<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=341986" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Félise</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">WHAT shall be said between us here<br>Among the downs, between the trees,<br>In fields that knew our feet last year,<br>In sight of quiet sands and seas,<br>This year, Félise?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Who knows what word were best to say?<br>For last year’s leaves lie dead and red<br>On this sweet day, in this green May,<br>And barren corn makes bitter bread.<br>What shall be said?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Here as last year the fields begin,<br>A fire of flowers and glowing grass;<br>The old fields we laughed and lingered in,<br>Seeing each our souls in last year’s glass,<br>Félise, alas!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Shall we not laugh, shall we not weep,<br>Not we, though this be as it is?<br>For love awake or love asleep<br>Ends in a laugh, a dream, a kiss,<br>A song like this.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I that have slept awake, and you<br>Sleep, who last year were well awake.<br>Though love do all that love can do,<br>My heart will never ache or break<br>For your heart’s sake.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The great sea, faultless as a flower,<br>Throbs, trembling under beam and breeze,<br>And laughs with love of the amorous hour.<br>I found you fairer once, Félise,<br>Than flowers or seas.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">We played at bondsman and at queen;<br>But as the days change men change too;<br>I find the grey sea’s notes of green,<br>The green sea’s fervent flakes of blue,<br>More fair than you.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Your beauty is not over fair<br>Now in mine eyes, who am grown up wise.<br>The smell of flowers in all your hair<br>Allures not now; no sigh replies<br>If your heart sighs.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But you sigh seldom, you sleep sound,<br>You find love’s new name good enough.<br>Less sweet I find it than I found<br>The sweetest name that ever love<br>Grew weary of.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">My snake with bright bland eyes, my snake<br>Grown tame and glad to be caressed,<br>With lips athirst for mine to slake<br>Their tender fever! who had guessed<br>You loved me best?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I had died for this last year, to know<br>You loved me. Who shall turn on fate?<br>I care not if love come or go<br>Now, though your love seek mine for mate.<br>It is too late.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The dust of many strange desires<br>Lies deep between us; in our eyes<br>Dead smoke of perishable fires<br>Flickers, a fume in air and skies,<br>A steam of sighs.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">You loved me and you loved me not;<br>A little, much, and overmuch.<br>Will you forget as I forget?<br>Let all dead things lie dead; none such<br>Are soft to touch.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I love you and I do not love,<br>Too much, a little, not at all:<br>Too much, and never yet enough.<br>Birds quick to fledge and fly at call<br>Are quick to fall.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And these love longer now than men,<br>And larger loves than ours are these.<br>No diver brings up love again<br>Dropped once, my beautiful Félise,<br>In such cold seas.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Gone deeper than all plummets sound,<br>Where in the dim green dayless day<br>The life of such dead things lies bound<br>As the sea feeds on, wreck and stray<br>And castaway.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Can I forget? yea, that can I,<br>And that can all men; so will you,<br>Alive, or later, when you die.<br>Ah, but the love you plead was true?<br>Was mine not too?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I loved you for that name of yours<br>Long ere we met, and long enough.<br>Now that one thing of all endures—<br>The sweetest name that ever love<br>Waxed weary of.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Like colours in the sea, like flowers,<br>Like a cat’s splendid circled eyes<br>That wax and wane with love for hours,<br>Green as green flame, blue-grey like skies,<br>And soft like sighs—</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And all these only like your name,<br>And your name full of all of these.<br>I say it, and it sounds the same—<br>Save that I say it now at ease,<br>Your name, Félise.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I said “she must be swift and white,<br>And subtly warm, and half perverse,<br>And sweet like sharp soft fruit to bite,<br>And like a snake’s love lithe and fierce.”<br>Men have guessed worse.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">What was the song I made of you<br>Here where the grass forgets our feet<br>As afternoon forgets the dew?<br>Ah that such sweet things should be fleet,<br>Such fleet things sweet!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">As afternoon forgets the dew,<br>As time in time forgets all men,<br>As our old place forgets us two,<br>Who might have turned to one thing then,<br>But not again.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">O lips that mine have grown into<br>Like April’s kissing May,<br>O fervent eyelids letting through<br>Those eyes the greenest of things blue,<br>The bluest of things grey,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">If you were I and I were you,<br>How could I love you, say?<br>How could the roseleaf love the rue,<br>The day love nightfall and her dew,<br>Though night may love the day?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">You loved it may be more than I;<br>We know not; love is hard to seize,<br>And all things are not good to try;<br>And lifelong loves the worst of these<br>For us, Félise.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Ah, take the season and have done,<br>Love well the hour and let it go:<br>Two souls may sleep and wake up one,<br>Or dream they wake and find it so,<br>And then—you know.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Kiss me once hard as though a flame<br>Lay on my lips and made them fire;<br>The same lips now, and not the same;<br>What breath shall fill and re-inspire<br>A dead desire?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The old song sounds hollower in mine ear<br>Than thin keen sounds of dead men’s speech—<br>A noise one hears and would not hear;<br>Too strong to die, too weak to reach<br>From wave to beach.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">We stand on either side the sea,<br>Stretch hands, blow kisses, laugh and lean<br>I toward you, you toward me;<br>But what hears either save the keen<br>Grey sea between?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">A year divides us, love from love,<br>Though you love now, though I loved then.