heard from hidden places We have seen on fervent faces The pallor of strange tears: Remembrance may recover The snake that hides and hisses In heaven we twain have known; The grief of cruel kisses, The joy whose mouth makes moan; The pulses' pause and measure, Where in one furtive vein Throbs through the heart of pleasure 881 We have done with tears and treasons The years that burn and break, Men's days and dreams, Juliette; Life treads down love in flying, Bring all dead things and dying, Reaped sheaf and ruined fruit, Our three days' love lies slain; And latter flower of pain. Breathe close upon the ashes, It may be flame will leap; Lift up the lids and weep. Algernon Charles Swinburne [1837-1909] RONDEL THESE many years since we began to be, What have the Gods done with us? what with me, Grief a fixed star, and joy a vane that veers, These many years. With her, my Love,—with her have they done well? Sweet things or sad, such things as no man hears? The Song of the Bower From eyes more dear to me than starriest spheres, But if tears ever touched, for any grief, Those eyelids folded like a white-rose leaf, 883 Deep double shells where through the eye-flower peers, Algernon Charles Swinburne [1837-1909] THE OBLATION Ask nothing more of me, sweet; Heart of my heart, were it more, All things were nothing to give I that have love and no more He that hath more, let him give; Here, that must love you to live. THE SONG OF THE BOWER From "The House of Life" SAY, is it day, is it dusk in thy bower, Free Love has leaped to that innermost chamber, Nay, but What waters still image its leaves torn apart? What were my prize, could I enter thy bower, Bosom then heaving that now lies forlorn. What is it keeps me afar from thy bower, My spirit, my body, so fain to be there? Waters engulfing or fires that devour?— Earth heaped against me or death in the air? Nay, but in day-dreams, for terror, for pity, The trees wave their heads with an omen to tell; Nay, but in night-dreams, throughout the dark city, The hours, clashed together, lose count in the bell. Shall I not one day remember thy bower, One day when all days are one day to me?Thinking, "I stirred not, and yet had the power," Yearning, "Ah God, if again it might be!" Peace, peace! such a small lamp illumes, on this highway, So dimly so few steps in front of my feet,— Yet shows me that her way is parted from my way. Out of sight, beyond light, at what goal may we meet? Dante Gabriel Rossetti [1828-1882] Maud Muller 885 SONG WE break the glass, whose sacred wine Should e'er the hallowed toy profane; But still the old, impassioned ways Thine image chambered in my brain, Edward Coate Pinkney [1802-1828] MAUD MULLER MAUD MULLER on a summer's day Beneath her torn hat glowed the wealth Singing, she wrought, and her merry glee But when she glanced to the far-off town, The sweet song died, and a vague unrest A wish that she hardly dared to own, |