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Dedication From "Astrophel and Other Poems"

by Algernon Charles Swinburne

The sea of the years that endure not

Whose tide shall endure till we die

And know what the seasons assure not,

If death be or life be a lie,

Sways hither the spirit and thither,

A waif in the swing of the sea

Whose wrecks are of memories that wither

As leaves of a tree.

We hear not and hail not with greeting

The sound of the wings of the years,

The storm of the sound of them beating,

That none till it pass from him hears:

But tempest nor calm can imperil

The treasures that fade not or fly;

Change bids them not change and be sterile,

Death bids them not die.

Hearts plighted in youth to the royal

High service of hope and of song,

Sealed fast for endurance as loyal,

And proved of the years as they throng,

Conceive not, believe not, and fear not

That age may be other than youth;

That faith and that friendship may hear not

And utter not truth.

Not yesterday's light nor to-morrow's

Gleams nearer or clearer than gleams,

Though joys be forgotten and sorrows

Forgotten as changes of dreams,

The dawn of the days unforgotten

That noon could eclipse not or slay,

Whose fruits were as children begotten

Of dawn upon day.

The years that were flowerful and fruitless,

The years that were fruitful and dark,

The hopes that were radiant and rootless,

The hopes that were winged for their mark,

Lie soft in the sepulchres fashioned

Of hours that arise and subside,

Absorbed and subdued and impassioned,

In pain or in pride.

But far in the night that entombs them

The starshine as sunshine is strong,

And clear through the cloud that resumes them

Remembrance, a light and a song,

Rings lustrous as music and hovers

As birds that impend on the sea,

And thoughts that their prison-house covers

Arise and are free.

Forgetfulness deep as a prison

Holds days that are dead for us fast

Till the sepulchre sees rearisen

The spirit whose reign is the past,

Disentrammelled of darkness, and kindled

With life that is mightier than death,

When the life that obscured it has dwindled

And passed as a breath.

But time nor oblivion may darken

Remembrance whose name will be joy

While memory forgets not to hearken,

While manhood forgets not the boy

Who heard and exulted in hearing

The songs of the sunrise of youth

Ring radiant above him, unfearing

And joyous as truth.

Truth, winged and enkindled with rapture

And sense of the radiance of yore,

Fulfilled you with power to recapture

What never might singer before,

The life, the delight, and the sorrow

Of troublous and chivalrous years

That knew not of night or of morrow,

Of hopes or of fears.

But wider the wing and the vision

That quicken the spirit have spread

Since memory beheld with derision

Man's hope to be more than his dead.

From the mists and the snows and the thunders

Your spirit has brought for us forth

Light, music, and joy in the wonders

And charms of the north.

The wars and the woes and the glories

That quicken and lighten and rain

From the clouds of its chronicled stories,

The passion, the pride, and the pain,

Whose echoes were mute and the token

Was lost of the spells that they spake,

Rise bright at your bidding, unbroken

Of ages that break.

For you, and for none of us other,

Time is not: the dead that must live

Hold commune with you as a brother

By grace of the life that you give.

The heart that was in them is in you,

Their soul in your spirit endures:

The strength of their song is the sinew

Of this that is yours.

Hence is it that life, everlasting

As light and as music, abides

In the sound of the surge of it, casting

Sound back to the surge of the tides,

Till sons of the sons of the Norsemen

Watch, hurtling to windward and lee,

Round England, unbacked of her horsemen,

The steeds of the sea.