Classic Audiobook Collection - Astrophel and Other Poems by Algernon Charles Swinburne ~ Full Audiobook [poetry]

Starting point is 00:00:00 astrophel after reading sir philip sidney's arcadia in the garden of an old english manor house one a star in the silence that follows the song of the death of the sun speaks music in heaven and the hollows and heights of the world are as one one liar that out sings and outlightens the rapture of sunset and thrills mute night till the sense of it brightens the soul that it fills the flowers of the sun that is sun hang heavy of heart as of head the bees that have eaten and drunken the soul of their sweetness are fled but a sunflower of song on whose honey my spirit has fed as a bee makes sunnier than morning was sunny, the twilight for me. The letters and lines on the pages that sundered my eyes and the flowers, wax faint as the shadows of ages, that sunder their season and hours, as the ghosts of the centuries that sever, a season of colourless time, from the days whose remembrance is ever, as they were sublime.

Starting point is 00:01:33 The season that bred and that cherished, the soul that I commune with yet, had it utterly withered and perished, to rise not again as it set, shame were it that Englishman living should read as their forefathers read, the books of the praise and thanksgiving of Englishmen dead. O light of the land that adored thee, and kindled thy soul with her breath, whose life such as fate would afford thee, was lovelier than aught, but thy death. By what name could thy lovers but know it? Might love of thee hail thee afar? Philicidius, ashtrafel poet whose love was thy star a star in the moon dawn of maytime a star in the cloudland of change too splendid and sad for the daytime to cheer or eclipse or estranged to sweep for tradition or vision to see but through shadows of tears rise deathless across the division of measureless years

Starting point is 00:02:52 the twilight may deepen and harden as nightward the stream of it runs till starshine transfigure a garden whose radiance responds to the suns the light of the love of the darkens the the lights that arise and that set the love that forgets me not hearkens if england forget two bright and brief in the sight of grief and love the light of thy lifetime shone seen and felt by the gifts it dealt the grace it gave and again was gone ay but now it is death not thou who whom time has conquered as years pass on i not yet may the land forget that bore and loved thee and praised and wept sydney lord of the stainless sword the name of names that her heart's love kept fast as thine did her own a sign to light thy life till it sank and slept bright as then for the souls of men thy brave arcadia resounds and shines lit with love that beholds above all joys and sorrows the steadfast signs faith a splendour that hope makes tender and truth whose presage the soul divines all the glory that girds the story of all thy life as with sun-lil light round all the spell that on all souls fell who saw thy spirits and held them bound lives for all that have heard the call and cadence yet of its music sound

Starting point is 00:04:52 music bright as the soul of light for wings and eagle for notes a dove leaps and shines from the lustrous lines where through thy soul from afar above shone and sang till the darkness rang with light whose fire is the fount of love love that led thee alive and fed thy soul with sorrows and joys and fears love that sped thee alive and dead to fame's fair goal with thy peerless peers feeds the flame of thy quenchless name with light that lightens the lightens the rayless years. Dark as sorrow, though night and morrow may lour with presage of clouded fame, how may she that of old bear thee, may Sydney's England be brought to shame? How should this be while England is? What need of answer beyond thy name? 3. that transfigures thy glory from the light of the dawn of thy death the life of thy song and thy story took subtler and fierier breath

Starting point is 00:06:19 and we though the day and the morrow set fear and thanksgiving at strife hail yet in the star of thy sorrow the sun of thy life shame and fear may be set men here and bid thanksgiving and pride be dumb faith discrowned of her praise and wound about with toils till her life wax numb scarce may see if the sun dawn be if darkness die not and day rise come but england enmeshed and beenetted with spiritless villainy's round with counsels of cowardice fretted with trammels of treason and wound is yet though the season be other than wept and rejoiced over thee thine england thy lover thy mother sublime as the sea hers was thou if her face be now less bright or seem for an hour less brave let but thine on her darkness shine thy saviour spirit revive and save time shall see as the shadows flee her shame entombed in a shameful grave if death and not life were the portal that opens on life at the last if the spirit of sydney were mortal and the past of it utterly past fear stronger than honour was ever forgetfulness mightier than fame faith knows not if england should never subside into shame yea but yet is thy sun not set thy sun-bright spirit of trust withdrawn england'st

Starting point is 00:08:23 love of thee burns above all hopes that darken or fears that fawn hers thou art and the faithful heart that hopes begets upon darkness dawn the sunset that sunrise will follow is less than the dream of a dream the star shine on height and on hollow sheds promise that dawn shall redeem The night, if the daytime would hide it, Shows lovelier a flame and afar, Thy soul and thy stella's beside it. A star by a star. End of poem, read by Alan Mapstone. A Nymphalept by Algern and Charles Swinburne.

Starting point is 00:09:18 Read for Libravox.org by Lauren Fontaine. A nymphalept. Summer and noon, and a splendor of silence felt, seen, and heard of the spirit within the sense. Soft through the frondage, the shades of the sunbeams melt. Sharp through the foliage, the shafts of them, keen and dense. Cleave as discharged from the string of the god's bow, tense as a warsteeds girth, and bright as a warrior's belt. Ah, why should an hour that is heaven for an hour pass hence?

Starting point is 00:09:59 I dare not sleep for delight of the perfect hour, lest God be wroth that his gift should be scorned of man. The face of the warm, bright world is the face of a flower. The word of the wind and the leaves that the light winds fan as the word that quickened at first into flame and ran, creative and subtle and fierce with invasive power, through darkness and cloud from the breath of the one god, Pan. The perfume of earth possessed by the sun pervades the chaster air that he soothes, but with sense of sleep. Soft, imminent, strong as desire that prevails and fades. The passing noon that beholds not a cloud-lit weep imbues and impugues and impregues, and impregnation. Pregnates life with delight more deep than dawn or sunset or moonrise on lawns or glades can shed from the skies that receive it and may not keep.

Starting point is 00:11:02 The skies may hold not the splendor of sundown fast. It wanes into twilight as dawn dies down into day. And the moon, triumphant when twilight is overpassed, takes pride but a while in the hours of her stately sway. But the might of the noon, though the light of it pass away, leaves earth fulfilled of desires and of dreams that last. But if any there be that hath sense of them none can say. For if any there be that hath sight of them, sense or trust made strong by the might of vision, the strength of a dream, his lips shall straighten and close as, a dead man's must, his heart shall be sealed as the voice of a frost-bound stream. For the deep mid-mystery of light and of heat that seemed clasp and pierce dark earth and enkindle dust, shall a man's faith say what it is, or a man's guess deem?

Starting point is 00:12:14 Sleep lies not heavier on eyes that have watched all night than hangs the heat of the noon on the hills and trees. Why now should the haze not open and yield to sight a fairer secret than hope or than slumber seas? I seek not heaven with submission of lips and knees, with worship and prayer for a sign till it leap to light. I gaze on the gods about me and call on these. I call on the gods hard by, the divine dim powers who, whose likeness is here at hand, in the breathless air, in the pulseless piece of the fervid and silent flowers, in the faint sweet speech of the waters that whisper there. Ah, what should darkness do in a world so fair? The bent grass heaves not, the couch grass

Starting point is 00:13:13 quails not, or cowers, the winds kiss frets not, the Rowans or Aspen's hair. But the silence trembles with passion of sound suppressed, and the twilight quivers and yearns to the sunward, rung with love as with pain, and the wide woods motionless breast is thrilled with a dumb desire that would fain, fine tongue and palpitates, tuneless as she whom a man's snake stung, whose heart now heaves in the nightingale,

Starting point is 00:13:46 never at rest nor satiated, ever with song till her last, be sung. Is it rapture or terror that circles me round and invades each vein of my life with hope, if it be not fear? Each pulse that awakens my blood into rapture fades. Each pulse that subsides into dread of a strange thing, near requickens with sense of a terror, less dread than dear. Is peace not one with light in the deep green glades where summer at noonday slumbers, is peace not here? The tall, thin stems of the firs and the roof sublime that screens from the sun the floor of the steep still wood. Deep, silent, splendid, and perfect and calm as time. Stand fast as ever in sight of the night.

Starting point is 00:14:50 they stood, when night gave all that moonlight and dewfall could. The dense ferns deepen. The moss glows warm as the time. The wild heaf quivers about me. The world is good. Is it Pan's breath, fierce in the tremulous maiden hair, that bids fear creep as a snake through the woodlands, felt in the leaves that it stirs not yet in the neat bright air, in the stress of the sun. For here has the great God dwelt, for hence were the shafts of his love or his anger dealt. For here has his wrath been fierce as his love was fair, when each was as fire to the darkness its breath bade melt. Is it love? Is it love? Is it love? Is it love? Is it dread that encendals the trembling noon?

Starting point is 00:15:51 That yearns reluctant in rapture that fear has fed. As man for woman, as woman for man? Full soon, if I live, and the life that may look on him drop not dead, shall the ear that hears not a leaf quake hear his tread. The sense that knows not the sound of the deep day's tune receive the God, be it love that he brings or dread. The naked noon is upon me, the fierce dumb spell, the fearful charm of the strong sun's imminent might,

Starting point is 00:16:29 unmerciful, steadfast, deeper than seas that swell, pervades, invades, appalls me with loveless light, with harsher awe than breeds and than breath of night. Have mercy, God, who art, all, for I know thee well, how sharp is thine eye to lighten, thine hand to smite. The whole wood feels thee, the whole air fears thee, but fear so deep, so dim, so sacred, is well nigh sweet. For the light that hangs and broods on the woodlands here, intense, invasive, intolerant, imperious, and meat to lighten the wood,

Starting point is 00:17:16 works of thine hands and the ways of thy feet is hot with the fire of the breath of thy life and dear as hope that shrivels or shrinks not for frost or heat. The, thee the supreme dim godhead, approved afar, perceived of the soul and conceived of the sense of man, we scarce dare love, and we dare not fear. The star we call. The star we the sun that lit us when life began to brood on the world that is thine by his grace for a span, conceals and reveals in the semblance of things that are thine imminent presence, the pulse of thy heart's life, pan. The fierce mid-noon that wakens and warms the snake conceals thy mercy, reveals thy wrath,

Starting point is 00:18:14 And again the due bright hour that assuages the twilight break conceals thy wrath and reveals thy mercy. Then thou art fearful only for evil souls of men, that feel with nightfall the serpent within them wake, and hate the holy darkness on Glade and glen. Yea, then we know not and dream not, if ill things be, or if aught of the work of the wrong of the world be thine. We hear not the footfall of terror that treads the sea. We hear not the moan of winds that assail the pine. We see not if shipwreck rain in the storm's dim shrine. If death do service and doom bear witness to thee, we see not. Know not if blood for thy lips be whine. But in all things evil and fearful that fear may scan, as in all things good, as in all things fair that fall,

Starting point is 00:19:19 we know thee present and latent, the Lord of man, in the murmuring of doves, in the clamouring of winds that call, and wolves that howl for their prey, in the midnight's pall, in the naked and nymph-like feet of the dawn, oh, pan, and in each life living, O thou the God who art all. smiling and singing, wailing and ringing and ringing of hands, laughing and weeping, watching, and sleeping, still, proclaim but and prove but thee. As the shifted sands speak forth and show but the strength of the sea's wild will,

Starting point is 00:20:02 that sifts and grinds them as grain in the stormwind's mill, in thee is the doom that falls and the doom that stands. The tempests utter thy word, and the stars fulfill. Where Etna shudders with passion and pain volcanic that rend her heart as with anguish that rends a man's, where typho labors and finds not his those titanic in breathless torment that ever the flame's breath fans, men felt and feared thee of old, whose pastoral clans were given to the charge of thy keeping,

Starting point is 00:20:44 and soundless panic held fast the woodland whose depths and whose heights were pans. And here, though fear be less than delight, and awe be one with desire and with worship of earth and thee, So mild seems now thy secret and speechless law, So fair and fearless and faithful and Godlike she, So soft the spell of thy whisper on stream and sea. Yet man should fear, lest he see what of old men saw and withered, Yet shall I quail if thy breaths might me? Lord God of life and of light and of light,

Starting point is 00:21:29 of all things fair. Lord God of raven and ruin and all things dim. Death seals up life and darkness, the sun-bright air, and the stars that watch blind earth and the deep night swim laugh, saying, what God is your God that ye call on him? What is man that the God who is guide of our way should care if day for a man be golden or night be grim? But thou, dost thou hear?

Starting point is 00:22:03 Stars too but abide for a span, gods too, but endure for a season. But thou, if thou be God, more than shadows conceived and adored of man, kind gods and fierce that bound him or made him free. The skies that scorn us are less in thy sight than we, whose souls have strength to conceive and perceive thee, pan, with sense more subtle than senses that hear and see. Yet may not it say, though it seek thee and think to find one soul of sense

Starting point is 00:22:42 in the fire and the frost-bound clod, what heart is this, what spirit, alive or blind, that moves thee? Only we know that the ways we trod we tread, with hands unyred, with hands unethed, unguided, with feet unshawed, with eyes unlightened, and yet, if with steadfast mind, perchance may we find thee, and know thee at last for God. Yet then should God be dark as the dawn is bright, and bright as the night is dark on the world, no more. Light slays not darkness, and darkness absorbs not light, And the labor of evil and good from the years of yore is even as the labor of waves on a sunless shore.

Starting point is 00:23:36 And he who is first and last, who is depth and height, keeps silence now, as the sun when the woods wax whore. The dark, dumb godhead innate in the fair world's life, imbues the rapture of dawn and of noon. with dread, infects the peace of the starshod night with strife, informs with terror the sorrow that guards the dead. No service of bended knee or of humbled head may soothe or subdue the god who has changed to wife, and life with death is as morning with evening wed. And yet, if the light and the life in the light that here seems soft and splendid and fervid as sleep may seem be more than the shine of a smile or the flash of a tear, sleep, change, and death are less than a spell-struck dream. And fear, then, the fall of a leaf on a starlit stream, and yet if the hope that hath set it

Starting point is 00:24:48 absorb not fear, what helps it man that the stars and the waters gleam? What helps it man that the noon be indeed intense, the night be indeed worth worship? Fear and pain were lords and masters yet of the secret sense, which now dares deem not that light is as darkness. Fain, though dark dreams be to declare it, crying in vain. For whence thou god of the light and the darkness, whence dawns now this vision that bids not the sunbeams wane? What light, what shadow diviner than dawn or night draws near, makes pause, and again, or I dream, draws near?

