<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=341979" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Epilogue</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Between the wave-ridge and the strand<br>I let you forth in sight of land,<br> Songs that with storm-crossed wings and eyes<br> Strain eastward till the darkness dies;<br>Let signs and beacons fall or stand,<br> And stars and balefires set and rise;<br>Ye, till some lordlier lyric hand<br> Weave the beloved brows their crown,<br> At the beloved feet lie down.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">O, whatsoever of life or light<br>Love hath to give you, what of might<br> Or heart or hope is yours to live,<br> I charge you take in trust to give<br>For very love's sake, in whose sight,<br> Through poise of hours alternative<br>And seasons plumed with light or night,<br> Ye live and move and have your breath<br> To sing with on the ridge of death.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I charge you faint not all night through<br>For love's sake that was breathed on you<br> To be to you as wings and feet<br> For travel, and as blood to heat<br>And sense of spirit to renew<br> And bloom of fragrance to keep sweet<br>And fire of purpose to keep true<br> The life, if life in such things be,<br> That I would give you forth of me.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Out where the breath of war may bear,<br>Out in the rank moist reddened air<br> That sounds and smells of death, and hath<br> No light but death's upon its path<br>Seen through the black wind's tangled hair,<br> I send you past the wild time's wrath<br>To find his face who bade you bear<br> Fruit of his seed to faith and love,<br> That he may take the heart thereof.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">By day or night, by sea or street,<br>Fly till ye find and clasp his feet<br> And kiss as worshippers who bring<br> Too much love on their lips to sing,<br>But with hushed heads accept and greet<br> The presence of some heavenlier thing<br>In the near air; so may ye meet<br> His eyes, and droop not utterly<br> For shame's sake at the light you see.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Not utterly struck spiritless<br>For shame's sake and unworthiness<br> Of these poor forceless hands that come<br> Empty, these lips that should be dumb,<br>This love whose seal can but impress<br> These weak word-offerings wearisome<br>Whose blessings have not strength to bless<br> Nor lightnings fire to burn up aught<br> Nor smite with thunders of their thought.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">One thought they have, even love; one light,<br>Truth, that keeps clear the sun by night;<br> One chord, of faith as of a lyre;<br> One heat, of hope as of a fire;<br>One heart, one music, and one might,<br> One flame, one altar, and one choir;<br>And one man's living head in sight<br> Who said, when all time's sea was foam,<br> &quot;Let there be Rome&quot;--and there was Rome.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">As a star set in space for token<br>Like a live word of God's mouth spoken,<br> Visible sound, light audible,<br> In the great darkness thick as hell<br>A stanchless flame of love unsloken,<br> A sign to conquer and compel,<br>A law to stand in heaven unbroken<br> Whereby the sun shines, and wherethrough<br> Time's eldest empires are made new;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">So rose up on our generations<br>That light of the most ancient nations,<br> Law, life, and light, on the world's way,<br> The very God of very day,<br>The sun-god; from their star-like stations<br> Far down the night in disarray<br>Fled, crowned with fires of tribulations,<br> The suns of sunless years, whose light<br> And life and law were of the night.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The naked kingdoms quenched and stark<br>Drave with their dead things down the dark,<br> Helmless; their whole world, throne by throne,<br> Fell, and its whole heart turned to stone,<br>Hopeless; their hands that touched our ark<br> Withered; and lo, aloft, alone,<br>On time's white waters man's one bark,<br> Where the red sundawn's open eye<br> Lit the soft gulf of low green sky.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">So for a season piloted<br>It sailed the sunlight, and struck red<br> With fire of dawn reverberate<br> The wan face of incumbent fate<br>That paused half pitying overhead<br> And almost had foregone the freight<br>Of those dark hours the next day bred<br> For shame, and almost had forsworn<br> Service of night for love of morn.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then broke the whole night in one blow,<br>Thundering; then all hell with one throe<br> Heaved, and brought forth beneath the stroke<br> Death; and all dead things moved and woke<br>That the dawn's arrows had brought low,<br> At the great sound of night that broke<br>Thundering, and all the old world-wide woe;<br> And under night's loud-sounding dome<br> Men sought her, and she was not Rome.