Page:Songs of the Springtides - Swinburne (1880).pdf/78

 What living things were happiest if not we? But knowing not love nor change nor wrath nor wrong, No more we knew of song.

Song, and the secrets of it, and their might, What blessings curse it and what curses bless, I know them since my spirit had first in sight, Clear as thy song's words or the live sun's light, The small dark body's Lesbian loveliness That held the fire eternal; eye and ear Were as a god's to see, a god's to hear, Through all his hours of daily and nightly chime, The sundering of the two-edged spear of time: The spear that pierces even the sevenfold shields Of mightiest Memory, mother of all songs made, And wastes all songs as roseleaves kissed and frayed As here the harvest of the foam-flowered fields;