Starting point is 00:25:38 More soft than shadow, more strong than the strong sun's light, more pure than moonbeams. Yay, but the rays run sheer as fire from the sun through the dusk of the pine wood, clear and constant, yea, but the shadow itself is bright that the light clothes round with love that is one with fear. Above and behind it the noon and the woodland lie. Terrible, radiant with mystery, superb and subdued, triumphant in silence, and hardly the sacred sky seems free from the tyrannous weight of the dumb fierce mood which rules as with fire and invasion of beams that brood the breathless rapture of earth till its hour pass by

Starting point is 00:26:29 and leave her spirit released and her peace renewed. I sleep not. Never in sleep has a man beholden this. From the shadow that trembles and yearns with lights, suppressed and elate and reluctant, obscure and golden as water kindled with presage of dawn or night. A form, a face, a wonder to sense and sight, grows great as the moon through the month, and her eyes emboldened fear till it changed to desire and desire to delight. I sleep not. Sleep would die of a dream so strange. A dream so sweet would die as a rainbow dies, as a sunbow laughs and is lost on the waves that range,

Starting point is 00:27:24 and reck not of light that flickers or spray that flies. But the sun withdraws not. The woodland shrinks not or sighs. No sweet thing sickens with sense or with fear of change. Light wounds not, darkness blinds not, my steadfast eyes. Only the soul in my sense that receives the soul, whence now my spirit is kindled with breathless bliss, knows well if the light that wounds it with love makes whole, if hopes that carol be louder than fears that hiss,

Starting point is 00:28:07 if truth be spoken of flowers and of waves that kiss, of clouds and stars that contend for a sun-bright goal, and yet, may I dream that I dream not indeed of this? An earth-born dreamer, constrained by the bonds of birth, held fast by the flesh, compelled by his veins that beat, and kindled to rapture or wrath, to desire, or to mirth, May here not surely the fall of immortal feet, may feel not surely if heaven upon earth be sweet, and here is my sense fulfilled of the joys of earth. Light, silence, bloom, shade, murmur of leaves that meet. Bloom, fervor, and perfume of grasses and flowers aglow. Breathe and brighten about me. The darkness gleams, the sweet light shivers and laughs on the slopes below,

Starting point is 00:29:16 made soft by leaves that lighten and change like dreams. The silence thrills with the whisper of secret streams, that well from the heart of the woodland. These I know. Earth bore them, heaven sustained them with showers and beams. I love. I love. I love. I love. I. I love. I. I love. I know. I love them. I love them. I love them. I was lean my face to the heather and drink the sun whose flame-lit odors satiates the flowers. Mine eyes close, and the goal of delight and of life is one. No more I crave of earth or her kindred skies. No more? But the joy that springs from them smiles and flies.

Starting point is 00:30:02 The sweet work wrought of them surely, the good work done, if the mind and the face of the season be loveless dies. The, therefore, thee would I come to, cleave to, cling, if happily thy heart be kind and thy gifts be good, unknown sweet spirit whose vesture is soft in spring, in summer splendid, in autumn pale as the wood that shudders and wanes and shrinks as ashamed things should, in winter bright as the male of a war-worn king, whose stands where foes fled far from the face of him stood.

Starting point is 00:30:46 My spirit, or thine, is it? Breath of thy life or of mine, which fills my sense with a rapture that casts out fear. Pan's dim frown wanes, and his wild eyes brighten as thine. transformed as night or as day by the kindling year. Earth-born, or mine I were withered that sees, mine ear that hears were stricken to death by the sense divine. Earth-born, I know thee, but heaven is about me here.

Starting point is 00:31:26 The terror that whispers in darkness and flames in light, the doubt that speaks in the silence of earth, earth and sea, the sense more fearful at noon than in midmost night, of wrath, scarce hushed, and of imminent ill to be, where are they? Heaven is as earth, and as heaven to me, earth, for the shadows that sundered them here take flight, and not as all, as am I, but a dream of The end of poem. This recording is in the public domain. On the South Coast by Alderman Charles Swinburne read for Libravox.org by Laura Gibbs. To Theodore Watts. Hills and valleys where April rallies his radiant squadron of flowers and birds, steep, strange

Starting point is 00:32:35 beaches and lustrous reaches of fluctuant sea that the land engirds, fields and downs that the sunrise crowns, with life diviner than lives in words. Day by day of resurgent May, salute the sun with sublime acclaim, change and brighten, with hours that lighten and darken, girdled with cloud or flame. Earth's fair face, in alternate grace beams, blooms, and lowers, and is yet the same. Twice each day, the Divine Seas play makes glad with glory that comes and goes, Field and street that her waves keep sweet, when past the bounds of their old repose, fast and fierce. In renewed reverse, the foam-flect estuary ebbs and fiends, and

Starting point is 00:33:35 close. Broad and bold, through the stays of old, staked fast with trunks of the wildwood tree, up from shoreward, impelled far forward by marsh and meadow, by lawn and lee. Inland still, at her own wild wills, swells, rolls, and revels the surging sea. Strong as time, and as faith sublime, clothed round with shadows of hope. hopes and fears. Nights and morrows and joys and sorrows, alive with passion of prayers and tears, stands the shrine that has seen decline 800 waxing and waning years. Tower sets square to the storms of air and change of season that glooms and glows, wall and roof of it tempest proof and equal ever to suns and snows.

Starting point is 00:34:34 Bright with riches Of radiant niches And pillars smooth As a straight stem grows Isle and knave That the whelming wave of time Has whelmed not Or touched or neared

Starting point is 00:34:49 Arch and vault Without stain or fault By hands of craftsmen We know not reared Time beheld them And time was quelled And change passed by them As one that feared

Starting point is 00:35:04 Time that flies as a dream and dies as dreams that die with the sleep they feed. Here alone, in a garb of stone incarnate, stands as a god indeed, stern and fair, and of strength to bear all burdens mortal to man's frail seed. Men in years are as leaves or tears that storm or sorrow is feigned to shed. These go by as the winds that sigh, and none takes note of them quick or dead. Time whose breath is their birth and death folds here his pinions and bows his head. Still the sun that beheld begun the work wrought here of unwearied hands, sees as then, though the Red King's men held ruthless rule over lawlessly,

Starting point is 00:36:03 lands, stand their massive design impassive, pure and proud, as a virgin stands. Statelier still, as the years fulfill their count subserving her sacred state, grows the hoary gray church whose story silence utters and age makes great. Statelier seems it, then shines in dreams the face unveiled of unvinquished faith. Fate, more high than the star shone sky, More deep than waters unsounded shines, Keen and far, as the final star on souls that seek not for charms or signs. Yet more bright is the love shone light of men's hands lighted in songs or shrines.

Starting point is 00:36:56 Love and trust that the grave's deep dust can soil not, neither may fear put out. Witness yet that their record set stands fast, though years be as hosts in route, spent and slain, but the signs remain that beat back darkness and cast forth doubt. Men that wrought by the grace of thought and toil things goodlier than praise dare trace, Fair is all that the world may call most fair, Save only the sea's own face. Shrines or songs that the world's change wrongs not Live by grace of their own gifts grace.

Starting point is 00:37:42 Dead, their names that the night reclaims, Alive, their works that the day relooms, Sink and stand, as in stone and sand engraven, none may behold their tombs. Nights and days shall record their praise while hear this flower of their grafting blooms. Flower more fair than the sun-thrilled air bids laugh and lighten and wax and rise.

Starting point is 00:38:13 Fruit more bright than the fervent light sustains with strength from the kindled skies. Flower and fruit that the deathless root of man's love rears, though the man's name dies. Stately stands it, the works of hands unknown of, statelier, a far and near.

Starting point is 00:38:36 Rise around it, the heights that bound our landward gaze from the seaboard here. Downs that swerve and aspire in curve and change of heights that the dawn holds dear. Dawn falls fair on the gray walls there,

Starting point is 00:38:52 confronting dawn on the low green lee, lone and sweet as for fairies' feet held sacred, silent and strange, and free. Wild and wet, with its rills, but yet more fairer falls dawn on the fairer sea. Eastward round by the high green bound of hills that fold the remote fields in, strive and shine on the low sea-line fleet waves and beams when the days begin. Westward glow, when the days burn low, the sun that yields, and the stars that win. Rose-red Eve, on the seas that heave, sinks fair as dawn when the first ray peers. Winds are glancing, from sun-bright-lancing to Shoreham, crowned with the grace of years.

Starting point is 00:39:45 Shoreum, clad with the sunset, glad and grave with glory that death reveres. Death more proud than the king's heads bowed before him stronger than all things bows. Here, his head, as if death were dead, and kingship plucked from his crownless brows. Life hath here such a face of cheer as change appalls not, and time avows. Skies fulfilled with the sundown, stilled and splendid, is a flower that spreads, paved with rarer device and fairer than heavens the luminous oyster beds, grass embanked and in square plots ranked, inlaid with gems that the sundown sheds. Squares more bright and with lovelier light than heaven that kindled it shines with shine, warm and soft, as the dome aloft, but heavier yet than the sun's own shrubs. heaven is high, but the water's sky lit here seems deeper and more divine. Flowers on flowers, that the whole world's bowers may show not, here may the sunset show,

Starting point is 00:41:07 lightly graven and the waters paving with ghostly gold by the clouds aglow. Bright as love is the vault above, but lovelier lightens the wave below. rosy gray or as fiery spray full plumed or greener than emerald gleams, plot by plot, as the skies a lot for each its glory, divine as dreams, lit with fire of appease desire, which sounds the secret of all that seems. Dreams that show what we fain would know, and know not saved by the grace of sleep, sleep whose hands have remove the bands that eyes long waking and feign to weep, feel fast found on them, light around them strange, and darkness above them steep. Yet no vision that heals division of love from love and renews a while, life and breath in the lips where death has quenched the spirit of speech and smile, shows on earth, or in heaven's mid-murth, where no fear enters, or doubts defile. Ought more fair than the radiant air and water here by the twilight wed, here made one by the waning

Starting point is 00:42:30 sun, whose last love quickens to rose bright red, half the crown of the soft high down that rears to northward its woodgirt head. There, when day, is a day, height of sway, men's eyes who stand as we oft have stood high where towers, with its world of flowers, the golden spinny that flanks the wood. See before and around them shore and seaboard, glad as their gifts are good. Higher and higher to the north aspire the green, smooth swelling, unending downs. East and west, on the brave earth's breast, glow girdled jewels, of gleaming towns. Southward shining,

Starting point is 00:43:17 the lands declining, subside in peace that the seas light crowns. Westward wide, in its fruitful pride, the plain lies lordly with plenteous grace, fair as dawns

Starting point is 00:43:31 when the fields and lawns desire her glitters the gladlands face. Eastward yet is the sole sign set of elder days and a lordlier race. Down beneath us afar where seeth in wilder weather the tides aflo, hurled up hither and drawn down thither in quest of rest that they may not know. Still as dew, on a flower, the blue broad stream now sleeps in the fields below.

Starting point is 00:44:04 Mild and bland, in the fair green land it smiles and takes to its heart the sky. scarce the meads and the fens the reeds and grasses still as they stand or lie where the palm of a stately or calm then rests on waters that pass them by yet shall these when the winds and seas of equal days and co-equal nights rage rejoice and uplift a voice whose sound is even as a sword that smites felt and heard as a doomsman's word from sea seaward reaches to landward heights, lift their heart up and take their part of triumphs swollen and strong with rage, rage elate with desire and great with pride that tempest and storm assuage, so their chime in the ear of time has rung from age to rekindled age. Fair and dear is the land's face here, and fair man's work at a man's may be dear and fair as the sun-bright air is here the record that speaks him free free by birth of a sacred earth and regent ever of all the sea

Starting point is 00:45:27 end of poem this recording is in the public domain an autumn vision by algernan charles swinburne read for librivox dot org by lauren fontein An Autumn Vision, October 31, 1889. Zifuro Gigantos ori 1. Is it midsummer here in the heavens that illumine October on Earth? Can the year, when his heart is fulfilled with desire of the days of his mirth, redeem them, recall, or remember? For a memory recalling the rapture of Earth and redeeming the sky, shines down from the heights to the depths.

Starting point is 00:46:17 Will the watchword of dawn be July, when tomorrow acclaims November? The stern salutation of sorrow to death or repentance to shame was all that the season was wont to accord her of grace or acclaim. No lightnings of love and of laughter. But here, in the laugh of the loud west wind from around and above, in the flash of the waters beneath him, what sound or what light but of love rings round him or leaps forth after?

Starting point is 00:46:51 2. Wind beloved of earth and sky and sea beyond all winds that blow. Wind whose might in fight was England's on her mightiest warrior day. Southwest wind whose breath for her was life and fire to scourge her foe. steal to smite and death to drive him down an unreturning way. Well-beloved and welcome, sounding all the clarions of the sky, rolling all the marshalled waters toward the charge that storms the shore. We receive acclaim, salute thee, we who live and dream and die,

Starting point is 00:47:34 as the mightiest mouth of song that ever spake acclaimed of yore. We that live as they that perish praise thee, Lord of cloud and wave, wind of winds, clothed on with darkness, whence as lightning light comes forth, we that know thee strong to guard and smite, to scatter and to save, we to whom the southwest wind is dear as Athens held the north. He for her waged war, as thou for us against all powers defiant. fleets full fraught with storm from Persia, laden deep with death from Spain. The, the giant god of song and battle, hailed as God and giant. Yet not his but ours the land is whence thy praise should ring and rain. Rain as rapture shed from song and ring as trumpets blown for battle. Sound and sing before thee, loud and glad as leaps and sinks the sea.

Starting point is 00:48:39 Yea, the sea's white steeds are curbed and spurred of thee, and pent as cattle. Yet they laugh with love and pride to live, subdued not save of thee. Ears that hear thee here in heaven the sound of widening wings gigantic. Eyes that see the cloud lift westward, see thy darkening brows divine. Wings whose measure is the limit of the limitless Atlantic. brows that bend and bid the sovereign sea submit her soul to thine. Three. Twelve days since, is it?

