Click in the field, then press CTRL+C to copy the HTML code
<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=341933" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Anactoria</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">MY LIFE is bitter with thy love; thine eyes<br>Blind me, thy tresses burn me, thy sharp sighs<br>Divide my flesh and spirit with soft sound,<br>And my blood strengthens, and my veins abound.<br>I pray thee sigh not, speak not, draw not breath;<br>Let life burn down, and dream it is not death.<br>I would the sea had hidden us, the fire<br>(Wilt thou fear that, and fear not my desire?)<br>Severed the bones that bleach, the flesh that cleaves,<br>And let our sifted ashes drop like leaves.<br>I feel thy blood against my blood: my pain<br>Pains thee, and lips bruise lips, and vein stings vein.<br>Let fruit be crushed on fruit, let flower on flower,<br>Breast kindle breast, and either burn one hour.<br>Why wilt thou follow lesser loves? are thine<br>Too weak to bear these hands and lips of mine?<br>I charge thee for my life’s sake, O too sweet<br>To crush love with thy cruel faultless feet,<br>I charge thee keep thy lips from hers or his,<br>Sweetest, till theirs be sweeter than my kiss:<br>Lest I too lure, a swallow for a dove,<br>Erotion or Erinna to my love.<br>I would my love could kill thee; I am satiated<br>With seeing thee live, and fain would have thee dead.<br>I would earth had thy body as fruit to eat,<br>And no mouth but some serpent’s found thee sweet.<br>I would find grievous ways to have thee slain,<br>Intense device, and superflux of pain;<br>Vex thee with amorous agonies, and shake<br>Life at thy lips, and leave it there to ache;<br>Strain out thy soul with pangs too soft to kill,<br>Intolerable interludes, and infinite ill;<br>Relapse and reluctation of the breath,<br>Dumb tunes and shuddering semitones of death.<br>I am weary of all thy words and soft strange ways,<br>Of all love’s fiery nights and all his days,<br>And all the broken kisses salt as brine<br>That shuddering lips make moist with waterish wine,<br>And eyes the bluer for all those hidden hours<br>That pleasure fills with tears and feeds from flowers,<br>Fierce at the heart with fire that half comes through,<br>But all the flower-like white stained round with blue;<br>The fervent underlid, and that above<br>Lifted with laughter or abashed with love;<br>Thine amorous girdle, full of thee and fair,<br>And leavings of the lilies in thine hair.<br>Yea, all sweet words of thine and all thy ways,<br>And all the fruit of nights and flower of days,<br>And stinging lips wherein the hot sweet brine<br>That Love was born of burns and foams like wine,<br>And eyes insatiable of amorous hours,<br>Fervent as fire and delicate as flowers,<br>Coloured like night at heart, but cloven through<br>Like night with flame, dyed round like night with blue,<br>Clothed with deep eyelids under and above—<br>Yea, all thy beauty sickens me with love;<br>Thy girdle empty of thee and now not fair,<br>And ruinous lilies in thy languid hair.<br>Ah, take no thought for Love’s sake; shall this be,<br>And she who loves thy lover not love thee?<br>Sweet soul, sweet mouth of all that laughs and lives,<br>Mine is she, very mine; and she forgives.<br>For I beheld in sleep the light that is<br>In her high place in Paphos, heard the kiss<br>Of body and soul that mix with eager tears<br>And laughter stinging through the eyes and ears;<br>Saw Love, as burning flame from crown to feet,<br>Imperishable, upon her storied seat;<br>Clear eyelids lifted toward the north and south,<br>A mind of many colours, and a mouth<br>Of many tunes and kisses; and she bowed,<br>With all her subtle face laughing aloud,<br>Bowed down upon me, saying, ‘Who doth thee wrong,<br>Sappho?’ but thou—thy body is the song,<br>Thy mouth the music; thou art more than I,<br>Though my voice die not till the whole world die;<br>Though men that hear it madden; though love weep,<br>Though nature change, though shame be charmed to sleep.<br>Ah, wilt thou slay me lest I kiss thee dead?<br>Yet the queen laughed from her sweet heart and said:<br>‘Even she that flies shall follow for thy sake,<br>And she shall give thee gifts that would not take,<br>Shall kiss that would not kiss thee’ (yea, kiss me)<br>‘When thou wouldst not’—when I would not kiss thee!<br>Ah, more to me than all men as thou art,<br>Shall not my songs assuage her at the heart?<br>Ah, sweet to me as life seems sweet to death,<br>Why should her wrath fill thee with fearful breath?<br>Nay, sweet, for is she God alone? hath she<br>Made earth and all the centuries of the sea,<br>Taught the sun ways to travel, woven most fine<br>The moonbeams, shed the starbeams forth as wine,<br>Bound with her myrtles, beaten with her rods,<br>The young men and the maidens and the gods?<br>Have we not lips to love with, eyes for tears,<br>And summer and flower of women and of years?<br>Stars for the foot of morning, and for noon<br>Sunlight, and exaltation of the moon;<br>Waters that answer waters, fields that wear<br>Lilies, and languor of the Lesbian air?