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Still with blind hands and robes blood-wet<br>Night hangs on heaven, reluctant yet,<br> With black blood dripping from her eyes<br> On the soiled lintels of the skies,<br>With brows and lips that thirst and threat,<br> Heart-sick with fear lest the sun rise,<br>And aching with her fires that set,<br> And shuddering ere dawn bursts her bars,<br> Burns out with all her beaten stars.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">In this black wind of war they fly<br>Now, ere that hour be in the sky<br> That brings back hope, and memory back,<br> And light and law to lands that lack;<br>That spiritual sweet hour whereby<br> The bloody-handed night and black<br>Shall be cast out of heaven to die;<br> Kingdom by kingdom, crown by crown,<br> The fires of darkness are blown down.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Yet heavy, grievous yet the weight<br>Sits on us of imperfect fate.<br> From wounds of other days and deeds<br> Still this day's breathing body bleeds;<br>Still kings for fear and slaves for hate<br> Sow lives of men on earth like seeds<br>In the red soil they saturate;<br> And we, with faces eastward set,<br> Stand sightless of the morning yet.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And many for pure sorrow's sake<br>Look back and stretch back hands to take<br> Gifts of night's giving, ease and sleep,<br> Flowers of night's grafting, strong to steep<br>The soul in dreams it will not break,<br> Songs of soft hours that sigh and sweep<br>Its lifted eyelids nigh to wake<br> With subtle plumes and lulling breath<br> That soothe its weariness to death.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And many, called of hope and pride,<br>Fall ere the sunrise from our side.<br> Fresh lights and rumours of fresh fames<br> That shift and veer by night like flames,<br>Shouts and blown trumpets, ghosts that glide<br> Calling, and hail them by dead names,<br>Fears, angers, memories, dreams divide<br> Spirit from spirit, and wear out<br> Strong hearts of men with hope and doubt.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Till time beget and sorrow bear<br>The soul-sick eyeless child despair,<br> That comes among us, mad and blind,<br> With counsels of a broken mind,<br>Tales of times dead and woes that were,<br> And, prophesying against mankind,<br>Shakes out the horror of her hair<br> To take the sunlight with its coils<br> And hold the living soul in toils.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">By many ways of death and moods<br>Souls pass into their servitudes.<br> Their young wings weaken, plume by plume<br> Drops, and their eyelids gather gloom<br>And close against man's frauds and feuds,<br> And their tongues call they know not whom<br>To help in their vicissitudes;<br> For many slaveries are, but one<br> Liberty, single as the sun.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">One light, one law, that burns up strife,<br>And one sufficiency of life.<br> Self-stablished, the sufficing soul<br> Hears the loud wheels of changes roll,<br>Sees against man man bare the knife,<br> Sees the world severed, and is whole;<br>Sees force take dowerless fraud to wife,<br> And fear from fraud's incestuous bed<br> Crawl forth and smite his father dead:</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Sees death made drunk with war, sees time<br>Weave many-coloured crime with crime,<br> State overthrown on ruining state,<br> And dares not be disconsolate.<br>Only the soul hath feet to climb,<br> Only the soul hath room to wait,<br>Hath brows and eyes to hold sublime<br> Above all evil and all good,<br> All strength and all decrepitude.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">She only, she since earth began,<br>The many-minded soul of man,<br> From one incognizable root<br> That bears such divers-coloured fruit,<br>Hath ruled for blessing or for ban<br> The flight of seasons and pursuit;<br>She regent, she republican,<br> With wide and equal eyes and wings<br> Broods on things born and dying things.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Even now for love or doubt of us<br>The hour intense and hazardous<br> Hangs high with pinions vibrating<br> Whereto the light and darkness cling,<br>Dividing the dim season thus,<br> And shakes from one ambiguous wing<br>Shadow, and one is luminous,<br> And day falls from it; so the past<br> Torments the future to the last.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And we that cannot hear or see<br>The sounds and lights of liberty,<br> The witness of the naked God<br> That treads on burning hours unshod<br>With instant feet unwounded; we<br> That can trace only where he trod<br>By fire in heaven or storm at sea,<br> Not know the very present whole<br> And naked nature of the soul;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">We that see wars and woes and kings,<br>And portents of enormous things,<br> Empires, and agonies, and slaves,<br> And whole flame of town-swallowing graves;<br>That hear the harsh hours clap sharp wings<br> Above the roar of ranks like waves,<br>From wreck to wreck as the world swings;<br> Know but that men there are who see<br> And hear things other far than we.