Starting point is 00:49:18 Twelve days gone, Lord of Storm, that a storm bow shone higher than sweeps thy sublime, dark wing, fair as dawn is and sweet like spring? Never dawn in the deep wide east spread so splendid and strange a feast, Whence the soul as it drank and fed, felt such rapture of wonder shed. Never spring in the Wildwood's heart felt such flowers at her footfall start. Born of earth as arose on sight,

Starting point is 00:49:51 born of heaven and of storm and light. Stern and sullen, the gray grim sea swelled and strove as in toils, though free, free as heaven and as heaven, and as heaven sublime, clear as heaven of the toils of time. 4. Suddenly, sheer from the heights to the depths of the sky and the sea, sprang from the darkness alive as a vision of life to be glory, triune, and transcendent of color,

Starting point is 00:50:27 a far and a fire, arching and darkening the darkness with light as of dream or desire. desire. Heaven, in the depth of its height, shone wistful and wan from above, earth from beneath, and the sea shone stricken and breathless with love. As a shadow may shine, so shone they, as ghosts of the viewless blessed, that sleep hath sight of alive in a rapture of sunbright rest. The green earth glowed and the gray sky gleamed for a wondrous while, and the star Storm's full frown was crossed by the light of its own deep smile. As the darkness of thought and of passion is touched by the light that gives life, deathless as love from the depth of a spirit that sees and lives,

Starting point is 00:51:21 from the soul of a seer and a singer wherein as a scroll unfurled lies open the scripture of light and of darkness, the word of the world. so shapeless and measureless, lurid as anguish and haggard as crime, pale as the front of oblivion and dark as the heart of time. The wild wan heaven at its height was assailed and subdued and made more fair than the skies that know not of storm and endure not shade. The grim sea swell, gray, sleepless, and sad as a soul is strutely. shone, smiled, took heart, and was glad of its wrath, and the world's face changed. Five. Up from the Morland's northward gleaming, even to heaven's transcendent height, clothed with massive cloud and seeming all one fortress reared of night, down to where the deep sea,

Starting point is 00:52:28 dreaming, angry dreams lay dark and white, white as death and dark as fate, heaving with the strong wind's weight, sad with stormy pride of state, one full rainbow shone alight. Up from inmost memories dwelling where the light of life abides, where the past finds tongue foretelling time that comes and grace the guides, power that saves and sways, compelling souls that ebb and flow like tides, shone or seem to shine, and swim through the cloud surf great and grim. Thoughts live surge, the soul of him, by whose light the sun looks dim. In what synod were they sitting, all the gods and lords of time, whence they watched as Fenfire's splitting years and names of men sublime. When their counsels found it fitting, one should stand

Starting point is 00:53:28 where none might climb. None of man begotten, none born of men beneath the sun till the race of time be run, save this heaven enfranchised one. With what rapture of creation was the sole supernal thrilled? With what pride of adoration was the world's heart fire? and filled, heaved in heavenward exultation, higher than hopes or dreams might build, grave with awe not known while he was not, mad with glorious glee as the sun-soluted sea, when his hour bade Shakespeare be. Six. There, clear as night beholds her crowning seven, the sea beheld his likeness set in heaven.

Starting point is 00:54:20 The shadow of his spirit, full in sight shone, For the shadow of that soul is light. Nor heaven alone bore witness. Earth avowed him present and acclaimed of storm aloud. From the arching sky to the ageless hills and sea, The whole world visible, audible, was he. Each part of all that wove that wondrous hole, the raiment of the presence of his soul.

Starting point is 00:54:52 The sun that smote and kissed the dark to death, spake, smiled, and strove, like song's triumphant breath. The soundless cloud whose thunderous heart was dumb, swelled, lowered, and shrank to feel its conqueror come. Yet high from heaven its empire vast and vain frowned, and renounced not night's reluctant reign,

Starting point is 00:55:18 The serpentine swift sounds and shapes wherein the stainless sea moks earth and death and sin crawls dark as craft or flashes keen as hate, subdued and insubmissive, strong like fate, and weak like man, bore wrathful witness yet that storms and sins are more than suns that set. That evil everlasting, girt for strife eternal, wars with hope, as death with life. The dark, sharp shifting wind that bade the waves falter, lose heart, bow down like foes made slaves,

Starting point is 00:55:58 and waxed within more bitter as they bowed, baffling the sea, swallowing the sun with cloud, devouring fast as fire on earth devours, and hungering hard as frost that feeds on flowers. Clothed round with fog that reeked as fume from hell, and darkening with its miscreative spell. Light, glad, and keen, and splendid as the sword,

Starting point is 00:56:26 whose heft had known Othello's hand, its lord, spake all the soul that hell drew back to greet and felt its fire shrink, shuddering from his feet. Far off, the darkness darkened, and recoiled, and neared again, and triumphed. And the coiled, colorless cloud and sea discolored, grew conscious of horror, huge as heaven, and knew where Gonerell's soul made chill and foul the mist, and all the leprous life and regan hissed.

Starting point is 00:56:57 Fierce, homeless ghosts, rejected of the pit, from hell to hell of storm fear watched them flit. About them and before, the dull gray gloom shuddered, and heaven seemed hateful as the tomb that shrinks from resurrection. and from out that sullen hell which girt their shades about, the nether soul that lurks and lowers within, man made of dust and fire and shame and sin breathed. All the cloud that felt it breathe and blight was blue as plague or black as thunderous night. Elect of hell, the children of his hate thronged, as to storm sweet heaven's triumphal

Starting point is 00:57:42 The terror of his giving rose and shone imminent. Life had put its likeness on, but higher than all its horrent height of shade shone sovereign, seen by light itself had made, above the woes of all the world, above life, sin, and death, his myriad-minded love. From landward heights whereon the radiance lent full frot from heaven, intense, and imminent, to depths wherein the seething strength of clouds scarce match the wrath of waves whereon they bowed, from home-born pride and kindling love of home, to the outer skies and seas of fire and foam, from splendor, soft as dew, that sun-dawn thrills, to gloom that shutters round the world fills, from midnight's murmuring round Titania's ear, to midnight's maddening round the

Starting point is 00:58:42 rage of Lear. The wonder woven of storm and sun became one with the light that lightens from his name. The music moving on the sea that felt, the stormwind, even as snows of springtide melt, was blithe as Ariel's hand or voice might make, and bid all grief die gladly for its sake. And there the soul, alive in ear and eye that watched the wonders of an hour pass by, saw brighter than all stars that heaven in spheres the silent splendor of Cordelia's tears, felt in the whispers of the quickening wind the radiance of the laugh of Rosalind, and heard in sounds that melt the souls of men with love of love, the tune of Imogen. 7. For the strong northeast is not strong to subdue and to slay the divine southwest,

Starting point is 00:59:47 and the darkness is less than the light that it darkens and dies in reluctant rest. It hovers and hangs on the laboring and trembling ascent of the dawn from the deep, till the sun's eye quicken the world and the waters and smite it again into sleep. Night, holy and starry, the fostress of souls, with the fragrance of heaven in her breath, subdues with the sense of her godhead the forces and mysteries of sorrow and death. Eternal as dawns is the comfort she gives, but the mist that beleaguers and slays comes, passes, and does not. The strength of it withers, appalled, or assuaged by, the days. Faith, haggard as fear that had borne her, and dark as the sire that begat her, despair,

Starting point is 01:00:45 held rule on the soul of the world, and the song of it saddening through ages that were. Dim centuries that darkened and brightened and darkened again, and the soul of their song was great as their grief, and sublime as their suffering, and strong as their sorrows were strong. It knew not, it saw not, but shadows triune, and evoked by the strength of their spell dark hell, and the mountain of anguish, and heaven that was hollower and harder than hell. These are not. The womb of the darkness that bear them rejects them and knows them no more. Thought, fettered in misery and iron, revives in the light that it lived in of yore.

Starting point is 01:01:35 For the soul that is wisdom and freedom, the spirit of England redeemed from her past, speaks life through the lips of the master and lord of her children, the first and the last. Thought, touched by his hand and redeemed by his breath, sees, hears, and accepts from above, the limitless lightnings of vision and passion, the measureless music of love. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. passionate, dark and sweet. Love's own self was the deep sea's daughter, fair and flawless from face to feet. Haled of all when the world was golden, loved of lovers whose names beholden,

Starting point is 01:02:58 thrill men's eyes, as with light of olden days more glad than their flight was fleet. So they sang, but for men that love her, souls that hear not her word in vain, Earth beside her, and heaven above her seem but shadows that wax and wane. Softer than sleeps are the seas caresses, kinder than loves that betrays and blesses, blither than springs when her flowerful tresses shake forth sunlight and shine with rain. All the strength of the waves that perish swells beneath me and laughs and sighs. Sighs for love of the life they cherish, laughs to know that it lives and dies. Dyes for joy of its life and lives, thrilled with joy that its brief death gives.

Starting point is 01:03:57 Death whose laugh or whose breath forgives change that bids it subside and rise. 2. Hard and heavy, remote but nearing, sunless hangs the severe skies wait, cloud on cloud, though the wind be veering, heaped on high to the sun-dawn's gate. Dawn and even and noon are one, veiled with vapor and void of sun, not in sight or in fancied hearing, now less mighty than time or fate. The gray sky gleams and the gray seas glimmer, pale and sweet as a dream's delight, as a dream's where darkness and light seem dimmer, touched by dawn, or subdued by night. The dark wind's stern and sublime and sad, swings the rollers to westward, clad with lustrous shadow that lures the swimmer, lures and lulls him with dreams of light.

Starting point is 01:05:04 Light and sleep and delight and wonder, Change and rest and a charm of cloud, Fill the world of the skies where under heaves and quivers and pints aloud, All the world of the waters, hoary now, but clothed with its own live glory, That mates the lightning, and mocks the thunder, With light more living, and word more proud. 3. Far off westward, whither sets the sounding strife. Strife more sweet than peace of shoreless waves whose glee scorns the shore and loves the wind that leaves them free. Strange as sleep and pale as death and fair as life, shifts the moonlight-colored sunshine on the sea. Toward the sunset's goal the sunless waters crowd,

Starting point is 01:06:03 Fast as autumn days toward winter, Yet it seems, Here that autumn wanes not, Here that woods and streams Lose not heart, And change not likeness, Chilled and bowed, Warped and wrinkled,

Starting point is 01:06:20 Here the days are fair as dreams. Four O Russet-robed November, What ails thee so to smile? Chill August, pale September, endured a woeful while, and fell as falls an ember from forth a flameless pile, but Golden Gert November bids all she looks on smile. The lustrous foliage, waning as wanes the morning moon,

Starting point is 01:06:53 here falling, here refraining, outbraves the pride of June, with statelyer semblance feigning, no fear, Thus death be soon, as though the woods thus waning should wax to meet the moon. As though when fields lie stricken by gray December's breath, these lordlier growths that sicken and die for fear of death should feel the sense re-quicken that hears what spring-tide seth, and thrills for love spring-stricken, and pierced with April's breath. The keen white-winged Northeaster, that stings and spurs thy sea,

Starting point is 01:07:39 Doth yet but feed and feast her with glowing sense of glee. Calm chained her, storm released her, and Storm's glad voice was he. Southwester or Northeaster, thy winds rejoice the sea. Five. A dream. A dream is it all. the season, the sky, the water, the wind, the shore. A day-born dream of divine unreason? A marvel molded of sleep, no more? For the cloud-like wave that my limbs, while cleaving, feel as in slumber beneath them

Starting point is 01:08:19 heaving, soothes the sense as to slumber, leaving sense of naught that was known of your. A pure passion, a lordlier leisure, A piece more happy than lives on land, Fulfs with pulse of diviner pleasure The dreaming head and the steering hand. I lean my cheek to the cold gray pillow, The deep soft swell of the full broad billow, And close mine eyes for delight past measure,

Starting point is 01:08:52 And wish the wheel of the world would stand. The wild-winged hour that we fain would capture Falls as from heaven that its light feet clomb. So brief, so soft, and so full the rapture was felt That soothed me with sense of home. To sleep, to swim, and to dream forever, Such joy the vision of man saw never, For here too soon will a dark day sever

Starting point is 01:09:22 The sea-birds wing from the sea-waves foam. A dream, and more than a dream, and dimmer at once and brighter than dreams that flee the moment's joy of the seaward swimmer abides, remembered as truth may be. Not all the joy, and not all the glory, must fade as leaves when the woods wax hoary, for there the downs and the sea-banks glimmer, and here to south of them swells the sea. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Grace Darling by Alderman Charles Swinburne. Read for Librebox.org by Laura Gibbs. Take O Star of All Our Seas from not an alien hand.

Starting point is 01:10:22 Ombage paid of song bowed down before thy glory's face. Thou the living light of all our lovely, storm. stormy strand, thou the brave North Country's very glory of glories, grace. Loud and dark about the lighthouse rings and glares the night, glares with foam-lit gloom and darkling fire of storm and spray, rings with roar of winds and chase and rage of waves and flight, howls and hisses as with mouths of snakes and wolves at bed, scarce the cliffs of the islets, scarce the walls of joyous guard, flashed to sight between the

Starting point is 01:11:10 deadlier lightnings of the sea. Storm is Lord and master of a midnight evil starred, nor may sight or fear discern what evil stars may be. Dark as death and white as snow the cease while scowls and shines, heaves and yearns and pants for prey, from ravening lip to lip. Strong, in rage of rapturous anguish lines on hurtling lines, ranks on charging ranks that break and rend the battling ship.

