free-verse500 lines

Thalassius

by Algernon Charles Swinburne

Upon the flowery forefront of the year,

One wandering by the grey-green April sea

Found on a reach of shingle and shallower sand

Inlaid with starrier glimmering jewellery

Left for the sun's love and the light wind's cheer

Along the foam-flowered strand

Breeze-brightened, something nearer sea than land

Though the last shoreward blossom-fringe was near,

A babe asleep with flower-soft face that gleamed

To sun and seaward as it laughed and dreamed,

Too sure of either love for either's fear,

Albeit so birdlike slight and light, it seemed

Nor man nor mortal child of man, but fair

As even its twin-born tenderer spray-flowers were,

That the wind scatters like an Oread's hair.

For when July strewed fire on earth and sea

The last time ere that year,

Out of the flame of morn Cymothoe

Beheld one brighter than the sunbright sphere

Move toward her from its fieriest heart, whence trod

The live sun's very God,

Across the foam-bright water-ways that are

As heavenlier heavens with star for answering star,

And on her eyes and hair and maiden mouth

Felt a kiss falling fierier than the South

And heard above afar

A noise of songs and wind-enamoured wings

And lutes and lyres of milder and mightier strings,

And round the resonant radiance of his car

Where depth is one with height,

Light heard as music, music seen as light.

And with that second moondawn of the spring's

That fosters the first rose,

A sun-child whiter than the sunlit snows

Was born out of the world of sunless things

That round the round earth flows and ebbs and flows.

But he that found the sea-flower by the sea

And took to foster like a graft of earth

Was born of man's most highest and heavenliest birth,

Free-born as winds and stars and waves are free;

A warrior grey with glories more than years,

Though more of years than change the quick to dead

Had rained their light and darkness on his head;

A singer that in time's and memory's ears

Should leave such words to sing as all his peers

Might praise with hallowing heat of rapturous tears

Till all the days of human flight were fled.

And at his knees his fosterling was fed

Not with man's wine and bread

Nor mortal mother-milk of hopes and fears,

But food of deep memorial days long sped;

For bread with wisdom and with song for wine

Clear as the full calm's emerald hyaline.

And from his grave glad lips the boy would gather

Fine honey of song-notes goldener than gold,

More sweet than bees make of the breathing heather,

That he, as glad and bold,

Might drink as they, and keep his spirit from cold.

And the boy loved his laurel-laden hair

As his own father's risen on the eastern air,

And that less white brow-binding bayleaf bloom

More than all flowers his father's eyes relume;

And those high songs he heard,

More than all notes of any landward bird,

More than all sounds less free

Than the wind's quiring to the choral sea.

High things the high song taught him; how the breath

Too frail for life may be more strong than death;

And this poor flash of sense in life, that gleams

As a ghost's glory in dreams,

More stabile than the world's own heart's root seems,

By that strong faith of lordliest love which gives

To death's own sightless-seeming eyes a light

Clearer, to death's bare bones a verier might,

Than shines or strikes from any man that lives.

How he that loves life overmuch shall die

The dog's death, utterly:

And he that much less loves it than he hates

All wrongdoing that is done

Anywhere always underneath the sun

Shall live a mightier life than time's or fate's.

One fairer thing he shewed him, and in might

More strong than day and night

Whose strengths build up time's towering period:

Yea, one thing stronger and more high than God,

Which if man had not, then should God not be:

And that was Liberty.

And gladly should man die to gain, he said,

Freedom; and gladlier, having lost, lie dead.

For man's earth was not, nor the sweet sea-waves

His, nor his own land, nor its very graves,

Except they bred not, bore not, hid not slaves:

But all of all that is,

Were one man free in body and soul, were his.

And the song softened, even as heaven by night

Softens, from sunnier down to starrier light,

And with its moonbright breath

Blessed life for death's sake, and for life's sake death.

