<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=342097" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Two Dreams</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">I WILL that if I say a heavy thing<br>Your tongues forgive me; seeing ye know that spring<br>Has flecks and fits of pain to keep her sweet,<br>And walks somewhile with winter-bitten feet.<br>Moreover it sounds often well to let<br>One string, when ye play music, keep at fret<br>The whole song through; one petal that is dead<br>Confirms the roses, be they white or red;<br>Dead sorrow is not sorrowful to hear<br>As the thick noise that breaks mid weeping were;<br>The sick sound aching in a lifted throat<br>Turns to sharp silver of a perfect note;<br>And though the rain falls often, and with rain<br>Late autumn falls on the old red leaves like pain,<br>I deem that God is not disquieted.<br>Also while men are fed with wine and bread,<br>They shall be fed with sorrow at his hand.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">There grew a rose-garden in Florence land<br>More fair than many; all red summers through<br>The leaves smelt sweet and sharp of rain, and blew<br>Sideways with tender wind; and therein fell<br>Sweet sound wherewith the green waxed audible,<br>As a bird’s will to sing disturbed his throat<br>And set the sharp wings forward like a boat<br>Pushed through soft water, moving his brown side<br>Smooth-shapen as a maid’s, and shook with pride<br>His deep warm bosom, till the heavy sun’s<br>Set face of heat stopped all the songs at once.<br>The ways were clean to walk and delicate;<br>And when the windy white of March grew late,<br>Before the trees took heart to face the sun<br>With ravelled raiment of lean winter on,<br>The roots were thick and hot with hollow grass.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Some roods away a lordly house there was,<br>Cool with broad courts and latticed passage wet<br>From rush-flowers and lilies ripe to set,<br>Sown close among the strewings of the floor;<br>And either wall of the slow corridor<br>Was dim with deep device of gracious things;<br>Some angel’s steady mouth and weight of wings<br>Shut to the side; or Peter with straight stole<br>And beard cut black against the aureole<br>That spanned his head from nape to crown; thereby<br>Mary’s gold hair, thick to the girdle-tie<br>Wherein was bound a child with tender feet;<br>Or the broad cross with blood nigh brown on it.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Within this house a righteous lord abode,<br>Ser Averardo; patient of his mood,<br>And just of judgment; and to child he had<br>A maid so sweet that her mere sight made glad<br>Men sorrowing, and unbound the brows of hate;<br>And where she came, the lips that pain made strait<br>Waxed warm and wide, and from untender grew<br>Tender as those that sleep brings patience to.<br>Such long locks had she, that with knee to chin<br>She might have wrapped and warmed her feet therein.<br>Right seldom fell her face on weeping wise;<br>Gold hair she had, and golden-coloured eyes,<br>Filled with clear light and fire and large repose<br>Like a fair hound’s; no man there is but knows<br>Her face was white, and thereto she was tall;<br>In no wise lacked there any praise at all<br>To her most perfect and pure maidenhood;<br>No sin I think there was in all her blood.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">She, where a gold grate shut the roses in,<br>Dwelt daily through deep summer weeks, through green<br>Hushed hours of rain upon the leaves; and there<br>Love made him room and space to worship her<br>With tender worship of bowed knees, and wrought<br>Such pleasure as the pained sense palates not<br>For weariness, but at one taste undoes<br>The heart of its strong sweet, is ravenous<br>Of all the hidden honey; words and sense<br>Fail through the tune’s imperious prevalence.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">In a poor house this lover kept apart,<br>Long communing with patience next his heart<br>If love of his might move that face at all,<br>Tuned evenwise with colours musical;<br>Then after length of days he said thus: “Love,<br>For love’s own sake and for the love thereof<br>Let no harsh words untune your gracious mood;<br>For good it were, if anything be good,<br>To comfort me in this pain’s plague of mine;<br>Seeing thus, how neither sleep nor bread nor wine<br>Seems pleasant to me, yea no thing that is<br>Seems pleasant to me; only I know this;<br>Love’s ways are sharp for palms of piteous feet<br>To travel, but the end of such is sweet:<br>Now do with me as seemeth you the best.”