Page:Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1918.djvu/1011

 ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE

For the stars and the winds are unto her As raiment, as songs of the harp-player; For the risen stars and the fallen cling to her, And the southwest-wind and the west-wind sing.

For winter's rains and ruins are over, And all the season of snows and sins;

The days dividing lover and lover,

The light that loses, the night that wins;

And time remembered is grief forgotten,

And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,

And in green underwood and cover Blossom by blossom the Spring begins.

The full streams feed on flower of rushes, Ripe grasses trammel a travelling foot,

The faint fresh flame of the young year flushes From leaf to flower and flower to fruit;

And fruit and Icif are as gold and fire,

And the oat is heard above the lyre,

And the hoofed heel of a satyr crushes The chestnut-husk at the chestnut-root.

And Pan by noon and Bacchus by night,

Fleeter of foot than the fleet-foot kid, Follows with a dancing and fills with delight

The Maenad and the Bassarid; And soft as lips that laugh and hide The laughing leaves of the trees divide, And screen from seeing and leave in sight The god pursuing, the maiden hid.

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