Starting point is 01:11:47 All the night is mad and murderous. Who shall front the night? Not the prow that labors, helpless as a storm-blown leaf, where the rocks and waters, darkling depth and beetling height, Rage with wave on shattering wave and thundering reef on reef. Death is fallen upon the prisoners there of darkness bound,

Starting point is 01:12:13 like as thralls with links of iron fast in bonds of doom. How shall any way to break the bands of death be found, any hand avail to pluck them from that raging tomb? All the night is great with child of death, No stars above Show them hope in heaven No lights from shores ward help on earth Is there help or hope to seaward? Is there help in love, hope and pity

Starting point is 01:12:46 Where the ravening hounds of storm make mirth? Where the light but shows the naked, eyeless face of death Nearer, laughing dumb and grim across the loud live storm? Not in human heart or hand or speech of human breath, surely nor in saviors found of mortal face or form. Yet below the light, between the reefs, a skiff shot out, seems a seabird feigned to breast and brave the straight fierce pass, whence the channeled roar of waters driven in raging rout,

Starting point is 01:13:25 pent and pressed and madden, speaks their monstrous, might and mass. Thunder heaves and howls about them lightning leaps and flashes. Hard at hand, not high in heaven, but close between the walls heaped and hollowed of the storms of old, whence reels and crashes, all the rage of all the unbaffled wave that breaks and falls. Who shall thwart the madness and the gladness of it, laden, full with heavy fate, and joyous as the birds that whirl. Not in heaven or earth, if not one mortal molded maiden, not if not the soul that glorifies a Northland girl. Not the rocks that break may baffle, not the reefs that thwart, stay the ravenous rapture of the waves that crowd and leap.

Starting point is 01:14:21 Scarce their flashing laughter shows the hunger of their heart, scarce their lion-throated roar, the wrath at heart they keep. Child and man and woman in the grasp of death clenched fast, tremble, clothed with darkness round about, and scarce draw breath, scarce lift eyes up toward the light that saves not, scarce may cast thought or prayer up, caught and trampled in the snare of death. Not as sea-muse cling and laugh or sun their plumes and sleep, and cower the wild night's waifs of shipwreck blind with fear, where the fierce reef scarce yields foothold that a bird might keep, and the clamorous darkness deadens eye and deafens ear. Yet beyond their helpless hearing, out of hopeless sight, saviors armed and girt upon with strength of heart, fairforth, sire and daughter, hand on oar and face again, against the night, maid and man whose names are beacons ever to the north.

Starting point is 01:15:34 Nearer now, but all the madness of the storming surf hounds and roars them back, but roars and hounds them back in vain, as a pleasure skiff may graze the lake in banking turf, so the boat that bears them grates the rock where toward they strain. dawn as fierce and haggard as the face of night scarce guides toward the cries that went and clove the darkness crying for aid hours on hours across the engorged reluctance of the tides sire and daughter high-souled man and mightier-hearted maid not the bravest land that ever-breasted wars grim sea hurled her foes back harried on the lowlands whence they came held her own and smote her smiters down while such durst be shining northward shining southward as the aurorian flame not our mother not northumberland brought ever forth though no southern shore may match the sons that kiss her mouth children worthy are all the birthright given of the ardent north where the fire of hearts outburns the sons that suns that fire the south. Even such fire was this that lit them, not from lowering skies, where the darkling dawned flag stricken in the sun's own shrine, down the gulf of storm subsiding, till their earnest

Starting point is 01:17:08 eyes find the relics of the ravening night that spared but nine. Life by life the man redeems them, head by storm-worn head, while the girl's hand stays the boat where, where of the waves are fain ah but woe for one the mother clasping fast her dead happier had the surges slain her with her children slain back they bear and bring between them safe the woeful nine where above the ravenous hawkers fixed at watch for prey storm and calm behold the long stone's towering signal shine now is when that laboring night brought forth a shut shuddering day. Now, as then, though like the hounds of storm against her snarling, all the clamorous years between us stormed down many of fame. As our sires beheld before us, we behold grace darling, crowned and throned our queen, and as they hailed, we hail her name. Nay, not ours alone, her kinsfolk worn, though chiefliest ours, East and West and South acclaim her queen of England's maids,

Starting point is 01:18:27 Star more sweet than all their stars and flower than all their flowers, Higher in heaven and earth than star that sets or flower that fades, How should land or sea that nurtured her forget or love, Hold not fast her fame for us while aught is born in mind? Land and sea beneath us, sun and moon, and stars above, bear the bright soul witness seen of all but souls born blind. Stars and moon and sun may wax and wane subside and rise, age on age as flake on flake of showering snows be shed. Not till earth be sunless, not till death strike blind the skies,

Starting point is 01:19:15 may the deathless love that waits on deathless deeds be dead. Years on years have withered sense Beside the hearth once thine I too young to have seen thee Touch thy father's hallowed hand The in him shall all men see Forever stars that shine While the sea that spared thee

Starting point is 01:19:37 Girds and glorifies the land End of poem This recording is in the public domain Lock Torridon by Algernan Charles Swinburne. Read for Librevox.org by Lauren Fontaine. Loc Torradon to E.H. The dawn of night more fair than morning rose,

Starting point is 01:20:10 stars hurrying forth on stars, as snows on snows haste when the wind and winter bid them speed. Vague miles of Moreland Road behind us lay scarce traversed, ere the day sank, and the sun forsook us at our need, belated. Where we thought to have rested, rest was none. For soft Marie's dim, quivering breast, bound round with gracious inland girth of green and fearless of the wild wave-wandering west, shone shelterless for strangers, and unseen the goal before us lay of all our blithe and stifleith and strenes,

Starting point is 01:20:54 strange and strenuous day. For when the northering road faced westward, when the dark, sharp sudden gorge drops seaward, then beneath the stars, between the steeps, the track we followed lighted not of moon or sun, and plunging whither none might guess, while heaven and earth were hoar and black, seemed even the dim still pass, once none turns back. And through the twilight leftward of the way, and down the dark with many a laugh and leap, the light-blythe hill-streams shone, from scar to steep, and glittering pride of play. And ever while the night grew great and deep, we felt but saw not what the hills were would keep sacred a while from sense of moon or star, and full and far beneath us, sweet and strange

Starting point is 01:21:57 as heaven may be, the sea. The very sea, no mountain-moulded lake whose fluctuant shapeliness is fain to take shape from the steadfast shore that rules it round, and only from the storms a casual sound, the sea that harbors in her heart sublime, the supreme heart of music deep as time, and in her spirit strong, the spirit of all imaginable song, not a whisper or lisp from the waters. The skies were not silenter.

Starting point is 01:22:38 Peace was between them, a passionless rapture of respite as soft as release. Not a sound, but a sense that possessed and pervaded with patient delight the soul and the body, clothed round with the comfort of limitless night. Night infinite, living, adorable, loved of the land and the sea. Night, mother of mercies, who saith to the spirits in prison, be free. And softer than dewfall and kind of. than starlight and keener than wine, came round us the fragrance of waters, the life of the breath

Starting point is 01:23:23 of the brine. We saw not, we heard not, the face or the voice of the waters, we knew by the darkling delight of the wind as the sense of the sea in it grew, by the pulse of the darkness about us enkindled and quickened, that here, unseen and unheard of us, surely the goal we had faith in was near. A silence diviner than music, a darkness diviner than light, fulfilled as from heaven with a measureless comfort, the measure of night. But never a roof for shelter and never a sign for guide rose doubtful or visible. Only and hardly and gladly we heard the soft waves whisper and welter, subdued and allured and allured to subside by the mild night's magic.

Starting point is 01:24:25 The lonely sweet silence was soothed, not stirred, by the noiseless noise of the gleaming glad ripples that played and sighed, kissed, laughed, recoiled, recoiled, and recoiled, and Relented, whispered, flickered, and fled. No season was this for dreaming how oft with a stormier tide had the wrath of the winds been vented on sons of the tribes long dead. The tribes whom time and the changes of things and the stress of doom have erased and effaced, forgotten as wrecks or weeds of the shore,

Starting point is 01:25:08 in sight of the stern hill ranges that hardly may change their gloom when the fruits of the years wax rotten, and the seed of them springs no more. For the dim, straight footway dividing, the waters that breathed below led safe to the kindliest of shelters that ever awoke into light. And still, in remembrance abiding, broods over the stars that glow, and the water that eddies, and welters the passionate piece of the night. All night long in the world of sleep, skies and waters were soft and deep. Shadow clothed them,

Starting point is 01:25:52 and silence made soundless music of dream and shade. All above us, the live-long night, shadow, kindled with sense of light. All around us, the brief night long silence, laden with sense of song. Stars and mountains without, we knew, watched and waited the soft night through, all unseen but divined and dear, thrilled the touch of the sea's breath near. All unheard but alive like sound, throbbed the sense of the sea's life around, round us, near us in depth and height. soft as darkness and keen as light.

Starting point is 01:26:41 And the dawn leapt in at my casement, and there, as I rose, at my feet, no waves of the landlocked waters, no lake submissive and sweet, soft slave of the lordly seasons, whose breath may loose it or freeze, but to left and to right and ahead was the ripple whose pulse is the seas. From the gorge we had traveled by starlight the sunrise, winged and aflame, shone large on the live, wide wavelets that shuddered with joy as it came. As it came and caressed and possessed them till panting and laughing with light, from mountain to mountain the water was kindled and stung to delight.

Starting point is 01:27:30 And the gray gaunt heights that embraced and constrained and compelled it were glad, and the rampart of rock, stark naked that thwarted and barred it, was clad with a stern gray splendor of sunrise. And scarce had I sprung to the sea when the dawn and the water were wetted, the hills and the sky set free. The chain of the night was broken. The waves that embraced me and smiled and flickered and fond in the sunlight alive, unafraid, undefiled, were sweeter to swim in than air, though fulfilled with the mounting mourn, could be for the birds whose triumph rejoiced that a day was born. And a day was arisen indeed for us. Years and the changes of years clothed round with their joys and their sorrows, and dead as their hopes and their fears, lie noteless and nameless, unlit by remembrance or record of days, were stupt. We're wonder or memory, or cursing or blessing, or passion or praise. Between us who live and forget not, but yearn with delight in it yet, and the day we forget not, and never may live and may think to forget.

Starting point is 01:28:55 And the years that were kindlier and fairer and kindled with pleasures as keen have eclipsed not with lights or with shadows the light on the face of its scene. For softly and surely, as nearer the boat that we gazed from drew, the face of the precipice opened and bade us as birds passed through. And the bark shot sheer to the sea through the straight of the sharp, steep cleft, the portal that opens with imminent rampires to right and to left. Sublime as the sky they darken and strange as a spell-struck dream. on the world unconfined of the mountains, the reign of the sea supreme, the kingdom of westward waters wherein, when we swam, we knew the waves that we clove were boundless. The wind on our brows that blew had swept no land and no lake, and had worn not on tower or on tree, but came on us hard out of heaven and alive with the soul of the sea. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain.

Starting point is 01:30:42 a presence of all men desired. Far eastward and westward, the sun-colored lands, smile warm as the light on them smiles, and statelyer than temples are builded with hands, tall column by column, the sanctuary stands, of the pine forest's infinite aisles. Mute worship too fervent for praise or for prayer, possesses the spirit with peace,

Starting point is 01:31:09 fulfilled with the breath of the luminous air, the fragrance, the silence, the shadow, as fair, as the rays that recede or increase. Riched pillars that redden aloft and aloof, with never a branch for a nest, sustain the sublime and divisible roof, to the storm and the sun in his majesty proof, and awful as waters at rest. Man's hand hath not measured the height of them thought,

Starting point is 01:31:37 may measure not, or may not know, and its shadow the woops of the woodland are wrought, as a bird is the sun and the toils of them caught, and the flakes of it scattered as snow. As the shreds of a plumage of gold on the ground, the sun flakes by multitudes lie, should loose as the petals of roses this ground, on the floors of the forest in gilt and browned,

Starting point is 01:32:04 and reddened afar in an eye. Dim centuries with darkling and scrutable hands, have reared and secluded the shrine, for gods that we know not, enkindled as brands. On the altar the years that are dust and their sands, time's glass has forgotten for sign. A temple whose transeps are measured by miles, whose chancel has mourning for priest, whose floorwalk the foot of no spoiler defiles, whose musical silence no music beguiles, no festivals limit its feast. The noon's minstration, the nights and the dawns, conceals not, reveals not for man,

Starting point is 01:32:48 on the slopes of their herbless and blossomless lawns, some track of a nymphs or some trail of a fawns, to the place of the slumber of pan. Thought kindled and quickened by worship and wonder, too rapture too sacred for fear, on the ways that unite or divide them in sunder, alone may be taken. discern, if about them were under, betoken a trace of him here. With passionate all that is deeper than panic, the spirit subdued and unshaken, takes heed of the godhead, Turin and Titanic, whose footfall is felt on the breach of volcanic, sharp steeps that their fire has forsaken. By a spell more serene than the dim necromanic, dead charms of the past and the night,

Starting point is 01:33:38 or the terror that lurked in the noon to make frantic, where Edna takes shape from the limbs of gigantic, dead gods disannointed of might. The spirit made one with the spirit whose breath makes noon in the woodland sublime, abides as entranced in a presence that saith, things loftier than life and serener than death, triumphant and silent as time.

Starting point is 01:34:05 Pine Ridge, September, 18, 93. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. A year's carols. My Aldrin'aunt Charles Swindburn. Read for Libravox.org by Agnes Robert Baer. January.

Starting point is 01:34:32 Hail January, that bearest tear. On snow-bright breasts the babe-faced ear. That weeps and trembles to be born. Hail made and mother, strong and bright. Hooded and cloaked and shod with white, Whose eyes are stars that match the morn, Thy forehead braves the storm's bent bow, Thy feet and kindle, stars of snow.

Starting point is 01:34:58 February On February, With weeping cheer, Whose cold hand guides the youngling year, Down misty roans of mire and rhyme, Before thy pale and fitful face, The shrill wind shifts, the clouds apace, through skies the morning scarce may climb,

Starting point is 01:35:18 thine eyes are thick with heavy tears, but lit with hopes that light the years. March Hail happy March, whose foot on earth rings as the blast of martial mirth, when trumpets fire men's heart for fray. No race of wild things winged or fined may match the might that wings thy wind

Starting point is 01:35:42 through air and sea, through scut and spray, Strong joy and thou, were powers twin born, Of tempest and the towering morn. April Crowned April King, whose kiss bade earth, Bring forth the time her lordliest birth, When Shakespeare from thy lips drew breath, And laugh to hold in one soft hand,

Starting point is 01:36:08 A spell that bade the world's wheel stand, And power on life and power, on death, with quarrying suns and sun-bright showers, praise him the flower of all thy flowers. May. Hail May, whose bark puts forth full sailed, for summer, May whom Chaucer hailed, with all his happy might of heart, and gave thy rose-bright-daisy tips, strange fragrance from his amorous lips, that still thine own breath seems to part, and sweeten till each word they say, is even a flower of flowering may. June.

