Algernon Charles Swinburne Quotes

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.

Body and spirit are twins: God only knows which is which.

Today will die tomorrow.

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.

Blossom by blossom the spring begins.

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.

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.

The tadpole poet will never grow into anything bigger than a frog.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Marvellous mercies and infinite love.

Where might is, the right is: Long purses make strong swords. Let weakness learn meekness: God save the House of Lords!

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

Time turns the old days to derision, Our loves into corpses or wives.

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

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.

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

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.

In hawthorn-time the heart grows light.

Thou has conquered, O pale Galilean.

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.

Love is more cruel than lust.

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

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.

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.

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

Sorrow, on wing through the world for ever, Here and there for awhile would borrow Rest, if rest might haply deliver Sorrow.

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.

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.

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.

The tadpole poet will never grow into anything bigger than a frog; not though in that stage of development he should puff and blow himself till he bursts with windy adulation at the heels of the laureled ox.

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

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.

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

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

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