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Anactoria

by Algernon Charles Swinburne

My life is bitter with thy love; thine eyes

Blind me, thy tresses burn me, thy sharp sighs

Divide my flesh and spirit with soft sound,

And my blood strengthens, and my veins abound.

I pray thee sigh not, speak not, draw not breath;

Let life burn down, and dream it is not death.

I would the sea had hidden us, the fire

(Wilt thou fear that, and fear not my desire?)

Severed the bones that bleach, the flesh that cleaves,

And let our sifted ashes drop like leaves.

I feel thy blood against my blood: my pain

Pains thee, and lips bruise lips, and vein stings vein.

Let fruit be crushed on fruit, let flower on flower,

Breast kindle breast, and either burn one hour.

Why wilt thou follow lesser loves? are thine

Too weak to bear these hands and lips of mine?

I charge thee for my life's sake, O too sweet

To crush love with thy cruel faultless feet,

I charge thee keep thy lips from hers or his,

Sweetest, till theirs be sweeter than my kiss:

Lest I too lure, a swallow for a dove,

Erotion or Erinna to my love.

I would my love could kill thee; I am satiated

With seeing thee live, and fain would have thee dead.

I would earth had thy body as fruit to eat,

And no mouth but some serpent's found thee sweet.

I would find grievous ways to have thee slain,

Intense device, and superflux of pain;

Vex thee with amorous agonies, and shake

Life at thy lips, and leave it there to ache;

Strain out thy soul with pangs too soft to kill,

Intolerable interludes, and infinite ill;

Relapse and reluctation of the breath,

Dumb tunes and shuddering semitones of death.

I am weary of all thy words and soft strange ways,

Of all love's fiery nights and all his days,

And all the broken kisses salt as brine

That shuddering lips make moist with waterish wine,

And eyes the bluer for all those hidden hours

That pleasure fills with tears and feeds from flowers,

Fierce at the heart with fire that half comes through,

But all the flower-like white stained round with blue;

The fervent underlid, and that above

Lifted with laughter or abashed with love;

Thine amorous girdle, full of thee and fair,

And leavings of the lilies in thine hair.

Yea, all sweet words of thine and all thy ways,

And all the fruit of nights and flower of days,

And stinging lips wherein the hot sweet brine

That Love was born of burns and foams like wine,

And eyes insatiable of amorous hours,

Fervent as fire and delicate as flowers,

Coloured like night at heart, but cloven through

Like night with flame, dyed round like night with blue,

Clothed with deep eyelids under and above,

Yea, all thy beauty sickens me with love;

Thy girdle empty of thee and now not fair,

And ruinous lilies in thy languid hair.

Ah, take no thought for Love's sake; shall this be,

And she who loves thy lover not love thee?

Sweet soul, sweet mouth of all that laughs and lives,

Mine is she, very mine; and she forgives.

For I beheld in sleep the light that is

In her high place in Paphos, heard the kiss

Of body and soul that mix with eager tears

And laughter stinging through the eyes and ears;

Saw Love, as burning flame from crown to feet,

Imperishable, upon her storied seat;

Clear eyelids lifted toward the north and south,

A mind of many colours, and a mouth

Of many tunes and kisses; and she bowed,

With all her subtle face laughing aloud,

Bowed down upon me, saying, 'Who doth thee wrong,

Sappho?' but thou, thy body is the song,

Thy mouth the music; thou art more than I,

Though my voice die not till the whole world die;

Though men that hear it madden; though love weep,

Though nature change, though shame be charmed to sleep.

Ah, wilt thou slay me lest I kiss thee dead?

Yet the queen laughed from her sweet heart and said:

'Even she that flies shall follow for thy sake,

And she shall give thee gifts that would not take,

Shall kiss that would not kiss thee' (yea, kiss me)

'When thou wouldst not' when I would not kiss thee!

Ah, more to me than all men as thou art,

Shall not my songs assuage her at the heart?

Ah, sweet to me as life seems sweet to death,

Why should her wrath fill thee with fearful breath?

Nay, sweet, for is she God alone? hath she

Made earth and all the centuries of the sea,

Taught the sun ways to travel, woven most fine

The moonbeams, shed the starbeams forth as wine,

Bound with her myrtles, beaten with her rods,

The young men and the maidens and the gods?

Have we not lips to love with, eyes for tears,

And summer and flower of women and of years?