Starting point is 01:36:50 Strong June, superb, serene, alate, with conscience of thy sovereign state, untouched of thunder, though the storm, skith here and there thy shuddering skies, and bid his lightning cross thine eyes, with fire, thine golden hours and form, Earth and the souls of men with life, that brings forth peace from shining strife. July Hail proud July, whose fervent mouth, bids even be morn, and north be south. My grace and gospel of thy word, whence all the splendor of the sea lies breathless with the light in thee, and marvel at the music heard from the ardent silent lips of noon and midnight's rapturous plenaloon. August Great August, Lord of Golden Lands, whose lordly joy through seas and strands,

Starting point is 01:37:51 and all the red-ripe heart of earth, strikes passion deep as life instills, the folded veils and folding hills, with gladness too divine from earth, the gracious glories of thine eyes, make night and noon where darkness dies. September Hail kind September, Friend whose grace, renews the bland year's bounteous face,

Starting point is 01:38:18 with largest given of corn and wine, through many a land that laughs with love of thee and all the heaven above, more fruitful found than all save thine, whose skies fulfill with strenuous cheer, the fervent fields that knew thee near. October. October of the tawny crown,

Starting point is 01:38:41 whose heavy laden hands drop down, blessings the bounties of thy breath, at mildness of thy mellowing might, fill earth in heaven with love and light, too sweet for fear to dream of death, or memory while thy joy lives yet, to know what joy would fain forget. November

Starting point is 01:39:03 Hail soft November Though thy pale sad smile Rebuk the words that hail Thy sorrow with no sorrowing words Or gratulate thy grief with song Less bitter than the winds that wrong Thy withering woodlands Where the birds

Starting point is 01:39:22 Keep hardly hot to sing or see How fair thy faint wan face may be December December thou whose hallowing hands On shuddering seas and hardening lands Set as a sacramental sign The seal of Christmas felt on earth As witness towards a new year's birth

Starting point is 01:39:46 Whose promise makes thy death divine The crowning joy that comes of thee Makes glad all grief on land or sea End of poem This recording is in the public domain england an ode by algernon charles swimburn read for liverybox dot org by allan mapstone one sea and strand and a lordlier land than sea-tides rolling and rising sun clasp and lighten inclines that brighten with day when day that was here is done call aloud on their children proud with trust that future and past are one

Starting point is 01:40:45 far and near from the swan's nest here the storm birds bred of her fair white breast sons whose home was the sea-waves foam have borne the fame of her east and west north and south has the storm-winds mouth rung praise of england and england's quest fame wherever her flag flew never forbore to fly with an equal wing france and spain with their warrior train bowed down before her as thrall to king india knelt at her feet and felt her sway more fruitful of life than spring darkness round them as iron bound fell off from races of elder name slain at sight of her eyes whose light bids freedom lighten and burn as flame night endures not the touch that cures of kingship tyrants and slaves of shame all the terror of time where error and time where error and and fear were lords of a world of slaves age on age in resurgent rage and anguish darkening as waves on waves fell or fled from a face that shed such grace as quickens the dust of graves things of night at her glance took flight the strength of darkness recoiled and sank sank the fires of the murderous pyres whereon wild agony writhed and shrank rose the light of the rain of wright from gulfs of years that the darkness drank yet the might of her wings in flight whence glory light of her wings in flight whence glory light and music rings loud and bright as the dawns shall smite and still the discord of evil things yet not slain by her radiant rain but darkened now by her sails stretched wings

Starting point is 01:43:16 two music made of change and conquest glory born of evil slain stilled the discord slew the darkness bade the lights of tempest wane where the deathless dawn of england rose in sign that right should reign mercy where the tiger wallowed mad and blind with blood and lust justice where the jackal yelped and fed and slaves allowed it just rose as england's light on as as as asia rose and smote them down to dust justice bright as mercy mercy girt by justice with her sword smote and saved and raised and ruined till the tyrant ridden horde saw the lightning fade from heaven and knew the sun for god and lord where the footfall sounds of england where the smile of england shines rings the tread and laughs the face of freedom fair as hope divines days to be more brave than ours and lit by lordlier stars for signs all our past acclaims our future shakespeare's voice and nelson's hand milton's faith and wordsworth's trust in this our chosen and chain-lid but-lainly land bear us witness come the world against her england yet shall stand earth and sea bear england witness if he lied who said it he whom the winds that ward her waves that clasp and herb and flower and tree fed with english jews and sunbeams hail as more than man may be no man ever spake as he that bade our england be but true keep but faith with england fast and firm and none should bid her rue none may speak as he but all may know the sign that shakespeare knew

Starting point is 01:45:27 three from the springs of the dawn from the depths of the noon from the heights of the night that shine hope faith and remembrance of glory that found but in england her throne her throne and her shrine speak louder than song may proclaim them that here is the seal of them set for a sign and loud as the sea's voice thunders applause of the land that is one with the sea speaks time in the ear of the people that never at heart was not inly free the word of command that assures us of life if we will but that life shall be if the race that is first that the races of men, who behold unashamed the sun, stand fast and forget not the sign that is given of the years and the wars that are done, the token that all who are born of its blood should in heart as in blood be one. The word of remembrance that lightens as fire from the steeps of the storm-lit past, bids only the faith of our fathers injuring us, firm as they held, fast, that the glory which was from the first upon England alone may endure to the last,

Starting point is 01:46:51 that the love and the hate may change not the faith, may not fade nor the wrath nor scorn, that shines for her sons and that burns for her foemen as fire of the knights or the morn, that the births of her womb may forget not the sign of the glory wherein they were born, A light that is more than the sunlight and air That is brighter than morning's breath Clothes England about as the strong sea classes her And answers the word that it sith The word that assures her of life if she change not

Starting point is 01:47:29 And choose not the ways of death Change darkens and lightens around her alternate In hope and in fear to be Hope knows not if fear speaks truth nor fear Whether hope be not blind as she But the sun is in heaven that beholds her immortal And girdled with life by the sea End of poem

Starting point is 01:47:56 This recording is in the public domain Eton An Ode By Algernon Charles Swimburn Read for Libribox.org by Alan Mapstone For the 450th anniversary of the foundation of the college

Starting point is 01:48:22 1 400 summers and 50 have shone on the meadows of Thames and died since Eton arose in an age that was darkness and shone by his radiant side As a star that the spell of a wise man's word bade live and ascend and abide and ever as times flow brightened a river more dark than the storm-clothed sea and age upon age rode fairer and larger in promise of hope set free with england eaten her child-kept pace as a fostress of men to be and ever as earth waxed wiser and softer the beating of time's wide wings since fate fell dark on her father most hapless and gentlest of star-crossed kings

Starting point is 01:49:22 her praise has increased as the chant of the dawn that the choir of the noon out sings two storm and cloud in the skies were loud and lightning mocked at the blind sun's light war and woe on the land below shed heavier shadow than falls from night dark was earth at her dawn of birth as here her record of praise is bright clear and fair through her morning air the light first laugh of the sunlit stage rose and rang as a fount that sprang from depths yet dark with a spent storm's rage loud and glad as of boys and bad the sunrise open on shakespeare's age lords of staten of war whom fate found strong in battle in council strong here ere fate had approved them great abode their season and thought not long here too first was the lark's note nursed that filled and flooded the skies with song three shelley lyric lord of england's lordliest singers here first heard ringed from lips of poets crowned and dead the promethean word whence his soul took fire and power to outsoar the sunward soaring bird still the reaches of the river still the light on field and hill still the memories held aloft as lamps for hope's young fire to fill shine and while the light of england lives shall shine for england's still

Starting point is 01:51:22 when four hundred more and fifty years have risen and shone and set bright with names that men remember loud with names that men Then forget. Happily here shall Eaton's record be what England finds it yet. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. The Union by Algernon Charles Swinburne. Read for Libribox.org by Alan Mapstone. Three in one, but one in three,

Starting point is 01:52:07 God who girt her with the sea Bade our common wheel to be Not if now not one Though fraud and fear would sever The bond assured for ever Their shameful strength shall never Undo what heaven has done South and north and west and east

Starting point is 01:52:34 Watch the ravens flock to feet dense as round some death-struck beast black as night is black stand fast as faith together in stress of treasurer's weather when hounds and wolves break tether and treason guides the pack lovelier than thy seas are strong glorious ireland sword and song gird and crown thee none may wrong save thy sons alone the sea that laughs around us hath sundered not but bound us the sun's first rising found us throned on its equal throne North and South and East and West, All true hearts that wish thee best, Beat one tune and own one quest, Staunch and shore as steel.

Starting point is 01:53:39 God guard from dark disunion, Our three-fold state's communion, God save the loyal union, The Royal Common Wheel. End of poem. the public domain. East to West by Algernon Charles Swinburne. Read for Libervox.org by Aaron Kay.

Starting point is 01:54:11 East to West. Sunset smiles on sunrise. East and West are one. Face to face in heaven before the sovereign sun. From the springs of the dawn everlasting, a glory renews and transfigures the West. from the depths of the sunset alight as of morning and kindles the broad sea's breast and the land and the skies and the waters are glad of the days and the night's work done child of dawn and region on the world-wide sea england smiles on europe fair is dawn and free not the waters that gird her are purer nor mightier the winds that her waters know but america daughter and

Starting point is 01:55:00 and sister of England, is praised of them, far as they flow. Atlantic response to Pacific, the praise of her days that have been and shall be. So from England westward let the watchward fly. So for England eastward let the seas reply. Praise, honor, and love everlasting. Be sent on the wind's wings westward and east, that the pride of the past and the pride of the future may mingle as friends at feast. And the sons of the Lords of the Worldwide Seas be won till the world's life die.

Starting point is 01:55:41 End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Inscriptions for the four sides of a pedestal by Algernon Charles Swimburn. Read for Libby Box.org by Alan Mapstone. stone. 1. Marlow, the father of the sons of song, whose praise is England's crowning praise, above all glories else that crown her,

Starting point is 01:56:17 sweet and strong, as England, clothed with light and fire of love, and girt with might of passion, thought and trust, stands here in spirit sleeps not here in dust two marlowe a star too sovereign too superb to fade when heaven took fire from shakespeare's light a soul that knew but song's triumphal curb and love's triumphant bondage holds of right his pride of place who first in place and time made england's voice as england's heart sublime three marlowe bade england live in living song the light he lifted up lit shakespeare's way he spake and life sprang forth in music strong as fire or lightning sweet as dawn of day song was a dream of a dream of a dream of music song was a dream of dream of where day took night to wife let there be life he said and there was life for marlow of all our fathers first beheld beyond the tidal ebb and flow of things the tideless depth and height of souls impelled by thought or passion born on waves or wings beyond

Starting point is 01:57:58 all flight or sight but songs and he first gave our song a sound that matched ammer sea end of poem this recording is in the public domain on the death of richard burton by algernon charles swimburn bred for liverybox dot org by alan mattstone night or light is is it now wherein sleeps shut out from the wild world's din wakes alive with a life more clear one who found not on earth his kin sleep were sweet for a while were dear surely to souls that were heartless here souls that faltered and flagged and fell soft of spirit and faint of cheer a living soul that had strength to quell hope the spectre and fear the spell clear-eyed content with a scorn sublime and a faith superb can it fare not well life the shadow of wide-wing time cast from the wings that change as they climb life may vanish in death and seem less than the promise of last year's years prime but not for us is the past a dream wherefrom as light from a clouded stream faith fades and shivers and ebbs away faint as the moon if the sun dawn gleam faith whose eyes in the low last ray watch the fire that renews the day faith which lives in the living past rock rooted swerves

Starting point is 02:00:04 not as weeds that sway. As trees that stand in the storm-wind fast, she stands, unsmitten of death's keen blast, with strong remembrance of some bright spring, alive at heart to the lifeless lust. Night she knows may in no wise cling to a soul that sinks not and droops not wing, a sun that sets not in death, false knight, whose kingdom finds him, not thrall but king. Souls there are that for souls are fright, bow down and cower in the sun's glad sight, clothed round with faith that is one with fear, and dark with doubts of the live world's light. But him we hailed from afar or near, as boldest born of the bravest here and loved as brightest of souls that eyed lifetime and death with unchangeful cheer a wider soul than the world was wide whose praise made love of him one with pride what part has death or has time in him who rode life's lists as a god might ride

Starting point is 02:01:30 while england sees not her old praise dim while still her stars through the world's night swim a fame outshining her raleigh's fame a light that lightens her loud seas rim shall shine and sound as her sons proclaim the pride that kindles at burton's name and joy shall exalt their pride to be the same in births if in soul the same. But we that yearn for a friend's face, we, who lack the light that on earth was he, mourn though the light be a quenchless flame that shines as dawn on a tideless sea. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. box.org by Laura Gibbs 1869 through 1891. Alvern, Alvern, O wild and woeful land, O glorious land and gracious, white as gleam the stairs of heaven,

Starting point is 02:02:53 black as a flameless brand, strange even as life, and stranger than a dream. Could earth remember man whose eyes made bright, the splendor of her beauty, lit by day, or soothed and softened and redeemed by night, wouldst thou not know what light has passed away? Wouldst thou not know whom England, whom the world mourns, for the world whose wildest ways he trod, and smiled their dangers down that coiled and curled against him, knows him now less man than God?

Starting point is 02:03:35 Our demigod of daring keenest-eyed To read and deepest read in earth's dim things A spirit now whose body of death has died And left it mightier yet in eyes and wings The sovereign seeker of the world Who now hath sought what world the light of death may show Held once with me the crowns that load thy brow Cragg's dark as midnight, columns bright as snow.

Starting point is 02:04:11 Thy steep, small sienna, splendid and content, as shines the mightier city's Tuscan pride, which here its face reflects in radiance pent by narrower bounds from towering side to side, set fast between the ridged and foamless waves of earth more fierce and fluctuant than the sea, the fearless town of towers that hails and braves, the heights that gird, the sun that brands Le Pui.

