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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=341985" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Faustine</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">LEAN BACK, and get some minutes’ peace;<br>Let your head lean<br>Back to the shoulder with its fleece<br>Of locks, Faustine.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The shapely silver shoulder stoops,<br>Weighed over clean<br>With state of splendid hair that droops<br>Each side, Faustine.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Let me go over your good gifts<br>That crown you queen;<br>A queen whose kingdom ebbs and shifts<br>Each week, Faustine.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Bright heavy brows well gathered up:<br>White gloss and sheen;<br>Carved lips that make my lips a cup<br>To drink, Faustine,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Wine and rank poison, milk and blood,<br>Being mixed therein<br>Since first the devil threw dice with God<br>For you, Faustine.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Your naked new-born soul, their stake,<br>Stood blind between;<br>God said “let him that wins her take<br>And keep Faustine.”</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But this time Satan throve, no doubt:<br>Long since, I ween,<br>God’s part in you was battered out;<br>Long since, Faustine.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The die rang sideways as it fell,<br>Rang cracked and thin,<br>Like a man’s laughter heard in hell<br>Far down, Faustine,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">A shadow of laughter like a sigh,<br>Dead sorrow’s kin;<br>So rang, thrown down, the devil’s die<br>That won Faustine.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">A suckling of his breed you were,<br>One hard to wean;<br>But God, who lost you, left you fair,<br>We see, Faustine.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">You have the face that suits a woman<br>For her soul’s screen—<br>The sort of beauty that’s called human<br>In hell, Faustine.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">You could do all things but be good<br>Or chaste of mien;<br>And that you would not if you could,<br>We know, Faustine.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Even he who cast seven devils out<br>Of Magdalene<br>Could hardly do as much, I doubt,<br>For you, Faustine.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Did Satan make you to spite God?<br>Or did God mean<br>To scourge with scorpions for a rod<br>Our sins, Faustine?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I know what queen at first you were,<br>As though I had seen<br>Red gold and black imperious hair<br>Twice crown Faustine.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">As if your fed sarcophagus<br>Spared flesh and skin,<br>You come back face to face with us,<br>The same Faustine.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">She loved the games men played with death,<br>Where death must win;<br>As though the slain man’s blood and breath<br>Revived Faustine.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Nets caught the pike, pikes tore the net;<br>Lithe limbs and lean<br>From drained-out pores dripped thick red sweat<br>To soothe Faustine.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">She drank the steaming drift and dust<br>Blown off the scene;<br>Blood could not ease the bitter lust<br>That galled Faustine.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">All round the foul fat furrows reeked,<br>Where blood sank in;<br>The circus splashed and seethed and shrieked<br>All round Faustine.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But these are gone now: years entomb<br>The dust and din;<br>Yea, even the bath’s fierce reek and fume<br>That slew Faustine.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Was life worth living then? and now<br>Is life worth sin?<br>Where are the imperial years? and how<br>Are you Faustine?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Your soul forgot her joys, forgot<br>Her times of teen;<br>Yea, this life likewise will you not<br>Forget, Faustine?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">For in the time we know not of<br>Did fate begin<br>Weaving the web of days that wove<br>Your doom, Faustine.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The threads were wet with wine, and all<br>Were smooth to spin;<br>They wove you like a Bacchanal,<br>The first Faustine.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And Bacchus cast your mates and you<br>Wild grapes to glean;<br>Your flower-like lips were dashed with dew<br>From his, Faustine.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Your drenched loose hands were stretched to hold<br>The vine’s wet green,<br>Long ere they coined in Roman gold<br>Your face, Faustine.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then after change of soaring feather<br>And winnowing fin,<br>You woke in weeks of feverish weather,<br>A new Faustine.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">A star upon your birthday burned,<br>Whose fierce serene<br>Red pulseless planet never yearned<br>In heaven, Faustine.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Stray breaths of Sapphic song that blew<br>Through Mitylene<br>Shook the fierce quivering blood in you<br>By night, Faustine.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The shameless nameless love that makes<br>Hell’s iron gin<br>Shut on you like a trap that breaks<br>The soul, Faustine.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And when your veins were void and dead,<br>What ghosts unclean<br>Swarmed round the straitened barren bed<br>That hid Faustine?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">What sterile growths of sexless root<br>Or epicene?<br>What flower of kisses without fruit<br>Of love, Faustine?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">What adders came to shed their coats?<br>What coiled obscene<br>Small serpents with soft stretching throats<br>Caressed Faustine?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But the time came of famished hours,<br>Maimed loves and mean,<br>This ghastly thin-faced time of ours,<br>To spoil Faustine.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">You seem a thing that hinges hold,<br>A love-machine<br>With clockwork joints of supple gold—<br>No more, Faustine.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Not godless, for you serve one God,<br>The Lampsacene,<br>Who metes the gardens with his rod;<br>Your lord, Faustine.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">If one should love you with real love<br>(Such things have been,<br>Things your fair face knows nothing of,<br>It seems, Faustine);</div><div style="margin:10px 0">That clear hair heavily bound back,<br>The lights wherein<br>Shift from dead blue to burnt-up black;<br>Your throat, Faustine,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Strong, heavy, throwing out the face<br>And hard bright chin<br>And shameful scornful lips that grace<br>Their shame, Faustine,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Curled lips, long since half kissed away,<br>Still sweet and keen;<br>You’d give him—poison shall we say?<br>Or what, Faustine?</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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<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=341985" data-title="Faustine de Algernon Charles Swinburne" data-description="LEAN BACK, and get some minutes’ peace;
Let your head lean
Back to the shoulder with its fleece
Of locks, Faustine.

The shapely silver shoulder stoops,
Weighed over clean
With state of splendid hair that droops
Each side, Faustine.

Let me go o..."></div>
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