Till as the moon's own beam and breath confuse

In one clear hueless haze of glimmering hues

The sea's line and the land's line and the sky's,

And light for love of darkness almost dies,

As darkness only lives for light's dear love,

Whose hands the web of night is woven of,

So in that heaven of wondrous words were life

And death brought out of strife;

Yea, by that strong spell of serene increase

Brought out of strife to peace.

And the song lightened, as the wind at morn

Flashes, and even with lightning of the wind

Night's thick-spun web is thinned

And all its weft unwoven and overworn

Shrinks, as might love from scorn.

And as when wind and light on water and land

Leap as twin gods from heavenward hand in hand,

And with the sound and splendour of their leap

Strike darkness dead, and daunt the spirit of sleep,

And burn it up with fire;

So with the light that lightened from the lyre

Was all the bright heat in the child's heart stirred

And blown with blasts of music into flame

Till even his sense became

Fire, as the sense that fires the singing bird

Whose song calls night by name.

And in the soul within the sense began

The manlike passion of a godlike man,

And in the sense within the soul again

Thoughts that make men of gods and gods of men.

For love the high song taught him: love that turns

God's heart toward man as man's to Godward; love

That life and death and life are fashioned of,

From the first breath that burns

Half kindled on the flowerlike yeanling's lip,

So light and faint that life seems like to slip,

To that yet weaklier drawn

When sunset dies of night's devouring dawn.

But the man dying not wholly as all men dies

If aught be left of his in live men's eyes

Out of the dawnless dark of death to rise;

If aught of deed or word

Be seen for all time or of all time heard.

Love, that though body and soul were overthrown

Should live for love's sake of itself alone,

Though spirit and flesh were one thing doomed and dead,

Not wholly annihilated.

Seeing even the hoariest ash-flake that the pyre

Drops, and forgets the thing was once afire

And gave its heart to feed the pile's full flame

Till its own heart its own heat overcame,

Outlives its own life, though by scarce a span,

As such men dying outlive themselves in man,

Outlive themselves for ever; if the heat

Outburn the heart that kindled it, the sweet

Outlast the flower whose soul it was, and flit

Forth of the body of it

Into some new shape of a strange perfume

More potent than its light live spirit of bloom,

How shall not something of that soul relive,

That only soul that had such gifts to give

As lighten something even of all men's doom

Even from the labouring womb

Even to the seal set on the unopening tomb?

And these the loving light of song and love

Shall wrap and lap round and impend above,

Imperishable; and all springs born illume

Their sleep with brighter thoughts than wake the dove

To music, when the hillside winds resume

The marriage-song of heather-flower and broom

And all the joy thereof.

And hate the song too taught him: hate of all

That brings or holds in thrall

Of spirit or flesh, free-born ere God began,

The holy body and sacred soul of man.

And wheresoever a curse was or a chain,

A throne for torment or a crown for bane

Rose, moulded out of poor men's molten pain,

There, said he, should man's heaviest hate be set

Inexorably, to faint not or forget

Till the last warmth bled forth of the last vein

In flesh that none should call a king's again,

Seeing wolves and dogs and birds that plague-strike air

Leave the last bone of all the carrion bare.

And hope the high song taught him: hope whose eyes

Can sound the seas unsoundable, the skies

Inaccessible of eyesight; that can see

What earth beholds not, hear what wind and sea

Hear not, and speak what all these crying in one

Can speak not to the sun.

For in her sovereign eyelight all things are

Clear as the closest seen and kindlier star

That marries morn and even and winter and spring

With one love's golden ring.

For she can see the days of man, the birth

Of good and death of evil things on earth

Inevitable and infinite, and sure

As present pain is, or herself is pure.

Yea, she can hear and see, beyond all things

That lighten from before Time's thunderous wings

Through the awful circle of wheel-winged periods,

The tempest of the twilight of all Gods:

And higher than all the circling course they ran

The sundawn of the spirit that was man.

