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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=342110" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>To Victor Hugo</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">IN the fair days when God<br>By man as godlike trod,<br>And each alike was Greek, alike was free,<br>God’s lightning spared, they said,<br>Alone the happier head<br>Whose laurels screened it; fruitless grace for thee,<br>To whom the high gods gave of right<br>Their thunders and their laurels and their light.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Sunbeams and bays before<br>Our master’s servants wore,<br>For these Apollo left in all men’s lands;<br>But far from these ere now<br>And watched with jealous brow<br>Lay the blind lightnings shut between God’s hands,<br>And only loosed on slaves and kings<br>The terror of the tempest of their wings.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Born in those younger years<br>That shone with storms of spears<br>And shook in the wind blown from a dead world’s pyre,<br>When by her back-blown hair<br>Napoleon caught the fair<br>And fierce Republic with her feet of fire,<br>And stayed with iron words and hands<br>Her flight, and freedom in a thousand lands:</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Thou sawest the tides of things<br>Close over heads of kings,<br>And thine hand felt the thunder, and to thee<br>Laurels and lightnings were<br>As sunbeams and soft air<br>Mixed each in other, or as mist with sea<br>Mixed, or as memory with desire,<br>Or the lute’s pulses with the louder lyre.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">For thee man’s spirit stood<br>Disrobed of flesh and blood,<br>And bare the heart of the most secret hours;<br>And to thine hand more tame<br>Than birds in winter came<br>High hopes and unknown flying forms of powers,<br>And from thy table fed, and sang<br>Till with the tune men’s ears took fire and rang.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Even all men’s eyes and ears<br>With fiery sound and tears<br>Waxed hot, and cheeks caught flame and eyelids light,<br>At those high songs of thine<br>That stung the sense like wine,<br>Or fell more soft than dew or snow by night,<br>Or wailed as in some flooded cave<br>Sobs the strong broken spirit of a wave.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But we, our master, we<br>Whose hearts, uplift to thee,<br>Ache with the pulse of thy remembered song,<br>We ask not nor await<br>From the clenched hands of fate,<br>As thou, remission of the world’s old wrong;<br>Respite we ask not, nor release;<br>Freedom a man may have, he shall not peace.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Though thy most fiery hope<br>Storm heaven, to set wide ope<br>The all-sought-for gate whence God or Chance debars<br>All feet of men, all eyes—<br>The old night resumes her skies,<br>Her hollow hiding-place of clouds and stars,<br>Where nought save these is sure in sight;<br>And, paven with death, our days are roofed with night.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">One thing we can; to be<br>Awhile, as men may, free;<br>But not by hope or pleasure the most stern<br>Goddess, most awful-eyed,<br>Sits, but on either side<br>Sit sorrow and the wrath of hearts that burn,<br>Sad faith that cannot hope or fear,<br>And memory grey with many a flowerless year.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Not that in stranger’s wise<br>I lift not loving eyes<br>To the fair foster-mother France, that gave<br>Beyond the pale fleet foam<br>Help to my sires and home,<br>Whose great sweet breast could shelter those and save<br>Whom from her nursing breasts and hands<br>Their land cast forth of old on gentler lands.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Not without thoughts that ache<br>For theirs and for thy sake,<br>I, born of exiles, hail thy banished head;<br>I whose young song took flight<br>Toward the great heat and light<br>On me a child from thy far splendour shed,<br>From thine high place of soul and song,<br>Which, fallen on eyes yet feeble, made them strong.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Ah, not with lessening love<br>For memories born hereof,<br>I look to that sweet mother-land, and see<br>The old fields and fair full streams,<br>And skies, but fled like dreams<br>The feet of freedom and the thought of thee;<br>And all between the skies and graves<br>The mirth of mockers and the shame of slaves.