<br>Beyond those flying feet of fluttered doves,<br>Are there not other gods for other loves?<br>Yea, though she scourge thee, sweetest, for my sake,<br>Blossom not thorns and flowers not blood should break.<br>Ah that my lips were tuneless lips, but pressed<br>To the bruised blossom of thy scourged white breast!<br>Ah that my mouth for Muses’ milk were fed<br>On the sweet blood thy sweet small wounds had bled!<br>That with my tongue I felt them, and could taste<br>The faint flakes from thy bosom to the waist!<br>That I could drink thy veins as wine, and eat<br>Thy breasts like honey! that from face to feet<br>Thy body were abolished and consumed,<br>And in my flesh thy very flesh entombed!<br>Ah, ah, thy beauty! like a beast it bites,<br>Stings like an adder, like an arrow smites.<br>Ah sweet, and sweet again, and seven times sweet,<br>The paces and the pauses of thy feet!<br>Ah sweeter than all sleep or summer air<br>The fallen fillets fragrant from thine hair!<br>Yea, though their alien kisses do me wrong,<br>Sweeter thy lips than mine with all their song;<br>Thy shoulders whiter than a fleece of white,<br>And flower-sweet fingers, good to bruise or bite<br>As honeycomb of the inmost honey-cells,<br>With almond-shaped and roseleaf-coloured shells<br>And blood like purple blossom at the tips<br>Quivering; and pain made perfect in thy lips<br>For my sake when I hurt thee; O that I<br>Durst crush thee out of life with love, and die,<br>Die of thy pain and my delight, and be<br>Mixed with thy blood and molten into thee!<br>Would I not plague thee dying overmuch?<br>Would I not hurt thee perfectly? not touch<br>Thy pores of sense with torture, and make bright<br>Thine eyes with bloodlike tears and grievous light?<br>Strike pang from pang as note is struck from note,<br>Catch the sob’s middle music in thy throat,<br>Take thy limbs living, and new-mould with these<br>A lyre of many faultless agonies?<br>Feed thee with fever and famine and fine drouth,<br>With perfect pangs convulse thy perfect mouth,<br>Make thy life shudder in thee and burn afresh,<br>And wring thy very spirit through the flesh?<br>Cruel? but love makes all that love him well<br>As wise as heaven and crueller than hell.<br>Me hath love made more bitter toward thee<br>Than death toward man; but were I made as he<br>Who hath made all things to break them one by one,<br>If my feet trod upon the stars and sun<br>And souls of men as his have alway trod,<br>God knows I might be crueller than God.<br>For who shall change with prayers or thanksgivings<br>The mystery of the cruelty of things?<br>Or say what God above all gods and years<br>With offering and blood-sacrifice of tears,<br>With lamentation from strange lands, from graves<br>Where the snake pastures, from scarred mouths of slaves,<br>From prison, and from plunging prows of ships<br>Through flamelike foam of the sea’s closing lips—<br>With thwartings of strange signs, and wind-blown hair<br>Of comets, desolating the dim air,<br>When darkness is made fast with seals and bars,<br>And fierce reluctance of disastrous stars,<br>Eclipse, and sound of shaken hills, and wings<br>Darkening, and blind inexpiable things—<br>With sorrow of labouring moons, and altering light<br>And travail of the planets of the night,<br>And weeping of the weary Pleiads seven,<br>Feeds the mute melancholy lust of heaven?<br>Is not his incense bitterness, his meat<br>Murder? his hidden face and iron feet<br>Hath not man known, and felt them on their way<br>Threaten and trample all things and every day?<br>Hath he not sent us hunger? who hath cursed<br>Spirit and flesh with longing? filled with thirst<br>Their lips who cried unto him? who bade exceed<br>The fervid will, fall short the feeble deed,<br>Bade sink the spirit and the flesh aspire,<br>Pain animate the dust of dead desire,<br>And life yield up her flower to violent fate?<br>Him would I reach, him smite, him desecrate,<br>Pierce the cold lips of God with human breath,<br>And mix his immortality with death.<br>Why hath he made us? what had all we done<br>That we should live and loathe the sterile sun,<br>And with the moon wax paler as she wanes,<br>And pulse by pulse feel time grow through our veins?<br>Thee too the years shall cover; thou shalt be<br>As the rose born of one same blood with thee,<br>As a song sung, as a word said, and fall<br>Flower-wise, and be not any more at all,<br>Nor any memory of thee anywhere;<br>For never Muse has bound above thine hair<br>The high Pierian flower whose graft outgrows<br>All summer kinship of the mortal rose<br>And colour of deciduous days, nor shed<br>Reflex and flush of heaven about thine head,<br>Nor reddened brows made pale by floral grief<br>With splendid shadow from that lordlier leaf.<br>Yea, thou shalt be forgotten like spilt wine,<br>Except these kisses of my lips on thine<br>Brand them with immortality; but me—<br>Men shall not see bright fire nor hear the sea,<br>Nor mix their hearts with music, nor behold<br>Cast forth of heaven with feet of awful gold<br>And plumeless wings that make the bright air blind,<br>Lightning, with thunder for a hound behind<br>Hunting through fields unfurrowed and unsown—<br>But in the light and laughter, in the moan<br>And music, and in grasp of lip and hand<br>And shudder of water that makes felt on land<br>The immeasurable tremor of all the sea,<br>Memories shall mix and metaphors of me.