<br>The gulf is strait, but deep enough;<br>Who shall recross, who among men<br>Shall cross again?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Love was a jest last year, you said,<br>And what lives surely, surely dies.<br>Even so; but now that love is dead,<br>Shall love rekindle from wet eyes,<br>From subtle sighs?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">For many loves are good to see;<br>Mutable loves, and loves perverse;<br>But there is nothing, nor shall be,<br>So sweet, so wicked, but my verse<br>Can dream of worse.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">For we that sing and you that love<br>Know that which man may, only we.<br>The rest live under us; above,<br>Live the great gods in heaven, and see<br>What things shall be.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">So this thing is and must be so;<br>For man dies, and love also dies.<br>Though yet love’s ghost moves to and fro<br>The sea-green mirrors of your eyes,<br>And laughs, and lies.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Eyes coloured like a water-flower,<br>And deeper than the green sea’s glass;<br>Eyes that remember one sweet hour—<br>In vain we swore it should not pass;<br>In vain, alas!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Ah my Félise, if love or sin,<br>If shame or fear could hold it fast,<br>Should we not hold it? Love wears thin,<br>And they laugh well who laugh the last.<br>Is it not past?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The gods, the gods are stronger; time<br>Falls down before them, all men’s knees<br>Bow, all men’s prayers and sorrows climb<br>Like incense towards them; yea, for these<br>Are gods, Félise.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Immortal are they, clothed with powers,<br>Not to be comforted at all;<br>Lords over all the fruitless hours;<br>Too great to appease, too high to appal,<br>Too far to call.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">For none shall move the most high gods,<br>Who are most sad, being cruel; none<br>Shall break or take away the rods<br>Wherewith they scourge us, not as one<br>That smites a son.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">By many a name of many a creed<br>We have called upon them, since the sands<br>Fell through time’s hour-glass first, a seed<br>Of life; and out of many lands<br>Have we stretched hands.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">When have they heard us? who hath known<br>Their faces, climbed unto their feet,<br>Felt them and found them? Laugh or groan,<br>Doth heaven remurmur and repeat<br>Sad sounds or sweet?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Do the stars answer? in the night<br>Have ye found comfort? or by day<br>Have ye seen gods? What hope, what light,<br>Falls from the farthest starriest way<br>On you that pray?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Are the skies wet because we weep,<br>Or fair because of any mirth?<br>Cry out; they are gods; perchance they sleep;<br>Cry; thou shalt know what prayers are worth,<br>Thou dust and earth.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">O earth, thou art fair; O dust, thou art great;<br>O laughing lips and lips that mourn,<br>Pray, till ye feel the exceeding weight<br>Of God’s intolerable scorn,<br>Not to be borne.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Behold, there is no grief like this;<br>The barren blossom of thy prayer,<br>Thou shalt find out how sweet it is.<br>O fools and blind, what seek ye there,<br>High up in the air?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Ye must have gods, the friends of men,<br>Merciful gods, compassionate,<br>And these shall answer you again.<br>Will ye beat always at the gate,<br>Ye fools of fate?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Ye fools and blind; for this is sure,<br>That all ye shall not live, but die.<br>Lo, what thing have ye found endure?<br>Or what thing have ye found on high<br>Past the blind sky?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The ghosts of words and dusty dreams,<br>Old memories, faiths infirm and dead.<br>Ye fools; for which among you deems<br>His prayer can alter green to red<br>Or stones to bread?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Why should ye bear with hopes and fears<br>Till all these things be drawn in one,<br>The sound of iron-footed years,<br>And all the oppression that is done<br>Under the sun?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Ye might end surely, surely pass<br>Out of the multitude of things,<br>Under the dust, beneath the grass,<br>Deep in dim death, where no thought stings,<br>No record clings.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">No memory more of love or hate,<br>No trouble, nothing that aspires,<br>No sleepless labour thwarting fate,<br>And thwarted; where no travail tires,<br>Where no faith fires.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">All passes, nought that has been is,<br>Things good and evil have one end.<br>Can anything be otherwise<br>Though all men swear all things would mend<br>With God to friend?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Can ye beat off one wave with prayer,<br>Can ye move mountains? bid the flower<br>Take flight and turn to a bird in the air?<br>Can ye hold fast for shine or shower<br>One wingless hour?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Ah sweet, and we too, can we bring<br>One sigh back, bid one smile revive?<br>Can God restore one ruined thing,<br>Or he who slays our souls alive<br>Make dead things thrive?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Two gifts perforce he has given us yet,<br>Though sad things stay and glad things fly;<br>Two gifts he has given us, to forget<br>All glad and sad things that go by,<br>And then to die.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">We know not whether death be good,<br>But life at least it will not be:<br>Men will stand saddening as we stood,<br>Watch the same fields and skies as we<br>And the same sea.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Let this be said between us here,<br>One love grows green when one turns grey;<br>This year knows nothing of last year;<br>To-morrow has no more to say<br>To yesterday.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Live and let live, as I will do,<br>Love and let love, and so will I.<br>But, sweet, for me no more with you:<br>Not while I live, not though I die.<br>Goodnight, goodbye.</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=341986" data-title="Félise de Algernon Charles Swinburne" data-description="WHAT shall be said between us here Among the downs, between the trees, In fields that knew our feet last year, In sight of quiet sands and seas, This year, Félise? Who knows what word were best to say? For last year’s leaves lie dead and red O..."></div> </div> </div>

solid border dashed border dotted border double border groove border ridge border inset border outset border no border blue green red purple cyan gold silver black