Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. V. Browning to Rupert Brooke

Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909)

Extracts from Songs before Sunrise: From the Epilogue to Songs before Sunrise

AS one that ere a June day rise

Makes seaward for the dawn, and tries

The water with delighted limbs

That taste the sweet dark sea, and swims

Right eastward under strengthening skies,

And sees the gradual rippling rims

Of waves whence day breaks blossom-wise

Take fire ere light peer well above,

And laughs from all his heart with love;

And softlier swimming with raised head

Feels the full flower of morning shed

And fluent sunrise round him rolled

That laps and laves his body bold

With fluctuant heaven in water’s stead,

And urgent through the growing gold

Strikes, and sees all the spray flash red,

And his soul takes the sun, and yearns

For joy wherewith the sea’s heart burns;

So the soul seeking through the dark

Heavenward, a dove without an ark,

Transcends the unnavigable sea

Of years that wear out memory;

So calls, a sunward-singing lark,

In the ear of souls that should be free;

So points them toward the sun for mark

Who steer not for the stress of waves,

And seek strange helmsmen, and are slaves.

For if the swimmer’s eastward eye

Must see no sunrise—must put by

The hope that lifted him and led

Once, to have light about his head,

To see beneath the clear low sky

The green foam-whitened wave wax red

And all the morning’s banner fly—

Then, as earth’s helpless hopes go down,

Let earth’s self in the dark tides drown.

Yea, if no morning must behold

Man, other than were they now cold,

And other deeds than past deeds done,

Nor any near or far-off sun

Salute him risen and sunlike-souled,

Free, boundless, fearless, perfect, one,

Let man’s world die like worlds of old,

And here in heaven’s sight only be

The sole sun on the worldless sea.