<br>Like me shall be the shuddering calm of night,<br>When all the winds of the world for pure delight<br>Close lips that quiver and fold up wings that ache;<br>When nightingales are louder for love’s sake,<br>And leaves tremble like lute-strings or like fire;<br>Like me the one star swooning with desire<br>Even at the cold lips of the sleepless moon,<br>As I at thine; like me the waste white noon,<br>Burnt through with barren sunlight; and like me<br>The land-stream and the tide-stream in the sea.<br>I am sick with time as these with ebb and flow,<br>And by the yearning in my veins I know<br>The yearning sound of waters; and mine eyes<br>Burn as that beamless fire which fills the skies<br>With troubled stars and travailing things of flame;<br>And in my heart the grief consuming them<br>Labours, and in my veins the thirst of these,<br>And all the summer travail of the trees<br>And all the winter sickness; and the earth,<br>Filled full with deadly works of death and birth,<br>Sore spent with hungry lusts of birth and death,<br>Has pain like mine in her divided breath;<br>Her spring of leaves is barren, and her fruit<br>Ashes; her boughs are burdened, and her root<br>Fibrous and gnarled with poison; underneath<br>Serpents have gnawn it through with tortuous teeth<br>Made sharp upon the bones of all the dead,<br>And wild birds rend her branches overhead.<br>These, woven as raiment for his word and thought,<br>These hath God made, and me as these, and wrought<br>Song, and hath lit it at my lips; and me<br>Earth shall not gather though she feed on thee.<br>As a shed tear shalt thou be shed; but I—<br>Lo, earth may labour, men live long and die,<br>Years change and stars, and the high God devise<br>New things, and old things wane before his eyes<br>Who wields and wrecks them, being more strong than they—<br>But, having made me, me he shall not slay.<br>Nor slay nor satiate, like those herds of his<br>Who laugh and live a little, and their kiss<br>Contents them, and their loves are swift and sweet,<br>And sure death grasps and gains them with slow feet,<br>Love they or hate they, strive or bow their knees—<br>And all these end; he hath his will of these.<br>Yea, but albeit he slay me, hating me—<br>Albeit he hide me in the deep dear sea<br>And cover me with cool wan foam, and ease<br>This soul of mine as any soul of these,<br>And give me water and great sweet waves, and make<br>The very sea’s name lordlier for my sake,<br>The whole sea sweeter—albeit I die indeed<br>And hide myself and sleep and no man heed,<br>Of me the high God hath not all his will.<br>Blossom of branches, and on each high hill<br>Clear air and wind, and under in clamorous vales<br>Fierce noises of the fiery nightingales,<br>Buds burning in the sudden spring like fire,<br>The wan washed sand and the waves’ vain desire,<br>Sails seen like blown white flowers at sea, and words<br>That bring tears swiftest, and long notes of birds<br>Violently singing till the whole world sings—<br>I Sappho shall be one with all these things,<br>With all high things for ever; and my face<br>Seen once, my songs once heard in a strange place,<br>Cleave to men’s lives, and waste the days thereof<br>With gladness and much sadness and long love.<br>Yea, they shall say, earth’s womb has borne in vain<br>New things, and never this best thing again;<br>Borne days and men, borne fruits and wars and wine,<br>Seasons and songs, but no song more like mine.<br>And they shall know me as ye who have known me here,<br>Last year when I loved Atthis, and this year<br>When I love thee; and they shall praise me, and say<br>‘She hath all time as all we have our day,<br>Shall she not live and have her will’—even I?<br>Yea, though thou diest, I say I shall not die.<br>For these shall give me of their souls, shall give<br>Life, and the days and loves wherewith I live,<br>Shall quicken me with loving, fill with breath,<br>Save me and serve me, strive for me with death.<br>Alas, that neither moon nor snow nor dew<br>Nor all cold things can purge me wholly through,<br>Assuage me nor allay me nor appease,<br>Till supreme sleep shall bring me bloodless ease;<br>Till time wax faint in all his periods;<br>Till fate undo the bondage of the gods,<br>And lay, to slake and satiate me all through,<br>Lotus and Lethe on my lips like dew,<br>And shed around and over and under me<br>Thick darkness and the insuperable sea.</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>
<img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share">
<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=341933" data-title="Anactoria de Algernon Charles Swinburne" data-description="MY LIFE is bitter with thy love; thine eyes
Blind me, thy tresses burn me, thy sharp sighs
Divide my flesh and spirit with soft sound,
And my blood strengthens, and my veins abound.
I pray thee sigh not, speak not, draw not breath;
Let life burn d..."></div>
</div>
</div>