Page:Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1918.djvu/1012

 ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE

The ivy falls with the Bacchanal's hair Over her eyebrows hiding her eyes; The wild vine slipping down leaves bare Her bright breast shortening into sighs; The wild vine slips with the weight of its leaves, But the berried ivy catches and cleaves To the limbs that glitter, the feet that scare The wolf that follows, the fawn that flies.

��813 Chorus from 'Atalanta*

��BEFORE the beginning of years

There came to the making of man Time, with a gift of tears,

Grief, with a glass that ran; Pleasure, with pain for leaven;

Summer, with flowers that fell; Remembrance fallen from heaven,

And madness risen from hell ; Strength without hands to smite,

Love that endures for a breath; Night, the shadow of light,

And life, the shadow of death. And the high gods took in hand Fire, and the falling of tears, And a measure of sliding sand

From under the feet of the years; And froth and drift of the sea;

And dust of the labouring earth; And bodies of things to be

In the houses of death and of birth;

�� �