<br>She mused a little, as one holds his guest<br>By the hand musing, with her face borne down:<br>Then said: “Yea, though such bitter seed be sown,<br>Have no more care of all that you have said;<br>Since if there is no sleep will bind your head,<br>Lo, I am fain to help you certainly;<br>Christ knoweth, sir, if I would have you die;<br>There is no pleasure when a man is dead.”<br>Thereat he kissed her hands and yellow head<br>And clipped her fair long body many times;<br>I have no wit to shape in written rhymes<br>A scanted tithe of this great joy they had.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">They were too near love’s secret to be glad;<br>As whoso deems the core will surely melt<br>From the warm fruit his lips caress, hath felt<br>Some bitter kernel where the teeth shut hard:<br>Or as sweet music sharpens afterward,<br>Being half disrelished both for sharp and sweet;<br>As sea-water, having killed over-heat<br>In a man’s body, chills it with faint ache;<br>So their sense, burdened only for love’s sake,<br>Failed for pure love; yet so time served their wit,<br>They saved each day some gold reserves of it,<br>Being wiser in love’s riddle than such be<br>Whom fragments feed with his chance charity.<br>All things felt sweet were felt sweet overmuch;<br>The rose-thorn’s prickle dangerous to touch,<br>And flecks of fire in the thin leaf-shadows;<br>Too keen the breathèd honey of the rose,<br>Its red too harsh a weight on feasted eyes;<br>They were so far gone in love’s histories,<br>Beyond all shape and colour and mere breath,<br>Where pleasure has for kinsfolk sleep and death,<br>And strength of soul and body waxen blind<br>For weariness, and flesh entoiled with mind,<br>When the keen edge of sense foretasteth sin.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Even this green place the summer caught them in<br>Seemed half deflowered and sick with beaten leaves<br>In their strayed eyes; these gold flower-fumèd eves<br>Burnt out to make the sun’s love-offering,<br>The midnoon’s prayer, the rose’s thanksgiving,<br>The trees’ weight burdening the strengthless air,<br>The shape of her stilled eyes, her coloured hair,<br>Her body’s balance from the moving feet—<br>All this, found fair, lacked yet one grain of sweet<br>It had some warm weeks back: so perisheth<br>On May’s new lip the tender April breath:<br>So those same walks the wind sowed lilies in<br>All April through, and all their latter kin<br>Of languid leaves whereon the autumn blows—<br>The dead red raiment of the last year’s rose—<br>The last year’s laurel, and the last year’s love,<br>Fade, and grow things that death grows weary of.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">What man will gather in red summer-time<br>The fruit of some obscure and hoary rhyme<br>Heard last midwinter, taste the heart in it,<br>Mould the smooth semitones afresh, refit<br>The fair limbs ruined, flush the dead blood through<br>With colour, make all broken beauties new<br>For love’s new lesson—shall not such find pain<br>When the marred music labouring in his brain<br>Frets him with sweet sharp fragments, and lets slip<br>One word that might leave satisfied his lip—<br>One touch that might put fire in all the chords?<br>This was her pain: to miss from all sweet words<br>Some taste of sound, diverse and delicate—<br>Some speech the old love found out to compensate<br>For seasons of shut lips and drowsiness—<br>Some grace, some word the old love found out to bless<br>Passionless months and undelighted weeks.<br>The flowers had lost their summer-scented cheeks,<br>Their lips were no more sweet than daily breath:<br>The year was plagued with instances of death.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">So fell it, these were sitting in cool grass<br>With leaves about, and many a bird there was<br>Where the green shadow thickliest impleached<br>Soft fruit and writhen spray and blossom bleached<br>Dry in the sun or washed with rains to white:<br>Her girdle was pure silk, the bosom bright<br>With purple as purple water and gold wrought in.<br>One branch had touched with dusk her lips and chin,<br>Made violet of the throat, abashed with shade<br>The breast’s bright plaited work: but nothing frayed<br>The sun’s large kiss on the luxurious hair.<br>Her beauty was new colour to the air<br>And music to the silent many birds.