free-verse192 lines

To Victor Hugo

by Algernon Charles Swinburne

In the fair days when God

By man as godlike trod,

And each alike was Greek, alike was free,

God's lightning spared, they said,

Alone the happier head

Whose laurels screened it; fruitless grace for thee,

To whom the high gods gave of right

Their thunders and their laurels and their light.

Sunbeams and bays before

Our master's servants wore,

For these Apollo left in all men's lands;

But far from these ere now

And watched with jealous brow

Lay the blind lightnings shut between God's hands,

And only loosed on slaves and kings

The terror of the tempest of their wings.

Born in those younger years

That shone with storms of spears

And shook in the wind blown from a dead world's pyre,

When by her back-blown hair

Napoleon caught the fair

And fierce Republic with her feet of fire,

And stayed with iron words and hands

Her flight, and freedom in a thousand lands:

Thou sawest the tides of things

Close over heads of kings,

And thine hand felt the thunder, and to thee

Laurels and lightnings were

As sunbeams and soft air

Mixed each in other, or as mist with sea

Mixed, or as memory with desire,

Or the lute's pulses with the louder lyre.

For thee man's spirit stood

Disrobed of flesh and blood,

And bare the heart of the most secret hours;

And to thine hand more tame

Than birds in winter came

High hopes and unknown flying forms of powers,

And from thy table fed, and sang

Till with the tune men's ears took fire and rang.

Even all men's eyes and ears

With fiery sound and tears

Waxed hot, and cheeks caught flame and eyelids light,

At those high songs of thine

That stung the sense like wine,

Or fell more soft than dew or snow by night,

Or wailed as in some flooded cave

Sobs the strong broken spirit of a wave.

But we, our master, we

Whose hearts, uplift to thee,

Ache with the pulse of thy remembered song,

We ask not nor await

From the clenched hands of fate,

As thou, remission of the world's old wrong;

Respite we ask not, nor release;

Freedom a man may have, he shall not peace.

Though thy most fiery hope

Storm heaven, to set wide ope

The all-sought-for gate whence God or Chance debars

All feet of men, all eyes

The old night resumes her skies,

Her hollow hiding-place of clouds and stars,

Where nought save these is sure in sight;

And, paven with death, our days are roofed with night.

One thing we can; to be

Awhile, as men may, free;

But not by hope or pleasure the most stern

Goddess, most awful-eyed,

Sits, but on either side

Sit sorrow and the wrath of hearts that burn,

Sad faith that cannot hope or fear,

And memory grey with many a flowerless year.

Not that in stranger's wise

I lift not loving eyes

To the fair foster-mother France, that gave

Beyond the pale fleet foam

Help to my sires and home,

Whose great sweet breast could shelter those and save

Whom from her nursing breasts and hands

Their land cast forth of old on gentler lands.

Not without thoughts that ache

For theirs and for thy sake,

I, born of exiles, hail thy banished head;

I whose young song took flight

Toward the great heat and light

On me a child from thy far splendour shed,

From thine high place of soul and song,

Which, fallen on eyes yet feeble, made them strong.

Ah, not with lessening love

For memories born hereof,

I look to that sweet mother-land, and see

The old fields and fair full streams,

And skies, but fled like dreams

The feet of freedom and the thought of thee;

And all between the skies and graves

The mirth of mockers and the shame of slaves.

She, killed with noisome air,

Even she! and still so fair,

Who said 'Let there be freedom,' and there was

Freedom; and as a lance

The fiery eyes of France

Touched the world's sleep and as a sleep made pass

Forth of men's heavier ears and eyes

Smitten with fire and thunder from new skies.

Are they men's friends indeed

Who watch them weep and bleed?

Because thou hast loved us, shall the gods love thee?

Thou, first of men and friend,

Seest thou, even thou, the end?

Thou knowest what hath been, knowest thou what shall be?

Evils may pass and hopes endure;

But fate is dim, and all the gods obscure.

O nursed in airs apart,

O poet highest of heart,

Hast thou seen time, who hast seen so many things?

Are not the years more wise,

More sad than keenest eyes,

The years with soundless feet and sounding wings?

Passing we hear them not, but past

The clamour of them thrills us, and their blast.

Thou art chief of us, and lord;

Thy song is as a sword

Keen-edged and scented in the blade from flowers;

Thou art lord and king; but we

Lift younger eyes, and see

Less of high hope, less light on wandering hours;

Hours that have borne men down so long,

Seen the right fail, and watched uplift the wrong.

But thine imperial soul,

As years and ruins roll

To the same end, and all things and all dreams

With the same wreck and roar

Drift on the dim same shore,

Still in the bitter foam and brackish streams

Tracks the fresh water-spring to be

And sudden sweeter fountains in the sea.

As once the high God bound

With many a rivet round

Man's saviour, and with iron nailed him through,

At the wild end of things,

Where even his own bird's wings

Flagged, whence the sea shone like a drop of dew,

From Caucasus beheld below

Past fathoms of unfathomable snow;

So the strong God, the chance

Central of circumstance,

Still shows him exile who will not be slave;

All thy great fame and thee

Girt by the dim strait sea

With multitudinous walls of wandering wave;

Shows us our greatest from his throne

Fate-stricken, and rejected of his own.

Yea, he is strong, thou say'st,

A mystery many-faced,

The wild beasts know him and the wild birds flee;

The blind night sees him, death

Shrinks beaten at his breath,

And his right hand is heavy on the sea:

We know he hath made us, and is king;

We know not if he care for anything.

Thus much, no more, we know;

He bade what is be so,

Bade light be and bade night be, one by one;

Bade hope and fear, bade ill

And good redeem and kill,

Till all men be aweary of the sun

And his world burn in its own flame

And bear no witness longer of his name.

Yet though all this be thus,

Be those men praised of us

Who have loved and wrought and sorrowed and not sinned

For fame or fear or gold,

Nor waxed for winter cold,

Nor changed for changes of the worldly wind;

Praised above men of men be these,

Till this one world and work we know shall cease.

Yea, one thing more than this,

We know that one thing is,

The splendour of a spirit without blame,

That not the labouring years

Blind-born, nor any fears,

Nor men nor any gods can tire or tame;

But purer power with fiery breath

Fills, and exalts above the gulfs of death.

Praised above men be thou,

Whose laurel-laden brow,

Made for the morning, droops not in the night;

Praised and beloved, that none

Of all thy great things done

Flies higher than thy most equal spirit's flight;

Praised, that nor doubt nor hope could bend

Earth's loftiest head, found upright to the end.