And fear the song too taught him; fear to be

Worthless the dear love of the wind and sea

That bred him fearless, like a sea-mew reared

In rocks of man's foot feared,

Where nought of wingless life may sing or shine.

Fear to wax worthless of that heaven he had

When all the life in all his limbs was glad

And all the drops in all his veins were wine

And all the pulses music; when his heart,

Singing, bade heaven and wind and sea bear part

In one live song's reiterance, and they bore:

Fear to go crownless of the flower he wore

When the winds loved him and the waters knew,

The blithest life that clove their blithe life through

With living limbs exultant, or held strife

More amorous than all dalliance aye anew

With the bright breath and strength of their large life,

With all strong wrath of all sheer winds that blew,

All glories of all storms of the air that fell

Prone, ineluctable,

With roar from heaven of revel, and with hue

As of a heaven turned hell.

For when the red blast of their breath had made

All heaven aflush with light more dire than shade,

He felt it in his blood and eyes and hair

Burn as if all the fires of the earth and air

Had laid strong hold upon his flesh, and stung

The soul behind it as with serpent's tongue,

Forked like the loveliest lightnings: nor could bear

But hardly, half distraught with strong delight,

The joy that like a garment wrapped him round

And lapped him over and under

With raiment of great light

And rapture of great sound

At every loud leap earthward of the thunder

From heaven's most furthest bound:

So seemed all heaven in hearing and in sight,

Alive and mad with glory and angry joy,

That something of its marvellous mirth and might

Moved even to madness, fledged as even for flight,

The blood and spirit of one but mortal boy.

So, clothed with love and fear that love makes great,

And armed with hope and hate,

He set first foot upon the spring-flowered ways

That all feet pass and praise.

And one dim dawn between the winter and spring,

In the sharp harsh wind harrying heaven and earth

To put back April that had borne his birth

From sunward on her sunniest shower-struck wing,

With tears and laughter for the dew-dropt thing,

Slight as indeed a dew-drop, by the sea

One met him lovelier than all men may be,

God-featured, with god's eyes; and in their might

Somewhat that drew men's own to mar their sight,

Even of all eyes drawn toward him: and his mouth

Was as the very rose of all men's youth,

One rose of all the rose-beds in the world:

But round his brows the curls were snakes that curled,

And like his tongue a serpent's; and his voice

Speaks death, and bids rejoice.

Yet then he spake no word, seeming as dumb,

A dumb thing mild and hurtless; nor at first

From his bowed eyes seemed any light to come,

Nor his meek lips for blood or tears to thirst:

But as one blind and mute in mild sweet wise

Pleading for pity of piteous lips and eyes,

He strayed with faint bare lily-lovely feet

Helpless, and flowerlike sweet:

Nor might man see, not having word hereof,

That this of all gods was the great god Love.

And seeing him lovely and like a little child

That wellnigh wept for wonder that it smiled

And was so feeble and fearful, with soft speech

The youth bespake him softly; but there fell

From the sweet lips no sweet word audible

That ear or thought might reach:

No sound to make the dim cold silence glad,

No breath to thaw the hard harsh air with heat;

Only the saddest smile of all things sweet,

Only the sweetest smile of all things sad.

And so they went together one green way

Till April dying made free the world for May;

And on his guide suddenly Love's face turned,

And in his blind eyes burned

Hard light and heat of laughter; and like flame

That opens in a mountain's ravening mouth

To blear and sear the sunlight from the south,

His mute mouth opened, and his first word came:

'Knowest thou me now by name?'

And all his stature waxed immeasurable,

As of one shadowing heaven and lightening hell;

And statelier stood he than a tower that stands

And darkens with its darkness far-off sands

Whereon the sky leans red;

And with a voice that stilled the winds he said:

'I am he that was thy lord before thy birth,

I am he that is thy lord till thou turn earth:

I make the night more dark, and all the morrow

Dark as the night whose darkness was my breath:

O fool, my name is sorrow;

Thou fool, my name is death.'

And he that heard spake not, and looked right on

Again, and Love was gone.

