free-verse296 lines

F'lise

by Algernon Charles Swinburne

Mais o' sont les neiges d'antan?

What shall be said between us here

Among the downs, between the trees,

In fields that knew our feet last year,

In sight of quiet sands and seas,

This year, F'lise?

Who knows what word were best to say?

For last year's leaves lie dead and red

On this sweet day, in this green May,

And barren corn makes bitter bread.

What shall be said?

Here as last year the fields begin,

A fire of flowers and glowing grass;

The old fields we laughed and lingered in,

Seeing each our souls in last year's glass,

F'lise, alas!

Shall we not laugh, shall we not weep,

Not we, though this be as it is?

For love awake or love asleep

Ends in a laugh, a dream, a kiss,

A song like this.

I that have slept awake, and you

Sleep, who last year were well awake.

Though love do all that love can do,

My heart will never ache or break

For your heart's sake.

The great sea, faultless as a flower,

Throbs, trembling under beam and breeze,

And laughs with love of the amorous hour.

I found you fairer once, F'lise,

Than flowers or seas.

We played at bondsman and at queen;

But as the days change men change too;

I find the grey sea's notes of green,

The green sea's fervent flakes of blue,

More fair than you.

Your beauty is not over fair

Now in mine eyes, who am grown up wise.

The smell of flowers in all your hair

Allures not now; no sigh replies

If your heart sighs.

But you sigh seldom, you sleep sound,

You find love's new name good enough.

Less sweet I find it than I found

The sweetest name that ever love

Grew weary of.

My snake with bright bland eyes, my snake

Grown tame and glad to be caressed,

With lips athirst for mine to slake

Their tender fever! who had guessed

You loved me best?

I had died for this last year, to know

You loved me. Who shall turn on fate?

I care not if love come or go

Now, though your love seek mine for mate.

It is too late.

The dust of many strange desires

Lies deep between us; in our eyes

Dead smoke of perishable fires

Flickers, a fume in air and skies,

A steam of sighs.

You loved me and you loved me not;

A little, much, and overmuch.

Will you forget as I forget?

Let all dead things lie dead; none such

Are soft to touch.

I love you and I do not love,

Too much, a little, not at all:

Too much, and never yet enough.

Birds quick to fledge and fly at call

Are quick to fall.

And these love longer now than men,

And larger loves than ours are these.

No diver brings up love again

Dropped once, my beautiful F'lise,

In such cold seas.

Gone deeper than all plummets sound,

Where in the dim green dayless day

The life of such dead things lies bound

As the sea feeds on, wreck and stray

And castaway.

Can I forget? yea, that can I,

And that can all men; so will you,

Alive, or later, when you die.

Ah, but the love you plead was true?

Was mine not too?

I loved you for that name of yours

Long ere we met, and long enough.

Now that one thing of all endures'

The sweetest name that ever love

Waxed weary of.

Like colours in the sea, like flowers,

Like a cat's splendid circled eyes

That wax and wane with love for hours,

Green as green flame, blue-grey like skies,

And soft like sighs'

And all these only like your name,

And your name full of all of these.

I say it, and it sounds the same'

Save that I say it now at ease,

Your name, F'lise.

I said 'she must be swift and white,

And subtly warm, and half perverse,

And sweet like sharp soft fruit to bite,

And like a snake's love lithe and fierce.'

Men have guessed worse.

What was the song I made of you

Here where the grass forgets our feet

As afternoon forgets the dew?

Ah that such sweet things should be fleet,

Such fleet things sweet!

As afternoon forgets the dew,

As time in time forgets all men,

As our old place forgets us two,

Who might have turned to one thing then,

But not again.

O lips that mine have grown into

Like April's kissing May,

O fervent eyelids letting through

Those eyes the greenest of things blue,

The bluest of things grey,

If you were I and I were you,

How could I love you, say?

How could the roseleaf love the rue,

The day love nightfall and her dew,

Though night may love the day?

You loved it may be more than I;

We know not; love is hard to seize,

And all things are not good to try;

And lifelong loves the worst of these

For us, F'lise.

Ah, take the season and have done,

Love well the hour and let it go:

Two souls may sleep and wake up one,

Or dream they wake and find it so,

And then'you know.

Kiss me once hard as though a flame

Lay on my lips and made them fire;

The same lips now, and not the same;

What breath shall fill and re-inspire

A dead desire?

The old song sounds hollower in mine ear

Than thin keen sounds of dead men's speech'

A noise one hears and would not hear;

Too strong to die, too weak to reach

From wave to beach.

We stand on either side the sea,

Stretch hands, blow kisses, laugh and lean

I toward you, you toward me;

But what hears either save the keen

Grey sea between?