Stars for the foot of morning, and for noon

Sunlight, and exaltation of the moon;

Waters that answer waters, fields that wear

Lilies, and languor of the Lesbian air?

Beyond those flying feet of fluttered doves,

Are there not other gods for other loves?

Yea, though she scourge thee, sweetest, for my sake,

Blossom not thorns and flowers not blood should break.

Ah that my lips were tuneless lips, but pressed

To the bruised blossom of thy scourged white breast!

Ah that my mouth for Muses' milk were fed

On the sweet blood thy sweet small wounds had bled!

That with my tongue I felt them, and could taste

The faint flakes from thy bosom to the waist!

That I could drink thy veins as wine, and eat

Thy breasts like honey! that from face to feet

Thy body were abolished and consumed,

And in my flesh thy very flesh entombed!

Ah, ah, thy beauty! like a beast it bites,

Stings like an adder, like an arrow smites.

Ah sweet, and sweet again, and seven times sweet,

The paces and the pauses of thy feet!

Ah sweeter than all sleep or summer air

The fallen fillets fragrant from thine hair!

Yea, though their alien kisses do me wrong,

Sweeter thy lips than mine with all their song;

Thy shoulders whiter than a fleece of white,

And flower-sweet fingers, good to bruise or bite

As honeycomb of the inmost honey-cells,

With almond-shaped and roseleaf-coloured shells

And blood like purple blossom at the tips

Quivering; and pain made perfect in thy lips

For my sake when I hurt thee; O that I

Durst crush thee out of life with love, and die,

Die of thy pain and my delight, and be

Mixed with thy blood and molten into thee!

Would I not plague thee dying overmuch?

Would I not hurt thee perfectly? not touch

Thy pores of sense with torture, and make bright

Thine eyes with bloodlike tears and grievous light?

Strike pang from pang as note is struck from note,

Catch the sob's middle music in thy throat,

Take thy limbs living, and new-mould with these

A lyre of many faultless agonies?

Feed thee with fever and famine and fine drouth,

With perfect pangs convulse thy perfect mouth,

Make thy life shudder in thee and burn afresh,

And wring thy very spirit through the flesh?

Cruel? but love makes all that love him well

As wise as heaven and crueller than hell.

Me hath love made more bitter toward thee

Than death toward man; but were I made as he

Who hath made all things to break them one by one,

If my feet trod upon the stars and sun

And souls of men as his have alway trod,

God knows I might be crueller than God.

For who shall change with prayers or thanksgivings

The mystery of the cruelty of things?

Or say what God above all gods and years

With offering and blood-sacrifice of tears,

With lamentation from strange lands, from graves

Where the snake pastures, from scarred mouths of slaves,

From prison, and from plunging prows of ships

Through flamelike foam of the sea's closing lips

With thwartings of strange signs, and wind-blown hair

Of comets, desolating the dim air,

When darkness is made fast with seals and bars,

And fierce reluctance of disastrous stars,

Eclipse, and sound of shaken hills, and wings

Darkening, and blind inexpiable things

With sorrow of labouring moons, and altering light

And travail of the planets of the night,

And weeping of the weary Pleiads seven,

Feeds the mute melancholy lust of heaven?

Is not his incense bitterness, his meat

Murder? his hidden face and iron feet

Hath not man known, and felt them on their way

Threaten and trample all things and every day?

Hath he not sent us hunger? who hath cursed

Spirit and flesh with longing? filled with thirst

Their lips who cried unto him? who bade exceed

The fervid will, fall short the feeble deed,

Bade sink the spirit and the flesh aspire,

Pain animate the dust of dead desire,

And life yield up her flower to violent fate?

Him would I reach, him smite, him desecrate,

Pierce the cold lips of God with human breath,

And mix his immortality with death.

Why hath he made us? what had all we done

That we should live and loathe the sterile sun,

And with the moon wax paler as she wanes,

And pulse by pulse feel time grow through our veins?

Thee too the years shall cover; thou shalt be

As the rose born of one same blood with thee,

As a song sung, as a word said, and fall

Flower-wise, and be not any more at all,

Nor any memory of thee anywhere;

For never Muse has bound above thine hair

The high Pierian flower whose graft outgrows

All summer kinship of the mortal rose

And colour of deciduous days, nor shed

Reflex and flush of heaven about thine head,

Nor reddened brows made pale by floral grief

With splendid shadow from that lordlier leaf.