Starting point is 02:04:46 The huddled churches clinging on the cliffs, as birds alighting might for storm's sake cling, moored to the rocks as tempest harried skiffs to perilous refuge from the loud winds wing. The stairs on stairs that wind and change and climb, Even up to the utmost crag's edge curved and curled, More bright than vision, more than faith sublime, Strange as the light and darkness of the world.

Starting point is 02:05:19 Strange as are night and morning, stars and sun, And washed from west and east by days deep tide. shine yet less fair when all their heights are won than sun dawn shows thy pillared mountain's side. Even so, the dawn of death whose light makes dim, the starry fires that life sees rise and set, shows higher than here he shone before us him whom faith forgets not, nor shall fame forget. Even so those else unfooted heights we clomb Through scudding mist and eddying whirls of cloud Blind as a pilot beaten blind with foam

Starting point is 02:06:08 And shrouded as a corpse with Storm's gray shroud Foot following foot along the sheer straight ledge Where space was none to bear the wild goat's feet Till blind we sat on the outer footless edge, where darkling death seemed fain to share the seat. The abyss before us, viewless even as times, the abyss to left of us, the abyss to right, bid thought now dream how high the freed soul climbs

Starting point is 02:06:42 that death sets free from change of day and night. The might of raging mist and wind whose wrath shut from our eyes the narrowing rock we trod. The wondrous world it darkened made our path, like theirs who take the shadow of death for God. Yet eastward veiled in vapor white as snow, the grim black, herbless heights that scorn the sun, and mock the face of mourning rose to show the work of earth-borne fire and earthquake done. And half the world was haggard night wherein we strove our blind way through, but far above was light that watched the wild mists whirl and spin, and far beneath a land worth light and love. Deep down the valley of the curse, undaunted by shadow and whisper of winds with

Starting point is 02:07:45 sins for wings and ghosts of crime where through the heights live haunted by present sense of past and monstrous things. The glimmering water holds its gracious way full forth and keeps one happier hands-breadth green of all that storm-scathed world where on the sway sits dark as death of deadlier things unseen. But on the soundless and the viewless river that bears through night perchance again today, the dead whom death and twin-born fame deliver from life that dies and times inveterate sway. No shadow save of falsehood and of fear that brands the future with the past and bids the spirit whither and the soul grows sear, hovers or hangs to cloud life's opening lids. If life have eyes to lift again and see beyond the bounds of sensual sight or

Starting point is 02:08:56 breath, what life incognizable of ours may be that turns our light to darkness deep as death. priests and the soulless serfs of priests may swarm with vultuous acclamation, loud and lies, about his dust, while yet his dust is warm, who mocked as sunlight mocks their base blind eyes. Their godless ghost of Godhead false and foul, as fear his dam or hell his throne, but we, scarce hearing, heed no carry in church wolf's howl. The corpse be theirs to mock. The soul is free. Free as ere yet its earthly day was done. It lived above the coil about us curled. A soul whose eyes were keener than the sun, a soul whose wings were wider than the world. We, sons of east and west, ringed round with dreams, bound fast with visions, girt about with fears, live, trust, and think by chance,

Starting point is 02:10:14 while shadow seems light, and the wind that wrecks a hand that steers. He whose full soul held east and west in poise, weighed man with man, and creed of man's with creed, and age with age, their triumphs and their toys, and found what faith may read not, and may read. Scorn deep and strong as death and life, that lit with fire the smile at lies and dreams outworn, wherewith he smote them, showed sublime in it the splendor and the steadfastness of scorn. What loftier heaven, what lordlier air, what space, illimitable, insuperable, infinite. Now to that strong wing's soul yields ampler place than passing darkness yields to passing light. No dream, no faith can tell us hope and fear whose tongues were loud of old as children's now, from babbling fall to silence, change is here, and death, dark furrows drawn by time's dark plow.

Starting point is 02:11:38 Still, sunward here on earth, its flight was bent, even since the man within the child began to yearn and kindle with superb, intent and trust in time to magnify the man. Still toward the old garden of the sun whose fruit the honey-heavy lips of Sophocles desired and sang, wherein the unwhithering root sprang of all gross that thought brings forth and sees. incarnate bright with bloom or dense with leaf far shadowing deep as depth of dawn or night and all were parcel of the garnered sheaf his strenuous spirit bound and stored aright and eastward now and ever toward the dawn if death's deep veil by life's bright hand be rent we see as through the shadow of death withdrawn the imperious souls indomitable assent. But not the soul whose labor knew not end,

Starting point is 02:12:54 but not the swordsman's hand, the crested head, the royal heart we mourn, the faultless friend, Burton, a name that lives, till fame be dead. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. A sequence of sonnets on the death of Robert Browning By Algernon Charles Swinburne Read for Libreibox.org by Alan Mapstone

Starting point is 02:13:30 1 The clearest eyes in all the world they read With sense more keen and spirit of sight more true Than burns and thrills in sunrise when the dew flames and absorbs the glory round it shed, as they the light of ages, quick and dead, closed now forsake us, yet the shaft that slew

Starting point is 02:14:01 can slay not one of all the works we knew, nor death disgrown that many laureled head. The works of words whose life seems lightning wrought, and moulded of unconquerable thought and quickened with imperishable flame stand fast and shine and smile assured that naught may fade of all their myriad moulded fame nor england's memory class not browning's name december thirteen eighteen eighty nine two death what hath thou to do with one for whom time is not lord but servant what least part of all the fire that fed his living heart of all the light more keen than sun-dawn's bloom that lit and led his spirit strong as doom and bright as hope can aught thy breath may dart quench nay thou knowest he knew thee what thou art a shadow born of terror's barren womb that brings not forth save shadows what art thou to dream albeit thou breathe upon his brow that power on him is given thee that thy breath can make him less than love acclaims him now and hears all time sound back the word it saith what part hast thou then in his glory death

Starting point is 02:15:56 three a graceless doom it seems that bids us grieve venice and winter hand in deadly hand hath slith the lover of her sun-bright strand and singer of a storm-bright christmas eve a graceless garden we that loved receive for all our love from that the dearest land love worshipped ever blithe and soft and bland to fair for storm to scathe or fire to cleave shone on our dreams and memories evermore the domes the towers the mountains and the shore that gird or guard thee venice cold and black seems now the face we loved as he of yore we have given thee love no stint no stay no lack what gift what gift is this thou hast given us back four but he to him who knows what gift is thine death hardly may we think or hope when we pass likewise thither where to-night is he beyond the irremiable outer seas that shine and darken round such dreams as half divine some sunlit harbour in that starless sea where gleams no ship to whimward or to lee to read with him the secret of thy shrine there too as here may song delight and love the nightingale the sea-bird and the dove fulfil with joy the splendour of the sky till all beneath wax bright as all above but none

Starting point is 02:18:07 of all that searched the heavens and try the sun may match the sovereign eagle's eye december fourteen five among the wondrous ways of men and time he went as one that ever found and sought and bore in hand the lamplight spirit of thought to illumine with instinct of its fire sublime the dusk of many a cloud-like age and clime no spirit in shape of light and darkness wrought no faith no fear no dream no rapture naught that blooms in wisdom naught that burns in crime no virtue girt and armed and helmed with light no love more lovely than the snows are white no serpent sleeping in some dead soul's tomb no song-bird singing from some live soul's height but he might hear interpret or elume with sense invasive as the dawn of doom six what secret thing of splendour or of shade surmised in all those wander ways wherein, man, led of love and life and death and sin, strays, climbs or cowers, allured, absorbed, afraid, might not the strong and sun-like sense invade, of that full soul that had for aim to win, light, silent over times, dark toil, and din,

Starting point is 02:20:03 life at whose touch death fades as dead things fade o spirit of man what mystery moves in thee that he might know not of in spirit and see the heart within the heart that seems to strive the life within the life that seems to be and here through all thy storms that whirl and drive the living sound of all men's souls alive seven he held no dreams worth waking so he said he who stands now on death's triumphal steep awakened out of life wherein we sleep sleep, and dream of what he knows and sees, being dead. But never death for him was dark or dread. Look forth, he bade the soul, and fear not, weep, or ye that trust not in his truth and keep, vain memory's vision of a vanished head, as all that lives of all that once was he, save that which lightens from his word but we who seeing the sunset-colored waters roll yet know the sun subdued not of the sea nor weep nor doubt that still the spirit is whole and life and death but shadows of the soul

Starting point is 02:21:43 December 15th. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Sunset and Moonrise by Altonon Charles Winburn. Read for Librovox.org by Lurie Wilson. New Year's Eve, 1889. All the West, whereon the sunset sealed the dead year's glorious grave, fast with seals of light and fire and cloud, that light, and fire elume, glows at heart and kindles earth and heaven with joyous blush and bloom. Warm and wide is life, and glad of death that only slays to save. As a tide reconquered sea rock lies aflush with the influent wave, lies the light of flush with darkness, lapped about by lustrous gloom. Even as life with death, and fame with time,

Starting point is 02:22:45 and memory with the tomb where a dead man hath for vassals fame the surf and time the slave. Far from earth as heaven, the steadfast light withdrawn, superb suspense, burns in dumb divine expansion of illimitable flower. Moonrise whets the shadow's edges keen as noontide, hence and thence close the presence from us passing, shines and passes not the power. Souls arise whose word remembered is a spirit within the sense. All the hours are theirs of all the seasons. Death has but his hour. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain.

Starting point is 02:23:37 Birthday Ode by Algernon Charles Swinburne. Read for Librevox.org by Lumeness. August 6th, 1891. Love and praise and a length of days whose shadow cast upon time is light, days whose sound was a spell shed round from wheeling wings as of doves in flight, meet in one, that the mounting sun today may triumph and cast out night. Two years more than the full four score lay hallowing hands on a sacred head, scarce one score of the perfect four uncrowned of fame as they smiled and fled. Still and soft and alive aloft,

Starting point is 02:24:20 Their sunlight stays, though the suns be dead. Ere we were or were thought on, ere the love that gave us to life began, Fame grew strong with his crescent song, to greet the goal of the race they ran. Song with fame and the lustrous name with years whose changes acclaimed the man. Soon ere time in the rounding rhyme of choral seasons had hailed us men, We too heard and acclaimed the word whose breath was life upon England then. Life more bright than the breathless light of soundless noon in a songless glen. Ah, the joy of the heart-struck boy whose ear was opened of love to hear.

Starting point is 02:25:05 Ah, the bliss of the burning kiss of song and spirit, the mounting cheer, lit with fire of divine desire, and love that knew not if love were fear. Fear and love as of heaven above and earth enkindled of heaven were one, one white flame that around his name grew keen and strong as the worldwide sun. Aw made bright with implied delight, as weft with weft of the rainbow spun. He that fears not the voice he hears and loves shall never have heart to sing. All the grace of the sun-god's face that bids the soul as a fountain spring, bids the brow that receives it bow and hail his likeness on earth as king.

Starting point is 02:25:53 We that knew when the sun's shaft flew beheld and worshipped, adored and heard, Light rang round it of shining sound, whence all men's hearts were subdued and stirred. Joy, love, sorrow, the day, the morrow took life upon them in one man's word. Not for him can the years wax dim, nor downward swirl, on a darkening way, upward wind they, and leave behind such light as lightens the front of May. Fair as youth and sublime as truth, we find the fame that we hail today. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. one life sublime and serene when time had power upon it and ruled its breath changed it bade it be glad or sad and hear what change in the world's ear saith

Starting point is 02:27:09 shines more fair in the starrier air whose glory lightens the dusk of death suns that sink on the wan seas brink and moons that kindle and flame and fade leave more clear for the darkness here the stars that set not and see not shade rise and rise on the lowlier skies by rule of sunlight and moonlight swayed. So when night for his eyes grew bright, his proud head pillowed on Shakespeare's breast, hand in hand with him soon to stand where shine the glories that death loves best, passed the light of his face from sight, and sank sublimely to radiant rest. far above us and all our love beyond all reach of its voiceless praise shines for ever the name that never shall feel the shade of the chainful days fall until the delight that still sees winter's light on it shine like maize strong as death is the dark day's breath whose blast has withered the life we see here where light is the child of night and less than visions or dreams are we strong as death but a word a breath a dream is stronger than death can be strong is truth and superb in youth eternal fair as the sun dawns flame seen when may on her first-born day bids earth exult in her radiant name

Starting point is 02:28:41 lives clothed round with its praise and crowned with love that dies not is lovelet fame three fairer far than the morning star as sweet for us as the songs that rang loud through heaven from the choral seven when all the stars of the morning sang shines the song that we loved so long since first such love in us flamed and sprang england glows as a sunlit rose as a sunlit rose from mead to mountain, from sea to sea, bright with love and with pride above all taint of sorrow that needs must be, needs must live for an hour, and give its rainbow's glory to lawn and lee. Not through tears shall the newborn years behold him, crowned with applause of men, pass at last from a lustrous past to life that lightens beyond their ken, glad and dead and from earthward led to sunward guided of Imogen. End of poem.