A year divides us, love from love,

Though you love now, though I loved then.

The gulf is strait, but deep enough;

Who shall recross, who among men

Shall cross again?

Love was a jest last year, you said,

And what lives surely, surely dies.

Even so; but now that love is dead,

Shall love rekindle from wet eyes,

From subtle sighs?

For many loves are good to see;

Mutable loves, and loves perverse;

But there is nothing, nor shall be,

So sweet, so wicked, but my verse

Can dream of worse.

For we that sing and you that love

Know that which man may, only we.

The rest live under us; above,

Live the great gods in heaven, and see

What things shall be.

So this thing is and must be so;

For man dies, and love also dies.

Though yet love's ghost moves to and fro

The sea-green mirrors of your eyes,

And laughs, and lies.

Eyes coloured like a water-flower,

And deeper than the green sea's glass;

Eyes that remember one sweet hour'

In vain we swore it should not pass;

In vain, alas!

Ah my F'lise, if love or sin,

If shame or fear could hold it fast,

Should we not hold it? Love wears thin,

And they laugh well who laugh the last.

Is it not past?

The gods, the gods are stronger; time

Falls down before them, all men's knees

Bow, all men's prayers and sorrows climb

Like incense towards them; yea, for these

Are gods, F'lise.

Immortal are they, clothed with powers,

Not to be comforted at all;

Lords over all the fruitless hours;

Too great to appease, too high to appal,

Too far to call.

For none shall move the most high gods,

Who are most sad, being cruel; none

Shall break or take away the rods

Wherewith they scourge us, not as one

That smites a son.

By many a name of many a creed

We have called upon them, since the sands

Fell through time's hour-glass first, a seed

Of life; and out of many lands

Have we stretched hands.

When have they heard us? who hath known

Their faces, climbed unto their feet,

Felt them and found them? Laugh or groan,

Doth heaven remurmur and repeat

Sad sounds or sweet?

Do the stars answer? in the night

Have ye found comfort? or by day

Have ye seen gods? What hope, what light,

Falls from the farthest starriest way

On you that pray?

Are the skies wet because we weep,

Or fair because of any mirth?

Cry out; they are gods; perchance they sleep;

Cry; thou shalt know what prayers are worth,

Thou dust and earth.

O earth, thou art fair; O dust, thou art great;

O laughing lips and lips that mourn,

Pray, till ye feel the exceeding weight

Of God's intolerable scorn,

Not to be borne.

Behold, there is no grief like this;

The barren blossom of thy prayer,

Thou shalt find out how sweet it is.

O fools and blind, what seek ye there,

High up in the air?

Ye must have gods, the friends of men,

Merciful gods, compassionate,

And these shall answer you again.

Will ye beat always at the gate,

Ye fools of fate?

Ye fools and blind; for this is sure,

That all ye shall not live, but die.

Lo, what thing have ye found endure?

Or what thing have ye found on high

Past the blind sky?

The ghosts of words and dusty dreams,

Old memories, faiths infirm and dead.

Ye fools; for which among you deems

His prayer can alter green to red

Or stones to bread?

Why should ye bear with hopes and fears

Till all these things be drawn in one,

The sound of iron-footed years,

And all the oppression that is done

Under the sun?

Ye might end surely, surely pass

Out of the multitude of things,

Under the dust, beneath the grass,

Deep in dim death, where no thought stings,

No record clings.

No memory more of love or hate,

No trouble, nothing that aspires,

No sleepless labour thwarting fate,

And thwarted; where no travail tires,

Where no faith fires.

All passes, nought that has been is,

Things good and evil have one end.

Can anything be otherwise

Though all men swear all things would mend

With God to friend?

Can ye beat off one wave with prayer,

Can ye move mountains? bid the flower

Take flight and turn to a bird in the air?

Can ye hold fast for shine or shower

One wingless hour?

Ah sweet, and we too, can we bring

One sigh back, bid one smile revive?

Can God restore one ruined thing,

Or he who slays our souls alive

Make dead things thrive?

Two gifts perforce he has given us yet,

Though sad things stay and glad things fly;

Two gifts he has given us, to forget

All glad and sad things that go by,

And then to die.

We know not whether death be good,

But life at least it will not be:

Men will stand saddening as we stood,

Watch the same fields and skies as we

And the same sea.

Let this be said between us here,

One love grows green when one turns grey;

This year knows nothing of last year;

To-morrow has no more to say

To yesterday.

Live and let live, as I will do,

Love and let love, and so will I.

But, sweet, for me no more with you:

Not while I live, not though I die.

Goodnight, goodbye.