ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE

Where stingless pleasure has no foam or fang Behind the unopening closure of her lips ? Is it not well where soul from body slips

And flesh from bone divides without a pang As dew from flower-bell drips ?

It is enough ; the end and the beginning

Are one thing to thee, who art past the end. O hand unclasp' d of unbeholden friend,

For thee no fruits to pluck, no palms for winning, No triumph and no labour and no lust, Only dead yew-leaves and a little dust.

O quiet eyes wherein the light saith naught, Whereto the day is dumb, nor any night With obscure finger silences your sight,

Nor in your speech the sudden soul speaks thought, Sleep, and have sleep for light.

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 here 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, Hast thou found sown, what gathered in the gloom ?

What of despair, of rapture, of derision,

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