Starting point is 02:29:46 This recording is in the public domain. The Ballad of Melichertes by Alternon Charles Swinburne. Read for Librevox.org by Laura Gibbs. In memory of Theodore de Banville. Death, a light outshining life, bids heaven. heaven resume, star by star the souls whose light made earth divine. Death, a night outshining day, sees burn and bloom, flower by flower, and sun by sun, the fames that shine,

Starting point is 02:30:32 deathless, higher than life, beheld their sovereign sign. Dead Simonides of chaos, late restored, given again of God, again by man to plight, shone but yester eve a glory frail as breath frail but fame's breath quickens kindles keeps in ward life so sweet as this that dies and casts off death mother's love and rapture of the sea whose womb breeds eternal life of joy that stings like brine pride of song and joy to dare the sea singer's doom, sorrow soft as sleep and laughter bright as wine, flushed and filled with fragrant fire his lyric line. As the sea-shell utters, like a stricken chord, music uttering all the seas within it stored, poet well-beloved, whose praise our sorrow saith, so thy songs retain thy soul,

Starting point is 02:31:43 and so record life so sweet as this that dies and casts off death. Side by side we mourned at Gautier's golden tomb. Here in spirit now I stand and mourn at thine. Yet no breath of death strikes thence, no shadow of gloom. Only light more bright than gold of the inmost mine, Only steam of incense Warm from Love's own shrine Not the darkling stream

Starting point is 02:32:17 The sundering Stygian ford, Not the hour that smites and severs as a sword Not the night subduing light that perisheth Smites subdue, divide from us by doom abhorred Life so sweet as this that dies And casts off death Prince of song more sweet than honey lyric lord not thy france here only mourns a light adored one whose lovelet fame the world inheriteth

Starting point is 02:32:50 strangers too now brethren hail with hearts accord life so sweet as this that dies and casts off death end of poem this recording is in the public domain O Tombo of Banville by Alginon Charles Swinburne Read for Librivox.org by Sonia O Tombo de Bonville The more douse of the voice that vibrae Soe, the Rosignolle

Starting point is 02:33:30 Zele, pleur, the frere, who sowne on the apre and sombre tere, no he descends more voire that's essential, Espri who chant and rie, fleurs of an amm self

Starting point is 02:33:43 Anemois, Lombre elisien Where the night Nets to Lumbiae Rews, Rewaute Of splendor

Starting point is 02:33:50 Dose and Fierre Mellicert Poet A-a-Bouch of Miel Dye Deguze, Passing Celeste of this world

Starting point is 02:33:59 Dant on Sometimes, In other Nuy Pribre the Voice, Frimir the Zels You know If he was

Starting point is 02:34:07 He-Cleurra, He, in the Vee and the chant, Rappellé Les Votre, Receive, L'Ame de Millecert, affranchy, and ravied. End of poem.

Starting point is 02:34:21 This recording is in the public domain. Light and Episcide By Charles Altonanus Winberg Read for Libravox.org by Larry Wilson To Philip Burke Marston Love will not weep because the seal is broken

Starting point is 02:34:44 that sealed upon a life beloved in brief darkness, and let but song break through foretoken, how deep, too far for even thy song's relief, slept in thy soul the secret springs of grief. Thy song may soothe full many a soul hereafter, as tears, if tears will come, dissolve despair, as here but late with smile more bright than laughter, Thy sweet, strange yearning eyes would seem to bear witness that joy might cleave the clouds of care.

Starting point is 02:35:20 Two days agone, and love was one with pity, when love gave thought wings toward the glimmering goal, whereas a shrine lit in some darkling city, shone soft the shrouded image of thy soul. And now thou art healed of life, thou art healed and whole. Ye two days since, all we that love thee, pitied. And now with wondering love, with shame of face, we think how foolish now, how far unfitted should be from us, toward thee who hast run thy race. Pity toward thee who hast won the painless place. The painless world of death, yet unbeholden of eyes that dream what light now lightens thine, and will not weep. Thought yearning toward those olden, dear hours that sorrow sees, and sees not

Starting point is 02:36:12 shine. Bows tearless down before a flameless shrine. A flameless altar here of life and sorrow, quenched and consumed together. These were one, one thing for thee as night was one with morrow, and utter darkness with the sovereign sun, and now thou seest life, sorrow, and darkness done. And yet love yearns again to win thee hither. Blind love and loveless and unworthy thee here where i watch the hours of darkness wither here where mine eyes were glad and sad to see thine they could see not mine though turned on me but now if aught beyond sweet sleep lie hidden and sleep be sealed not fast on dead men's sight for ever thine hath grace for ours forbidden and sees this compassed round with change in night yet like like thine is ours, if love be light.

Starting point is 02:37:16 End the poem. This recording is in the public domain. Thrinity by Charles Algernonon Swinburne. Read for Libravox.org by Larry Wilson. Watching here alone by the fire, whereat last year sat with me, the friend that a week since yet was near. That a week has borne so far and hid so deep, woe am I, that I have, that I have, may not weep, may not yearn to behold him here. Shame were mine, and little the love I bore him were.

Starting point is 02:37:57 Now to mourn that better he fares than love may fare, which desires and would not have indeed its will, would not love him so worse than ill, would not clothe him again with care. Yet can love not choose but remember, hearts but achy, eyes but darken only for one vain thoughts poor sake for the thought that by this hearth's now lonely side two fast friends on the day he died looked once more for his hand to take let thy soul forgive them and pardon heal the sin though their hearts be heavy to think what then had been the delight that never while they live may be love's communion of speech with soul and speech with the soul therein o my friend o brother a glory veiled and marred never love made moan for a life more evil starred was it envy chance or chance compelling fate whence thy spirit was bruised so late bowed so heavily bound so hard now released it may be if only love might know filled and fired with sight it beholds us blind and low with a pity keener yet if that may be even than ever was this that we felt when love of thee wrought us woe none may tell the depths and the heights of life and death what we may we give thee a word that sorrow saith and that none will heed save

Starting point is 02:39:42 sorrow, scarce a song. All we may, who have loved thee long, take the best we can give is breath. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. A dirge by Algernon Charles Winburn. Read for Librevox.org by Agnes Robert Baer. A bell tolls on in my heart, as though in my ears a knell had ceased for a while to swell. but the sense of it would not part from the spirit that bears its part in the chime of the soundless bell. Ah, dear dead singer of sorrow, the burden is now not thine, that grief bade sound for a sign, through the songs of the night whose morrow has risen and I may not borrow, a beam from its radiant shrine.

Starting point is 02:40:43 The burden has dropped from thee, that grief on thy life, bound fast, the winter is over and past, whose end thou wast fain to see, shall sorrow not comfort me, that is thine no longer, at last. Good day, good night, and good morrow, men living in morning say, for thee we could only pray that night of the day might borrow, such comfort as dreams lend sorrow, death gives thee at last good day. End of purpose. This recording is in the public domain. A Reminiscence by Algernon Charles Winburn, read for Librevox.org by Agnes Robert Baer. The rose to the wind has yielded all its leaves.

Starting point is 02:41:40 Thou shrewd on the graveyard grass, and all their light, and colour and fragrance leave our scents in sight. Peruffed as a man whom bitter time bereaves, of blossom at once in hope of gone achieves, of april at once and august day to night cause wailing and life to death and depths to height and soul upon soul of man that hears and grieves who knows though he see the snow-called blossom shed if haply the heart that burned within the rose the spirit incense the life of life be dead if happily the wind that slays were seen storming snows, be one with the wind that quickens, bow thine head, oh sorrow, and commune with thine heart. Who knows? End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Via Dolorosa by Algernon Charles Winburn. Read for Librevox.org by Laura Gibbs. The days of a man are three score years and ten. The days of a man. The day of

Starting point is 02:43:00 of his life were half a man's whom we lament and would yet not bid him back to be partaker of all the woes and ways of men life sent him enough of sorrow not again would anguish of love beholding him set free bring back the beloved to suffer life and see no light but the fire of grief that scathed him then We know not at all, we hope, and do not fear. We shall not again behold him, late so near, who now from far above with eyes alight and spirit enkindled, happily toward us here looks down, unforgetful yet of days like night, and love that has yet his sightless face in sight.

Starting point is 02:44:00 February 15, 1887. 1. Transfiguration But half a man's days, and his days were knights. What hearts were ours who loved him, should we pray that night would yield him back to darkling day, sweet death that soothes to life that spoils and smites? For now, perchance, life lovely, than the lights that shed no comfort on his weary way,

Starting point is 02:44:35 shows him what none may dream to see or say, or yet the soul may scale those topless heights, where death lies dead and triumph happily there, already may his kindling eyesight find faces of friends, no face than his more fair, and first among them found of all his kind, Milton, with crowns from Eden on his hair, and eyes that meet a brother's now not blind. 2. Deliverance. O death, fair death, soul comforter and sweet, nor love nor hope can give

Starting point is 02:45:19 such gifts as thine. Sleep hardly shows us round thy shadowy shrine, what roses hang, what music floats, what feet pass and what wings of angels we repeat wild words or mild disastrous or divine blind prayer blind imprecation seeing no sign nor hearing aught of thee not faint and fleet as words of men or snowflakes on the wind but if we chide thee saying thou hast sinned thou hast sinned dark death to take so sweet a light away as shone but late though shadowed in our skies we hear thine answer night has given what day denied him darkness hath unsealed his eyes three thanksgiving could love give strength to thank thee love can give strong sorrow heart to suffer. What we bear, we would not put away, albeit this were a burden love might cast aside and live. Love chooses rather pain than palliative, sharp thought, then soft oblivion. May we dare so trample down our passion and our prayer, that Fain would cling round feet now fugitive, and stay them,

Starting point is 02:46:54 so remember, so forget, what joy we had who had his presence yet, what griefs were his while joy in him was ours, and grief made weary music of his breath, as even to hail his best and last of ours, with love grown strong enough to thank thee, death. 4. Libitina Verticordia Sister of sleep, healer of life divine, As rest and strong as very love may be To set the soul that love could set not free

Starting point is 02:47:34 To bid the skies that day could bid not shine To give the gift that life withheld was thine With all my heart I loved one born from me And all my heart bows down and praises thee death that hast now made grief, not his, but mine. O changer of men's hearts, we would not bid thee, turn back our hearts from sorrow, this alone we bid, we pray thee from thy sovereign throne, and sanctuary sublime where heaven has hid thee,

Starting point is 02:48:13 give grace to know of those for whom we weep, that if they wake, their life is sweet as sleep. Five, the order of release. Thou canst not give it. Grace enough is ours, to know that pain for him has fallen on rest. The worst we know was his on earth. The best, we fain would think,

Starting point is 02:48:41 a thought no fear deflowers, is his, released from bonds of rayless hours. Ah, turn our hearts from longing, bid our quest cease, as content with failure. This thy guest sleeps. Vex no more of times imperious powers. The spirit of hope, the spirit of change and loss, the spirit of love bowed down beneath his cross, nor now needs comfort from the strength of song.

Starting point is 02:49:14 Love, should he wake, bear it. now no cross for him. Dead hope, whose living eyes like his, were dim, has brought forth better comfort, strength, more strong. 6. Psychagogos As Greece of old acclaimed thee God and man, so, death, our tongue acclaims thee, yet wast thou hailed of old Rome,

Starting point is 02:49:44 as Romans hail thee now, goddess and woman, since the sands first ran that told when first man's life and death began, the shadows round thy blind, ambiguous brow, have mocked the votive plea, the pleading vow, that sought thee sorrowing, feign to bless or ban. But stronger than a father's love is thine, and gentler than a mother's, Lord and God, thy staff. is sure than the wizard rod that Hermes bear as priest before thy shrine and herald of thy mercies, we could give naught when we would have given. Thou bids him live. Seven, the last word. So many a dream and hope that went and came, so many and sweet that love thought

Starting point is 02:50:43 like to be of hours as bright and soft as those for me that made our hearts for song sweet love the same lie now struck dead that hope seems one with shame o death thy name is love we know it and see the witness yet for very love's sake we can hardly bear to mix with thine his name philip how hard it is to bid thee part thou knowest, if ought thou knowest where now thou art of us that loved and love thee. None may tell what none but knows, how hard it is to say the word that seals up sorrow darkens day and bids fareforth the soul it bids farewell. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. In memory of Orelio Safi by Algernon Charles Winburn, read for Librivox.org by Laura Gibbs. The wider world of men that is not ours receives a soul whose life on earth was light.

Starting point is 02:52:07 Though darkness closed the date of human hours, love holds the spirit and sense of life in sight that may not even though death bid fly take flight, faith, love, and hope fulfilled with memory, see as clear and dear as life could bid it be, the present soul that is, and is not he. He who held up the shield and sword of Rome against the ravening brood of recreant France, beside the man of men whom heaven took home,

Starting point is 02:52:44 when earth beheld the spring's first eye-beams glance, and life and winter seemed like a trance. Eighteen years since, in sight of heaven and spring, that saw the soul above all souls take wing, he too now hears the heaven we hear not sing. He too now dwells where death is dead, and stands where souls like stars exult in life to be, whence all who linked heroic hearts and hands shine on our sight and give its strength to see

Starting point is 02:53:22 what hope makes fair for all whom faith makes free free with such freedom as we find in sleep the light sweet shadow of death when dreams are deep and high as heaven whence light and lightning leap scarce a month yet gone, his living hand, writ-loving words that sealed me, friend, of his, Are heaven and earth as near a sea to strand? May life and death as bride and bridegroom kiss? His last month's written word abides and is, clear as the sun that lit through storm and strife, and darkling days when hope took fear to wife, the faith whose fire was light, of all his life. A life so fair, so pure of earthly or leaven, that none hath won through higher and

Starting point is 02:54:24 harder ways the deathless life of death, which earth calls heaven. Heaven and the light of love on earth and praise of silent memory through subsiding days, wherein the light subsides not whence the past feeds full with life the future. Time holds fast their names whom faith forgets not, first, and last. Forget? The dark forgets not dawn, nor we the suns that sink to rise again and shine. Lords of live years and ages, earth and sea, forget not heaven that makes them seem divine, though night put out their fires and bid their shrine be dark and pale as storm and twilight day not night is everlasting life's full sway bids death bow down as dead and pass away what part has death and souls that passed all fear when heavenward their supernal way and smite with scorn sublime as heaven Such dreams as here plague and perplex with cloud and fire,

Starting point is 02:55:45 the light that leads men's waking souls from glimmering night to the awless heights of day, whereon man's awe transfigured, dies in rapture, seeing the law sealed of the sun that earth arising saw. Faith, justice, mercy, love, and heaven-born hate that sets them all on fire and bids them be more than soft words and dreams

Starting point is 02:56:15 that wake too late shone living through the lordly life that we beheld, revered, and loved on earth while he dwelt here and bad our eyes take light thereof light is from heaven

Starting point is 02:56:31 that flamed or smiled above in light or fire whose very hate was love no hate of man but hate of hate whose foam sheds poison forth from tongues of snakes and priests and stains the sickening air with steams whence Rome now feeds not full the god that slays and feasts for now the fangs of all the ravenous beasts that ramped about him feign of prayer and prey fulfill their lust no more The tide of day swells and compels him down the deathward way. Night sucks the church its creature down, and hell yawns, heaves, and yearns to clasp its loathliest child, close to the breast that bore it.