Through many a night toward many a wearier day

His spirit bore his body down its way.

Through many a day toward many a wearier night

His soul sustained his sorrows in her sight.

And earth was bitter, and heaven, and even the sea

Sorrowful even as he.

And the wind helped not, and the sun was dumb;

And with too long strong stress of grief to be

His heart grew sere and numb.

And one bright eve ere summer in autumn sank

At stardawn standing on a grey sea-bank

He felt the wind fitfully shift and heave

As toward a stormier eve;

And all the wan wide sea shuddered; and earth

Shook underfoot as toward some timeless birth,

Intolerable and inevitable; and all

Heaven, darkling, trembled like a stricken thrall.

And far out of the quivering east, and far

From past the moonrise and its guiding star,

Began a noise of tempest and a light

That was not of the lightning; and a sound

Rang with it round and round

That was not of the thunder; and a flight

As of blown clouds by night,

That was not of them; and with songs and cries

That sang and shrieked their soul out at the skies

A shapeless earthly storm of shapes began

From all ways round to move in on the man,

Clamorous against him silent; and their feet

Were as the wind's are fleet,

And their shrill songs were as wild birds' are sweet.

And as when all the world of earth was wronged

And all the host of all men driven afoam

By the red hand of Rome,

Round some fierce amphitheatre overthronged

With fair clear faces full of bloodier lust

Than swells and stings the tiger when his mood

Is fieriest after blood

And drunk with trampling of the murderous must

That soaks and stains the tortuous close-coiled wood

Made monstrous with its myriad-mustering brood,

Face by fair face panted and gleamed and pressed,

And breast by passionate breast

Heaved hot with ravenous rapture, as they quaffed

The red ripe full fume of the deep live draught,

The sharp quick reek of keen fresh bloodshed, blown

Through the dense deep drift up to the emperor's throne

From the under steaming sands

With clamour of all-applausive throats and hands,

Mingling in mirthful time

With shrill blithe mockeries of the lithe-limbed mime:

So from somewhence far forth of the unbeholden,

Dreadfully driven from over and after and under,

Fierce, blown through fifes of brazen blast and golden,

With sound of chiming waves that drown the thunder

Or thunder that strikes dumb the sea's own chimes,

Began the bellowing of the bull-voiced mimes,

Terrible; firs bowed down as briars or palms

Even at the breathless blast as of a breeze

Fulfilled with clamour and clangour and storms of psalms;

Red hands rent up the roots of old-world trees,

Thick flames of torches tossed as tumbling seas

Made mad the moonless and infuriate air

That, ravening, revelled in the riotous hair

And raiment of the furred Bassarides.

So came all those in on him; and his heart,

As out of sleep suddenly struck astart,

Danced, and his flesh took fire of theirs, and grief

Was as a last year's leaf

Blown dead far down the wind's way; and he set

His pale mouth to the brightest mouth it met

That laughed for love against his lips, and bade

Follow; and in following all his blood grew glad

And as again a sea-bird's; for the wind

Took him to bathe him deep round breast and brow

Not as it takes a dead leaf drained and thinned,

But as the brightest bay-flower blown on bough,

Set springing toward it singing: and they rode

By many a vine-leafed, many a rose-hung road,

Exalt with exultation; many a night

Set all its stars upon them as for spies

On many a moon-bewildering mountain-height

Where he rode only by the fierier light

Of his dread lady's hot sweet hungering eyes.

For the moon wandered witless of her way,

Spell-stricken by strong magic in such wise

As wizards use to set the stars astray.

And in his ears the music that makes mad

Beat always; and what way the music bade,

That alway rode he; nor was any sleep

His, nor from height nor deep.

But heaven was as red iron, slumberless,

And had no heart to bless;

And earth lay sere and darkling as distraught,

And help in her was nought.