<br>Love was an-hungred for some perfect words<br>To praise her with; but only her low name<br>“Andrevuola” came thrice, and thrice put shame<br>In her clear cheek, so fruitful with new red<br>That for pure love straightway shame’s self was dead.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then with lids gathered as who late had wept<br>She began saying: “I have so little slept<br>My lids drowse now against the very sun;<br>Yea, the brain aching with a dream begun<br>Beats like a fitful blood; kiss but both brows,<br>And you shall pluck my thoughts grown dangerous<br>Almost away.” He said thus, kissing them:<br>“O sole sweet thing that God is glad to name,<br>My one gold gift, if dreams be sharp and sore<br>Shall not the waking time increase much more<br>With taste and sound, sweet eyesight or sweet scent?<br>Has any heat too hard and insolent<br>Burnt bare the tender married leaves, undone<br>The maiden grass shut under from the sun?<br>Where in this world is room enough for pain?”</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The feverish finger of love had touched again<br>Her lips with happier blood; the pain lay meek<br>In her fair face, nor altered lip nor cheek<br>With pallor or with pulse; but in her mouth<br>Love thirsted as a man wayfaring doth,<br>Making it humble as weak hunger is.<br>She lay close to him, bade do this and this,<br>Say that, sing thus: then almost weeping-ripe<br>Crouched, then laughed low. As one that fain would wipe<br>The old record out of old things done and dead,<br>She rose, she heaved her hands up, and waxed red<br>For wilful heart and blameless fear of blame;<br>Saying “Though my wits be weak, this is no shame<br>For a poor maid whom love so punisheth<br>With heats of hesitation and stopped breath<br>That with my dreams I live yet heavily<br>For pure sad heart and faith’s humility.<br>Now be not wroth and I will show you this.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">“Methought our lips upon their second kiss<br>Met in this place, and a fair day we had<br>And fair soft leaves that waxed and were not sad<br>With shaken rain or bitten through with drouth;<br>When I, beholding ever how your mouth<br>Waited for mine, the throat being fallen back,<br>Saw crawl thereout a live thing flaked with black<br>Specks of brute slime and leper-coloured scale,<br>A devil’s hide with foul flame-writhen grail<br>Fashioned where hell’s heat festers loathsomest;<br>And that brief speech may ease me of the rest,<br>Thus were you slain and eaten of the thing.<br>My waked eyes felt the new day shuddering<br>On their low lids, felt the whole east so beat,<br>Pant with close pulse of such a plague-struck heat,<br>As if the palpitating dawn drew breath<br>For horror, breathing between life and death,<br>Till the sun sprang blood-bright and violent.”</div><div style="margin:10px 0">So finishing, her soft strength wholly spent,<br>She gazed each way, lest some brute-hoovèd thing,<br>The timeless travail of hell’s childbearing,<br>Should threat upon the sudden: whereat he,<br>For relish of her tasted misery<br>And tender little thornprick of her pain,<br>Laughed with mere love. What lover among men<br>But hath his sense fed sovereignly ’twixt whiles<br>With tears and covered eyelids and sick smiles<br>And soft disaster of a painèd face?<br>What pain, established in so sweet a place,<br>But the plucked leaf of it smells fragrantly?<br>What colour burning man’s wide-open eye<br>But may be pleasurably seen? what sense<br>Keeps in its hot sharp extreme violence<br>No savour of sweet things? The bereaved blood<br>And emptied flesh in their most broken mood<br>Fail not so wholly, famish not when thus<br>Past honey keeps the starved lip covetous.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Therefore this speech from a glad mouth began,<br>Breathed in her tender hair and temples wan<br>Like one prolonged kiss while the lips had breath:<br>“Sleep, that abides in vassalage of death<br>And in death’s service wears out half his age,<br>Hath his dreams full of deadly vassalage,<br>Shadow and sound of things ungracious;<br>Fair shallow faces, hooded bloodless brows,<br>And mouths past kissing; yea, myself have had<br>As harsh a dream as holds your eyelids sad.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">“This dream I tell you came three nights ago:<br>In full mid sleep I took a whim to know<br>How sweet things might be; so I turned and thought;<br>But save my dream all sweet availed me not.