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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=341895" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>A Ballad of Death</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Kneel down, fair Love, and fill thyself with tears,<br>Girdle thyself with sighing for a girth<br>Upon the sides of mirth,<br>Cover thy lips and eyelids, let thine ears<br>Be filled with rumour of people sorrowing;<br>Make thee soft raiment out of woven sighs<br>Upon the flesh to cleave,<br>Set pains therein and many a grievous thing,<br>And many sorrows after each his wise<br>For armlet and for gorget and for sleeve. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">O Love's lute heard about the lands of death,<br>Left hanged upon the trees that were therein;<br>O Love and Time and Sin,<br>Three singing mouths that mourn now underbreath,<br>Three lovers, each one evil spoken of;<br>O smitten lips wherethrough this voice of mine<br>Came softer with her praise;<br>Abide a little for our lady's love.<br>The kisses of her mouth were more than wine,<br>And more than peace the passage of her days. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">O Love, thou knowest if she were good to see.<br>O Time, thou shalt not find in any land<br>Till, cast out of thine hand,<br>The sunlight and the moonlight fail from thee,<br>Another woman fashioned like as this.<br>O Sin, thou knowest that all thy shame in her<br>Was made a goodly thing;<br>Yea, she caught Shame and shamed him with her kiss,<br>With her fair kiss, and lips much lovelier<br>Than lips of amorous roses in late spring. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">By night there stood over against my bed<br>Queen Venus with a hood striped gold and black,<br>Both sides drawn fully back<br>From brows wherein the sad blood failed of red,<br>And temples drained of purple and full of death.<br>Her curled hair had the wave of sea-water<br>And the sea's gold in it.<br>Her eyes were as a dove's that sickeneth.<br>Strewn dust of gold she had shed over her,<br>And pearl and purple and amber on her feet. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Upon her raiment of dyed sendaline<br>Were painted all the secret ways of love<br>And covered things thereof,<br>That hold delight as grape-flowers hold their wine;<br>Red mouths of maidens and red feet of doves,<br>And brides that kept within the bride-chamber<br>Their garment of soft shame,<br>And weeping faces of the wearied loves<br>That swoon in sleep and awake wearier,<br>With heat of lips and hair shed out like flame. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">The tears that through her eyelids fell on me<br>Made mine own bitter where they ran between<br>As blood had fallen therein,<br>She saying; Arise, lift up thine eyes and see<br>If any glad thing be or any good<br>Now the best thing is taken forth of us;<br>Even she to whom all praise<br>Was as one flower in a great multitude,<br>One glorious flower of many and glorious,<br>One day found gracious among many days: </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Even she whose handmaiden was Love--to whom<br>At kissing times across her stateliest bed<br>Kings bowed themselves and shed<br>Pale wine, and honey with the honeycomb,<br>And spikenard bruised for a burnt-offering;<br>Even she between whose lips the kiss became<br>As fire and frankincense;<br>Whose hair was as gold raiment on a king,<br>Whose eyes were as the morning purged with flame,<br>Whose eyelids as sweet savour issuing thence. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then I beheld, and lo on the other side<br>My lady's likeness crowned and robed and dead.<br>Sweet still, but now not red,<br>Was the shut mouth whereby men lived and died.<br>And sweet, but emptied of the blood's blue shade,<br>The great curled eyelids that withheld her eyes.<br>And sweet, but like spoilt gold,<br>The weight of colour in her tresses weighed.<br>And sweet, but as a vesture with new dyes,<br>The body that was clothed with love of old. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Ah! that my tears filled all her woven hair<br>And all the hollow bosom of her gown--<br>Ah! that my tears ran down<br>Even to the place where many kisses were,<br>Even where her parted breast-flowers have place,<br>Even where they are cloven apart--who knows not this?<br>Ah! the flowers cleave apart<br>And their sweet fills the tender interspace;<br>Ah! the leaves grown thereof were things to kiss<br>Ere their fine gold was tarnished at the heart. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Ah! in the days when God did good to me,<br>Each part about her was a righteous thing;<br>Her mouth an almsgiving,<br>The glory of her garments charity,<br>The beauty of her bosom a good deed,<br>In the good days when God kept sight of us;<br>Love lay upon her eyes,<br>And on that hair whereof the world takes heed;<br>And all her body was more virtuous<br>Than souls of women fashioned otherwise. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Now, ballad, gather poppies in thine hands<br>And sheaves of brier and many rusted sheaves<br>Rain-rotten in rank lands,<br>Waste marigold and late unhappy leaves<br>And grass that fades ere any of it be mown;<br>And when thy bosom is filled full thereof<br>Seek out Death's face ere the light altereth,<br>And say &quot;My master that was thrall to Love<br>Is become thrall to Death.&quot;<br>Bow down before him, ballad, sigh and groan.<br>But make no sojourn in thy outgoing;<br>For haply it may be<br>That when thy feet return at evening<br>Death shall come in with thee.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Algernon+Charles+Swinburne">Algernon Charles Swinburne</a><div class=q>
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Girdle thyself with sighing for a girth
Upon the sides of mirth,
Cover thy lips and eyelids, let thine ears
Be filled with rumour of people sorrowing;
Make thee soft raiment out of woven sighs
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