Quotes from Algernon Charles Swinburne

At the door of life by the gate of breath, There are worse things waiting for men than death.

On the mountains of memory by the world's wellsprings, in all man's eyes, where the light of life of him is on all past things, death only dies.

I will go back to the great sweet mother, Mother and lover of men, the sea. I will go down to her, I and no other, Close with her, kiss her and mix her with me.

A young man with a very good past. [Fr., Un jeune homme d'un bien beau passe.]

Is not Precedent indeed a King of men? A Word from the Psalmist.

The beast faith lives on its own dung.

There is no God found stronger than death; and death is a sleep.

Where might is, the right is: Long purses make strong swords. Let weakness learn meekness: God save the House of Lords!

As a god self-slain on his own strange altar, Death lies dead.

Faith speaks when hope is disassembled; faith lives when hope dies dead.

Here now in his triumph where all things falter, Stretched out on the spoils that his own hand spread, As a god self-slain on his own strange altar, Death lies dead.

When the hounds of spring are on winter's traces,The mother of months in meadow or plainFills the shadows and windy placesWith lisp of leaves and ripple of rain;And the brown bright nightingale amorousIs half assuaged for Itylus,For the Thracian ships and the foreign faces,The tongueless vigil, and all the pain.

In a coign of the cliff between lowland and highland,At the sea-down's edge between windward and lee,Walled round with rocks as an inland island,The ghost of a garden fronts the sea.

For there is no God found stronger than death; and death is a sleep.

For the crown of our life as it closesIs darkness, the fruit there of dust.

We are not sure of sorrow,And joy was never sure.

Sleep; and if life was bitter to thee, pardon,If sweet, give thanks; thou hast no more to live;And to give thanks is good, and to forgive.

Lo, this is she that was the world's delight.

The delight that consumes the desire,The desire that outruns the delight.

I am tired of tears and laughter,And men that laugh and weep;Of what may come hereafterFor men that sow and reap:I am weary of days and hours,Blown buds of barren flowers,Desires and dreams and powersAnd everything but sleep.

If you were queen of pleasure,And I were king of pain,We'd hunt down love together,Pluck out his flying feather,And teach his feet a measure,And find his mouth a rein.

O splendid and sterile Dolores,Our Lady of Pain.

For life is sweet, but after life is death.This is the end of every man's desire.

Ah, yet would God this flesh of mine might beWhere air might wash and long leaves cover me;Where tides of grass break into foam of flowers,Or where the wind's feet shine along the sea.