<br>First came a smell of pounded spice and scent<br>Such as God ripens in some continent<br>Of utmost amber in the Syrian sea;<br>And breaths as though some costly rose could be<br>Spoiled slowly, wasted by some bitter fire<br>To burn the sweet out leaf by leaf, and tire<br>The flower’s poor heart with heat and waste, to make<br>Strong magic for some perfumed woman’s sake.<br>Then a cool naked sense beneath my feet<br>Of bud and blossom; and sound of veins that beat<br>As if a lute should play of its own heart<br>And fearfully, not smitten of either part;<br>And all my blood it filled with sharp and sweet<br>As gold swoln grain fills out the huskèd wheat;<br>So I rose naked from the bed, and stood<br>Counting the mobile measure in my blood<br>Some pleasant while, and through each limb there came<br>Swift little pleasures pungent as a flame,<br>Felt in the thrilling flesh and veins as much<br>As the outer curls that feel the comb’s first touch<br>Thrill to the roots and shiver as from fire;<br>And blind between my dream and my desire<br>I seemed to stand and held my spirit still<br>Lest this should cease. A child whose fingers spill<br>Honey from cells forgotten of the bee<br>Is less afraid to stir the hive and see<br>Some wasp’s bright back inside, than I to feel<br>Some finger-touch disturb the flesh like steel.<br>I prayed thus; Let me catch a secret here<br>So sweet, it sharpens the sweet taste of fear<br>And takes the mouth with edge of wine; I would<br>Have here some colour and smooth shape as good<br>As those in heaven whom the chief garden hides<br>With low grape-blossom veiling their white sides<br>And lesser tendrils that so bind and blind<br>Their eyes and feet, that if one come behind<br>To touch their hair they see not, neither fly;<br>This would I see in heaven and not die.<br>So praying, I had nigh cried out and knelt,<br>So wholly my prayer filled me: till I felt<br>In the dumb night’s warm weight of glowing gloom<br>Somewhat that altered all my sleeping-room,<br>And made it like a green low place wherein<br>Maids mix to bathe: one sets her small warm chin<br>Against a ripple, that the angry pearl<br>May flow like flame about her: the next curl<br>Dips in some eddy coloured of the sun<br>To wash the dust well out; another one<br>Holds a straight ankle in her hand and swings<br>With lavish body sidelong, so that rings<br>Of sweet fierce water, swollen and splendid, fail<br>All round her fine and floated body pale,<br>Swayed flower-fashion, and her balanced side<br>Swerved edgeways lets the weight of water slide,<br>As taken in some underflow of sea<br>Swerves the banked gold of sea-flowers; but she<br>Pulls down some branch to keep her perfect head<br>Clear of the river: even from wall to bed,<br>I tell you, was my room transfigured so.<br>Sweet, green and warm it was, nor could one know<br>If there were walls or leaves, or if there was<br>No bed’s green curtain, but mere gentle grass.<br>There were set also hard against the feet<br>Gold plates with honey and green grapes to eat,<br>With the cool water’s noise to hear in rhymes:<br>And a wind warmed me full of furze and limes<br>And all hot sweets the heavy summer fills<br>To the round brim of smooth cup-shapen hills.<br>Next the grave walking of a woman’s feet<br>Made my veins hesitate, and gracious heat<br>Made thick the lids and leaden on mine eyes:<br>And I thought ever, surely it were wise<br>Not yet to see her: this may last (who knows?)<br>Five minutes; the poor rose is twice a rose<br>Because it turns a face to her, the wind<br>Sings that way; hath this woman ever sinned,<br>I wonder? as a boy with apple-rind,<br>I played with pleasures, made them to my mind,<br>Changed each ere tasting. When she came indeed,<br>First her hair touched me, then I grew to feed<br>On the sense of her hand; her mouth at last<br>Touched me between the cheek and lip and past<br>Over my face with kisses here and there<br>Sown in and out across the eyes and hair.<br>Still I said nothing; till she set her face<br>More close and harder on the kissing-place,<br>And her mouth caught like a snake’s mouth, and stung<br>So faint and tenderly, the fang scarce clung<br>More than a bird’s foot: yet a wound it grew,<br>A great one, let this red mark witness you<br>Under the left breast; and the stroke thereof<br>So clove my sense that I woke out of love<br>And knew not what this dream was nor had wit;<br>But now God knows if I have skill of it.”