Then many a midnight, many a morn and even,

His mother, passing forth of her fair heaven,

With goodlier gifts than all save gods can give

From earth or from the heaven where sea-things live,

With shine of sea-flowers through the bay-leaf braid

Woven for a crown her foam-white hands had made

To crown him with land's laurel and sea-dew,

Sought the sea-bird that was her boy: but he

Sat panther-throned beside Erigone,

Riding the red ways of the revel through

Midmost of pale-mouthed passion's crownless crew.

Till on some winter's dawn of some dim year

He let the vine-bit on the panther's lip

Slide, and the green rein slip,

And set his eyes to seaward, nor gave ear

If sound from landward hailed him, dire or dear;

And passing forth of all those fair fierce ranks

Back to the grey sea-banks,

Against a sea-rock lying, aslant the steep,

Fell after many sleepless dreams on sleep.

And in his sleep the dun green light was shed

Heavily round his head

That through the veil of sea falls fathom-deep,

Blurred like a lamp's that when the night drops dead

Dies; and his eyes gat grace of sleep to see

The deep divine dark dayshine of the sea,

Dense water-walls and clear dusk water-ways,

Broad-based, or branching as a sea-flower sprays

That side or this dividing; and anew

The glory of all her glories that he knew.

And in sharp rapture of recovering tears

He woke on fire with yearnings of old years,

Pure as one purged of pain that passion bore,

Ill child of bitter mother; for his own

Looked laughing toward him from her midsea throne,

Up toward him there ashore.

Thence in his heart the great same joy began,

Of child that made him man:

And turned again from all hearts else on quest,

He communed with his own heart, and had rest.

And like sea-winds upon loud waters ran

His days and dreams together, till the joy

Burned in him of the boy.

Till the earth's great comfort and the sweet sea's breath

Breathed and blew life in where was heartless death,

Death spirit-stricken of soul-sick days, where strife

Of thought and flesh made mock of death and life.

And grace returned upon him of his birth

Where heaven was mixed with heavenlike sea and earth;

And song shot forth strong wings that took the sun

From inward, fledged with might of sorrow and mirth

And father's fire made mortal in his son.

Nor was not spirit of strength in blast and breeze

To exalt again the sun's child and the sea's;

For as wild mares in Thessaly grow great

With child of ravishing winds, that violate

Their leaping length of limb with manes like fire

And eyes outburning heaven's

With fires more violent than the lightning levin's

And breath drained out and desperate of desire,

Even so the spirit in him, when winds grew strong,

Grew great with child of song.

Nor less than when his veins first leapt for joy

To draw delight in such as burns a boy,

Now too the soul of all his senses felt

The passionate pride of deep sea-pulses dealt

Through nerve and jubilant vein

As from the love and largess of old time,

And with his heart again

The tidal throb of all the tides keep rhyme

And charm him from his own soul's separate sense

With infinite and invasive influence

That made strength sweet in him and sweetness strong,

Being now no more a singer, but a song.

Till one clear day when brighter sea-wind blew

And louder sea-shine lightened, for the waves

Were full of godhead and the light that saves,

His father's, and their spirit had pierced him through,

He felt strange breath and light all round him shed

That bowed him down with rapture; and he knew

His father's hand, hallowing his humbled head,

And the old great voice of the old good time, that said:

"Child of my sunlight and the sea, from birth

A fosterling and fugitive on earth;

Sleepless of soul as wind or wave or fire,

A manchild with an ungrown God's desire;

Because thou hast loved nought mortal more than me,

Thy father, and thy mother-hearted sea;

Because thou hast set thine heart to sing, and sold

Life and life's love for song, God's living gold;

Because thou hast given thy flower and fire of youth

To feed men's hearts with visions, truer than truth;

Because thou hast kept in those world-wandering eyes

The light that makes me music of the skies;

Because thou hast heard with world-unwearied ears

The music that puts light into the spheres;

Have therefore in thine heart and in thy mouth

The sound of song that mingles north and south,

The song of all the winds that sing of me,

And in thy soul the sense of all the sea."