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">By the light sitting on their brows,<br>The fire wherewith their presence glows,<br> The music falling with their feet,<br> The sweet sense of a spirit sweet<br>That with their speech or motion grows<br> And breathes and burns men's hearts with heat;<br>By these signs there is none but knows<br> Men who have life and grace to give,<br> Men who have seen the soul and live.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">By the strength sleeping in their eyes,<br>The lips whereon their sorrow lies<br> Smiling, the lines of tears unshed,<br> The large divine look of one dead<br>That speaks out of the breathless skies<br> In silence, when the light is shed<br>Upon man's soul of memories;<br> The supreme look that sets love free,<br> The look of stars and of the sea;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">By the strong patient godhead seen<br>Implicit in their mortal mien,<br> The conscience of a God held still<br> And thunders ruled by their own will<br>And fast-bound fires that might burn clean<br> This worldly air that foul things fill,<br>And the afterglow of what has been,<br> That, passing, shows us without word<br> What they have seen, what they have heard,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">By all these keen and burning signs<br>The spirit knows them and divines.<br> In bonds, in banishment, in grief,<br> Scoffed at and scourged with unbelief,<br>Foiled with false trusts and thwart designs,<br> Stripped of green days and hopes in leaf,<br>Their mere bare body of glory shines<br> Higher, and man gazing surelier sees<br> What light, what comfort is of these.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">So I now gazing; till the sense<br>Being set on fire of confidence<br> Strains itself sunward, feels out far<br> Beyond the bright and morning star,<br>Beyond the extreme wave's refluence,<br> To where the fierce first sunbeams are<br>Whose fire intolerant and intense<br> As birthpangs whence day burns to be<br> Parts breathless heaven from breathing sea.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I see not, know not, and am blest,<br>Master, who know that thou knowest,<br> Dear lord and leader, at whose hand<br> The first days and the last days stand,<br>With scars and crowns on head and breast,<br> That fought for love of the sweet land<br>Or shall fight in her latter quest;<br> All the days armed and girt and crowned<br> Whose glories ring thy glory round.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Thou sawest, when all the world was blind,<br>The light that should be of mankind,<br> The very day that was to be;<br> And how shalt thou not sometime see<br>Thy city perfect to thy mind<br> Stand face to living face with thee,<br>And no miscrowned man's head behind;<br> The hearth of man, the human home,<br> The central flame that shall be Rome?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">As one that ere a June day rise<br>Makes seaward for the dawn, and tries<br> The water with delighted limbs<br> That taste the sweet dark sea, and swims<br>Right eastward under strengthening skies,<br> And sees the gradual rippling rims<br>Of waves whence day breaks blossom-wise<br> Take fire ere light peer well above,<br> And laughs from all his heart with love;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And softlier swimming with raised head<br>Feels the full flower of morning shed<br> And fluent sunrise round him rolled<br> That laps and laves his body bold<br>With fluctuant heaven in water's stead,<br> And urgent through the growing gold<br>Strikes, and sees all the spray flash red,<br> And his soul takes the sun, and yearns<br> For joy wherewith the sea's heart burns;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">So the soul seeking through the dark<br>Heavenward, a dove without an ark,<br> Transcends the unnavigable sea<br> Of years that wear out memory;<br>So calls, a sunward-singing lark,<br> In the ear of souls that should be free;<br>So points them toward the sun for mark<br> Who steer not for the stress of waves,<br> And seek strange helmsmen, and are slaves.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">For if the swimmer's eastward eye<br>Must see no sunrise--must put by<br> The hope that lifted him and led<br> Once, to have light about his head,<br>To see beneath the clear low sky<br> The green foam-whitened wave wax red<br>And all the morning's banner fly -<br> Then, as earth's helpless hopes go down,<br> Let earth's self in the dark tides drown.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Yea, if no morning must behold<br>Man, other than were they now cold,<br> And other deeds than past deeds done,<br> Nor any near or far-off sun<br>Salute him risen and sunlike-souled,<br> Free, boundless, fearless, perfect, one,<br>Let man's world die like worlds of old,<br> And here in heaven's sight only be<br> The sole sun on the worldless 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=341979" data-title="Epilogue de Algernon Charles Swinburne" data-description="Between the wave-ridge and the strand I let you forth in sight of land, Songs that with storm-crossed wings and eyes Strain eastward till the darkness dies; Let signs and beacons fall or stand, And stars and balefires set and rise; Ye, till som..."></div> </div> </div>

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