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">She, killed with noisome air,<br>Even she! and still so fair,<br>Who said “Let there be freedom,” and there was<br>Freedom; and as a lance<br>The fiery eyes of France<br>Touched the world’s sleep and as a sleep made pass<br>Forth of men’s heavier ears and eyes<br>Smitten with fire and thunder from new skies.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Are they men’s friends indeed<br>Who watch them weep and bleed?<br>Because thou hast loved us, shall the gods love thee?<br>Thou, first of men and friend,<br>Seest thou, even thou, the end?<br>Thou knowest what hath been, knowest thou what shall be?<br>Evils may pass and hopes endure;<br>But fate is dim, and all the gods obscure.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">O nursed in airs apart,<br>O poet highest of heart,<br>Hast thou seen time, who hast seen so many things?<br>Are not the years more wise,<br>More sad than keenest eyes,<br>The years with soundless feet and sounding wings?<br>Passing we hear them not, but past<br>The clamour of them thrills us, and their blast.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Thou art chief of us, and lord;<br>Thy song is as a sword<br>Keen-edged and scented in the blade from flowers;<br>Thou art lord and king; but we<br>Lift younger eyes, and see<br>Less of high hope, less light on wandering hours;<br>Hours that have borne men down so long,<br>Seen the right fail, and watched uplift the wrong.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But thine imperial soul,<br>As years and ruins roll<br>To the same end, and all things and all dreams<br>With the same wreck and roar<br>Drift on the dim same shore,<br>Still in the bitter foam and brackish streams<br>Tracks the fresh water-spring to be<br>And sudden sweeter fountains in the sea.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">As once the high God bound<br>With many a rivet round<br>Man’s saviour, and with iron nailed him through,<br>At the wild end of things,<br>Where even his own bird’s wings<br>Flagged, whence the sea shone like a drop of dew,<br>From Caucasus beheld below<br>Past fathoms of unfathomable snow;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">So the strong God, the chance<br>Central of circumstance,<br>Still shows him exile who will not be slave;<br>All thy great fame and thee<br>Girt by the dim strait sea<br>With multitudinous walls of wandering wave;<br>Shows us our greatest from his throne<br>Fate-stricken, and rejected of his own.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Yea, he is strong, thou say’st,<br>A mystery many-faced,<br>The wild beasts know him and the wild birds flee;<br>The blind night sees him, death<br>Shrinks beaten at his breath,<br>And his right hand is heavy on the sea:<br>We know he hath made us, and is king;<br>We know not if he care for anything.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Thus much, no more, we know;<br>He bade what is be so,<br>Bade light be and bade night be, one by one;<br>Bade hope and fear, bade ill<br>And good redeem and kill,<br>Till all men be aweary of the sun<br>And his world burn in its own flame<br>And bear no witness longer of his name.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Yet though all this be thus,<br>Be those men praised of us<br>Who have loved and wrought and sorrowed and not sinned<br>For fame or fear or gold,<br>Nor waxed for winter cold,<br>Nor changed for changes of the worldly wind;<br>Praised above men of men be these,<br>Till this one world and work we know shall cease.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Yea, one thing more than this,<br>We know that one thing is,<br>The splendour of a spirit without blame,<br>That not the labouring years<br>Blind-born, nor any fears,<br>Nor men nor any gods can tire or tame;<br>But purer power with fiery breath<br>Fills, and exalts above the gulfs of death.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Praised above men be thou,<br>Whose laurel-laden brow,<br>Made for the morning, droops not in the night;<br>Praised and beloved, that none<br>Of all thy great things done<br>Flies higher than thy most equal spirit’s flight;<br>Praised, that nor doubt nor hope could bend<br>Earth’s loftiest head, found upright to the end</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=342110" data-title="To Victor Hugo de Algernon Charles Swinburne" data-description="IN the fair days when God
By man as godlike trod,
And each alike was Greek, alike was free,
God’s lightning spared, they said,
Alone the happier head
Whose laurels screened it; fruitless grace for thee,
To whom the high gods gave of right
Their ..."></div>
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