free-verse28 lines
Algernon Charles Swinburne.
by Francis William Lauderdale AdamsShrieks out of smoke, a flame of dung-straw fire
That is not quenched but hath for only fruit
What writhes and dies not in its rotten root:
Two things made flesh, the visible desire
To match in filth the skunk, the ape in ire, {87a}
Mouthing before the mirrors with wild foot
Beyond all feebler footprint of pursuit,
The perfect twanger of the Chinese lyre!
A heart with generous virtues run to seed
In vices making all a jumbled creed:
A soul that knows not love nor trust nor shame,
But cuts itself with knives to bawl and bleed -
If thou we've known of late, art still the same,
What need, O soul, to sign thee with thy name?
Once on thy lips the golden-honeyed bees
Settling made sweet the heart that was not strong,
And sky and earth and sea burst into song: {87b}
Once on thine eyes the light of agonies
Flashed through the soul and robbed the days of ease. {87c}
But tunes turn stale when love turns babe, and long
The exiled gentlemen grow fat with wrong.
And peasants, workmen, beggars, what are these? {87d}
O you who sang the Italian smoke above, -
Mud-lark of Freedom, pipe of that vile band
Whose envy slays the tyrant, not the love
Of these poor souls none have the keeping of -
It is your hand - it is your pandar hand
Smites the bruised mouth of pilloried Ireland!