Page:Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1918.djvu/1016

 ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE

Now all strange hours and all strange loves are over, Dreams and desires and sombre songs and sweet, Hast thou found place at the great knees and feet

Of some pale Titan-woman like a lover, Such as thy vision her solicited, Under the shadow of her fair vast head,

The deep division of prodigious breasts,

The solemn slope of mighty limbs asleep, The weight of awful tresses that still keep

The savour and shade of old-world pine-forests Where the wet hill-winds weep ?

��Hast thou found any likeness for thy vision ?

O gardener of strange flowers, what bud, what bloom, What of despair, of rapture, of derision,

What of life is there, what of ill or good ?

Are the fruits gray like dust or bright like blood ? Docs the dim ground grow any seed of ours,

The faint fields quicken any terrene root,

In low lands where the sun and moon are mute And all the stars keep silence ? Are there flowers

At all, or any fruit ?

��Alas, but though my flying song flies after,

O sweet strange elder singer, thy more fleet Singing, and footprints of thy fleeter feet,

Some dim derision of mysterious laughter

From the blind tongueless warders of the dead, Some gainless glimpse of Proserpine's veil'd head,

�� �