Yea, thou shalt be forgotten like spilt wine,

Except these kisses of my lips on thine

Brand them with immortality; but me

Men shall not see bright fire nor hear the sea,

Nor mix their hearts with music, nor behold

Cast forth of heaven with feet of awful gold

And plumeless wings that make the bright air blind,

Lightning, with thunder for a hound behind

Hunting through fields unfurrowed and unsown

But in the light and laughter, in the moan

And music, and in grasp of lip and hand

And shudder of water that makes felt on land

The immeasurable tremor of all the sea,

Memories shall mix and metaphors of me.

Like me shall be the shuddering calm of night,

When all the winds of the world for pure delight

Close lips that quiver and fold up wings that ache;

When nightingales are louder for love's sake,

And leaves tremble like lute-strings or like fire;

Like me the one star swooning with desire

Even at the cold lips of the sleepless moon,

As I at thine; like me the waste white noon,

Burnt through with barren sunlight; and like me

The land-stream and the tide-stream in the sea.

I am sick with time as these with ebb and flow,

And by the yearning in my veins I know

The yearning sound of waters; and mine eyes

Burn as that beamless fire which fills the skies

With troubled stars and travailing things of flame;

And in my heart the grief consuming them

Labours, and in my veins the thirst of these,

And all the summer travail of the trees

And all the winter sickness; and the earth,

Filled full with deadly works of death and birth,

Sore spent with hungry lusts of birth and death,

Has pain like mine in her divided breath;

Her spring of leaves is barren, and her fruit

Ashes; her boughs are burdened, and her root

Fibrous and gnarled with poison; underneath

Serpents have gnawn it through with tortuous teeth

Made sharp upon the bones of all the dead,

And wild birds rend her branches overhead.

These, woven as raiment for his word and thought,

These hath God made, and me as these, and wrought

Song, and hath lit it at my lips; and me

Earth shall not gather though she feed on thee.

As a shed tear shalt thou be shed; but I

Lo, earth may labour, men live long and die,

Years change and stars, and the high God devise

New things, and old things wane before his eyes

Who wields and wrecks them, being more strong than they

But, having made me, me he shall not slay.

Nor slay nor satiate, like those herds of his

Who laugh and live a little, and their kiss

Contents them, and their loves are swift and sweet,

And sure death grasps and gains them with slow feet,

Love they or hate they, strive or bow their knees

And all these end; he hath his will of these.

Yea, but albeit he slay me, hating me

Albeit he hide me in the deep dear sea

And cover me with cool wan foam, and ease

This soul of mine as any soul of these,

And give me water and great sweet waves, and make

The very sea's name lordlier for my sake,

The whole sea sweeter, albeit I die indeed

And hide myself and sleep and no man heed,

Of me the high God hath not all his will.

Blossom of branches, and on each high hill

Clear air and wind, and under in clamorous vales

Fierce noises of the fiery nightingales,

Buds burning in the sudden spring like fire,

The wan washed sand and the waves' vain desire,

Sails seen like blown white flowers at sea, and words

That bring tears swiftest, and long notes of birds

Violently singing till the whole world sings

I Sappho shall be one with all these things,

With all high things for ever; and my face

Seen once, my songs once heard in a strange place,

Cleave to men's lives, and waste the days thereof

With gladness and much sadness and long love.

Yea, they shall say, earth's womb has borne in vain

New things, and never this best thing again;

Borne days and men, borne fruits and wars and wine,

Seasons and songs, but no song more like mine.

And they shall know me as ye who have known me here,

Last year when I loved Atthis, and this year

When I love thee; and they shall praise me, and say

'She hath all time as all we have our day,

Shall she not live and have her will', even I?

Yea, though thou diest, I say I shall not die.

For these shall give me of their souls, shall give

Life, and the days and loves wherewith I live,

Shall quicken me with loving, fill with breath,

Save me and serve me, strive for me with death.

Alas, that neither moon nor snow nor dew

Nor all cold things can purge me wholly through,

Assuage me nor allay me nor appease,

Till supreme sleep shall bring me bloodless ease;

Till time wax faint in all his periods;

Till fate undo the bondage of the gods,

And lay, to slake and satiate me all through,

Lotus and Lethe on my lips like dew,

And shed around and over and under me

Thick darkness and the insuperable sea.