</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Hereat she laid one palm against her lips<br>To stop their trembling; as when water slips<br>Out of a beak-mouthed vessel with faint noise<br>And chuckles in the narrowed throat and cloys<br>The carven rims with murmuring, so came<br>Words in her lips with no word right of them,<br>A beaten speech thick and disconsolate,<br>Till his smile ceasing waxed compassionate<br>Of her sore fear that grew from anything—<br>The sound of the strong summer thickening<br>In heated leaves of the smooth apple-trees:<br>The day’s breath felt about the ash-branches,<br>And noises of the noon whose weight still grew<br>On the hot heavy-headed flowers, and drew<br>Their red mouths open till the rose-heart ached;<br>For eastward all the crowding rose was slaked<br>And soothed with shade; but westward all its growth<br>Seemed to breathe hard with heat as a man doth<br>Who feels his temples newly feverous.<br>And even with such motion in her brows<br>As that man hath in whom sick days begin,<br>She turned her throat and spake, her voice being thin<br>As a sick man’s, sudden and tremulous;<br>“Sweet, if this end be come indeed on us,<br>Let us love more;” and held his mouth with hers.<br>As the first sound of flooded hill-waters<br>Is heard by people of the meadow-grass,<br>Or ever a wandering waif of ruin pass<br>With whirling stones and foam of the brown stream<br>Flaked with fierce yellow: so beholding him<br>She felt before tears came her eyelids wet,<br>Saw the face deadly thin where life was yet,<br>Heard his throat’s harsh last moan before it clomb:<br>And he, with close mouth passionate and dumb,<br>Burned at her lips: so lay they without speech,<br>Each grasping other, and the eyes of each<br>Fed in the other’s face: till suddenly<br>He cried out with a little broken cry<br>This word, “O help me, sweet, I am but dead.”<br>And even so saying, the colour of fair red<br>Was gone out of his face, and his blood’s beat<br>Fell, and stark death made sharp his upward feet<br>And pointed hands: and without moan he died.<br>Pain smote her sudden in the brows and side,<br>Strained her lips open and made burn her eyes:<br>For the pure sharpness of her miseries<br>She had no heart’s pain, but mere body’s wrack;<br>But at the last her beaten blood drew back<br>Slowly upon her face, and her stunned brows<br>Suddenly grown aware and piteous<br>Gathered themselves, her eyes shone, her hard breath<br>Came as though one nigh dead came back from death;<br>Her lips throbbed, and life trembled through her hair.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And in brief while she thought to bury there<br>The dead man that her love might lie with him<br>In a sweet bed under the rose-roots dim<br>And soft earth round the branchèd apple-trees,<br>Full of hushed heat and heavy with great ease,<br>And no man entering divide him thence.<br>Wherefore she bade one of her handmaidens<br>To be her help to do upon this wise.<br>And saying so the tears out of her eyes<br>Fell without noise and comforted her heart:<br>Yea, her great pain eased of the sorest part<br>Began to soften in her sense of it.<br>There under all the little branches sweet<br>The place was shapen of his burial;<br>They shed thereon no thing funereal,<br>But coloured leaves of latter rose-blossom,<br>Stems of soft grass, some withered red and some<br>Fair and fresh-blooded; and spoil splendider<br>Of marigold and great spent sunflower.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And afterward she came back without word<br>To her own house; two days went, and the third<br>Went, and she showed her father of this thing.<br>And for great grief of her soul’s travailing<br>He gave consent she should endure in peace<br>Till her life’s end; yea, till her time should cease,<br>She should abide in fellowship of pain.<br>And having lived a holy year or twain<br>She died of pure waste heart and weariness.<br>And for love’s honour in her love’s distress<br>This word was written over her tomb’s head;<br>“Here dead she lieth, for whose sake Love is dead.”</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=342097" data-title="The Two Dreams de Algernon Charles Swinburne" data-description="I WILL that if I say a heavy thing Your tongues forgive me; seeing ye know that spring Has flecks and fits of pain to keep her sweet, And walks somewhile with winter-bitten feet. Moreover it sounds often well to let One string, when ye play music,..."></div> </div> </div>

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