Starting point is 02:57:26 All the spell whence darkness saw the dawn in heaven defiled is dumb as death. The lips that lied and smiled, waxed, waxed. white for fear as ashes. She that bore the banner up of darkness now no more sheds night and fear and shame from shore to shore. When they that cast her kingdom down were born, North cried on south and east made moan to west, for hopes that love had hardly heart to mourn for Italy that was not. Kings on quest by priests who's blessings burn as curses blessed, made spoil of souls and bodies bowed and bound, hunted and harried, leashed as horse or hound, and hopeless of the hope that died unfound. And now that faith has brought forth fruit to time, how should not memory praise their names and hold their record even as Dante's life

Starting point is 02:58:34 sublime, who bad his dream, found fair and false of old live, not till earth and heaven be dead and cold. May man forget whose work and will made one, Italy fair as heaven or freedom won, and left their fame to shine beside her son. This recording is in the public domain. in his sight, whose eyes beheld her eyes again, and fell shame-stricken. Since her soul took flight to dwell in heaven, six hundred years have taken flight. And now that heavenliest part of earth whereon shines yet their shadow as once their presence shone to her bears witness for his sake, as he for hers bear witness when her face was gone.

Starting point is 03:00:09 No slave, no hospice now for grief, but free from shore to mountain and from Alp to sea. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. The Monument of Giordano Bruno by Algernon Charles Winburn. Read for Librevox.org by Laura Gibbs. One. Not from without us, only. from within, comes or can ever come upon us light, whereby the soul keeps ever truth in sight. No truth, no strength, no comfort man may win, no grace for guidance, no release from sin,

Starting point is 03:01:02 save of his own soul's giving, deep and bright, as fire encindled in the core of night, burns in the soul, where once its fire has been, the light that leaves, and quickens thought inspired to doubt and trust and conquer. So he said, whom Sydney, flower of England, lordly as head of all we love, loved. But the fates required a sacrifice to hate and hell ere fame should set with his in heaven Giordano's name. Two. Cover thine eyes and weep, O child of hell, Grace spouse of Satan, Church of name abhorred,

Starting point is 03:01:51 Weep, withered harlot, With thy weeping Lord. Now none will buy the heaven Thou hast to sell At price of prostituted souls And swell thy loveless list of lovers, Fire and sword, No more are thine.

Starting point is 03:02:09 The steel, the wheel, the cord, the flames that rose round living limbs and fell in lifeless ash and ember, now no more approved thee, godlike. Rome redeemed at last from all the red pollution of thy past, acclaims the grave bright face that smiled of yore, even on the fire that caught it round and clomb, to cast its ashes on the face of Rome. June 9, 1889.

Starting point is 03:02:52 End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Life and Death by Alderman Charles Winburn. Read for Librabox.org by Larry Wilson. He should have followed who goes forth before us. last born of us in life in death first born the last to lift up eyes against the morn the first to see the sunset life that bore us perchance for death to comfort and restore us of him hath left us here a while forlorn for him is as a garment overworn and time and change with suns and stars in course silent but if beyond all change or time or time A law more just, more equal, more sublime, than sways the surge of life's loud, sterile sea,

Starting point is 03:03:51 Sways that still world whose peace environs him, where death lies dead as night, when stars wax dim. Above all thought or hope of ours is he. August 2, 1891 In the poem, this recording is in the public domain. Episade by Charles O. Alternance Windburn, read for Libravox.org by Larry Wilson. As a vesture shalt thou change them, said the prophet, and the raiment that was flesh is turned to dust. Dust and flesh and dust again, the likeness of it, and the fine gold woven

Starting point is 03:04:39 and worn of youth is rust. Hours that wax and wane salute the shade and scoff it, that it knows not aught it doth nor aught it must day by day the speeding soul makes haste to daff it night by night the pride of life resigns its trust sleep whose silent notes of song loud life's derange not takes the trust in hand a while as angels may joy with wings that rest not grief with wings that range not guard the gates of sleep and waking gold or gray joys that joys is strange and griefs that griefs is strange not day that yearns for night and night that yearns for day as a vesture shalt thou change them and they change not seeing that change may never change or pass away life of death makes question what are thou that changest what am i that fear should trust or faith should doubt i that lighten thou that thou that you should doubt i that lighten thou that darkenest and estrangedst. Is it night or day that girds us round about? Light and darkness on the way wherein thou rangers seem as one, and beams as clouds they put to rout. Strange is hope, but fear of all things born were strangest, seeing that none may strive with change to cast it out.

Starting point is 03:06:10 Change alone stands fast, thou sayest, O death, I know not. What are thou, thou, my brother's death that thou shouldst know. Men may reap no fruits of fields wherein they sow not. Hope or fear is all the seed we have to sow. Winter seals the sacred springs up that they flow not. Wind and sun and change unbind them, and they flow. Am I thou, or art thou I? The years that show not pass and leave no sign when time shall be to show. hope makes suit to faith lest fear give ear to sorrow doubt strews dust upon his head and goes his way all the golden hope that life of death would borrow how if death require again may life repay earth endures no darkness whence no light yearns thorough god and man as light in darkness lives they say yet would midnight take assurance of the morrow who shall pledge the faith or seal the bond of day. Darkness mute or loud with music or with morning, starry darkness winged with

Starting point is 03:07:25 wind or clothed with calm, dreams no dream of grief or fear or wrath or warning. Bear's no sign of race or goal or strife or palm. Word of blessing, word of mocking or of scorning, knows it none, nor wince its breath sheds blight or balm. Yet a little while, and harker, the psalm of morning, yet a little while and silence takes the psalm. All the comfort, all the worship, all the wonder, all the light of love that darkness holds in fee, all the song that silence keeps or keeps not under, night the soul that knows gives thanks for all to thee. Far beyond the gates that morning strikes and sunder, hopes that grief makes holy, dreams that fear sets free. Far above the throes,

Starting point is 03:08:17 throne of thought, the lair of thunder, silent shines the word whose utterance fills the sea. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Memorial verses on the death of William Bell Scott by Algernon Charles Winburn. Read for Librevox.org by Laura Gibbs. A life more bright than the sun's face bowed through stress of season and coy. of cloud sets and the sorrow that casts out fear scarce deems him dead in his chill still shroud dead on the breast of the dying year poet and painter and friend thrice dear for love of the sun's long set for love of song that sets not with sunset here for love of the

Starting point is 03:09:19 fervent heart above their sense who saw not the swift light move, that filled with sense of the loud sun's lyre, the thoughts that passion was fain to prove, in fervent labor of high desire, and faith that leapt from its own quenched pire, alive and strong as the sun and caught from darkness light, and from twilight fire. Passion deep as the depths unsought, whence faith's own hope may redeem, us not, filled full with ardor of pain sublime, his morning song, and his mounting thought. Elate with sense of a sterner time, his hands flight clomb as a birds might climb Calvary, dark in the darkling air, that shrank for fear of the crowning crime.

Starting point is 03:10:19 Three crosses rose on the hillside bear, shown scarce by grail. race of the lightning's glare that clove the veil of the temple through and smote the priests on the threshold there the soul that saw it the hand that drew whence light as thoughts or his faith's glance flew and stung to life the sepulchral past and bade the stars of it burn anew held no less than the dead world fast the light light shadows about them cast, the likeness living of dawn and night, the days that pass, and the dreams that last. Thought clothed round with sorrow as light, dark as a cloud that the moon turns bright, moved as a wind on the striving sea that yearns and quickens and flags in flight, through forms of color and song that he who Fain would have set its wide wings free, cast round it, clothing or chaining, hope, with lights that last not, and shades that flee. Scarce in song could his soul find scope, scarce the strength

Starting point is 03:11:42 of his hand might ope, arts inmost gait of her sovereign shrine, to cope with heaven, as a man may cope. But high as the hope of a man may shine, the faith, the fervor, the life divine, that thrills our life and transfigures, rose and shone resurgent, a sun-bright sign, through shapes where under the strong soul glows,

Starting point is 03:12:12 and fills them full as a sunlit rose, with sense and fervor of life, whose light, the fools of, eye knows not, the man's eye knows. None that can read or divine aright the scripture's writ of the soul may slight the strife of a strenuous soul to show more than the craft of the hand may write. None may slide it, and none may know how high the flames that aspire and glow from heart and spirit and soul may climb and triumph higher than the souls lie low, whose hearing hears not the live-long rhyme, whose eyesight sees not the light sublime, that shines, that sounds, that ascends and

Starting point is 03:13:05 lives unquenched of change, unobstured of time. A long life's length, as a man's life gives space for the spirit that soars and strives, to strive and soar, has the soul shone through, that heeds not whither the world's wind drives, now that the days and the ways it knew are strange, are dead as the dawn's gray dew, at high mid-noon of the mounting day that mocks the might of the dawn it slew. Yet happily may not, and happily may, No sense abide of the dead sun's ray, We're in the soul that outsoors us now, Rejoiced with ours in its radiant sway.

Starting point is 03:13:57 Hope may hover and doubt may bow, dreaming. Happily, they dream not how, Not life, but death may indeed be dead When silence darkens the dead man's brow. Hope, whose name is remnant, fendence, fed with love, that lightens from seasons, fled, dreams, and craves not indeed to know that death and life are as souls that wed. But change that falls on the heart like snow can chill not memory nor hope that show the soul, the spirit, the heart, and head,

Starting point is 03:14:41 alive above us who strive below. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. An Old Saying by Algernon Charles Windburn. Read for Librivox.org by Laura Gibbs. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it, who shall snare or slay the white dove,

Starting point is 03:15:17 faith, whose very dreams crown it, gird it round with grace and peace, deep, warm and pure, and soft as sweet sleep. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it. Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm. How should we behold the days depart? and the knights resign their charm. Love is as the soul, though hate and fear, waste and overthrow, they strike not here. Set me as a seal upon thine heart,

Starting point is 03:16:03 as a seal upon thine arm. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. A moss rose by Algernon Charles, Swinburne. Read forlibrivox.org by Am Lee. If the rose of all flowers be the rarest that heaven may adore from above, and the fervent moss rose be the fairest that sweetens the summer with love,

Starting point is 03:16:44 can it be that a fairer than any should blossom afar from the tree, yet one and a symbol of many shone sudden for eyes that could see. In the grime and the gloom of November, the bliss and the bloom of July, bade autumn rejoice and remember the balm of the blossoms gone by. Would you know what moss rose now it may be, that puts all the rest to the blush, the flower was the face of a baby, the moss, was a bonnet of plush and of poem

Starting point is 03:17:24 this recording is in the public domain To a cat by Alderman Charles Swinburne Read for Librivox org by Amley stately kindly lordly friend

Starting point is 03:17:48 condescend here to sit by me and turn glorious eyes that smile and burn Golden eyes loves lustrous mead. On the golden page I read, All your wondrous wealth of hair, dark and fair, silken shaggy, soft and bright, As the clouds and beams of night,

Starting point is 03:18:13 Pays my reverent hands caress, Back with friendlier gentleness. Dogs may fawn on all and some as they come, You, a friend of loftier mind, Answer friends alone and kind, Just your foot upon my hand, Softly bids it understand. Morning round this silent, sweet garden seat

Starting point is 03:18:42 Sheds its wealth of gathering light, Thrills the gradual clouds with might, Changes Woodland Orchard Heath, Lawn and Garden, there beneath. Fair and dim they gleaned below. Now they glow, deep as even your sun-bright eyes, fair as even the awakening skies. Can it not or can it be, now that you give thanks to sea? May not you rejoice this eye, seeing the sky change to heaven revealed, and bid earth reveal the heaven it hid all night long from stars and moon. Now the sun sets all in tune. What within you wakes with

Starting point is 03:19:34 day? Who can say? All too little may we tell. Friends who like each other well. What might happily, if we might, bid us read our lives aright? Wild on Woodland ways your sire's flashed like fires, ferrous flame and fierce and fleet, as with wings on wingless feet. Shown and sprang your mother free, bright and brave as wind or sea. Free and proud and glad as they, here to-day, rests or roams their radiant child, vanquished not, but reconciled, Free from curb of aught above save the lovely curb of love. Love through dreams of souls divine, Vain would shine round a dawn whose light and strong then should right our mutual wrong.

Starting point is 03:20:38 Speak and seal the lovelet law, sweet as sissy's seer foresaw. Dreams were theirs, yet happily may dawn a day when such first. friends and fellows born, seeing our earth as fair at morn. May for wiser's love's sake see more of heavens depart than we. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Hawthorne Dyke by Altonon Charles Winburn. Read for Librovocs.org by Larry Wilson. All the golden air is full of balm and bloom.

Starting point is 03:21:25 where the hawthorns line the shelving dyke with flowers joyous children born of april's happiest hours high and low they laugh and lighten knowing their doom bright as brief to bless and cheer they know not whom heed not how but washed and warmed with suns and showers smile and bid the sweet soft gradual banks and bowers thrill with love of sunlit fire or starry gloom all are moors and lawns all round rejoice but here all the rapturous resurrection of the year finds the radiant utterance perfect sees the word spoken hears the light that speaks it far and near all the world is heaven and man and flower and bird here are one at heart with all things seen and heard end a poem this recording is in the public domain The Brothers by Algernon Charles Swinburne. Read for Librevox.org by Luminess. There were twa brethren fell on strife, sweet fruits are sere to gather. The tain has reft his brother of life, and the wind wears o'er the heather.

Starting point is 03:22:52 There were twa brethren fell to fray, sweet fruits are sere to gather. The tain is clad in a cloak of clay, and the wind is, wears o'er the heather. Oh, loud and loud was the live man's cry, sweet fruits are sere to gather. Would God the dead and the slain were I, and the wind wears o'er the heather? O'er was the wrong and sere the fray, sweet fruits are sere to gather. But leifer had love be slain than slay, and the wind wears o'er the heather. O sweet is the life that sleeps at hem, sweet fruits are sere to gather, But I morn wake on a far seas femme, Fem, and the wind wears o'er the heather.

Starting point is 03:23:44 And women are fairest of all things fair, Sweet fruits are sere to gather, But never shall I kiss woman mare, And the wind wears o'er the heather. Between the burke and the eck and the thorns, sweet fruits are sere to gather, He's laid his brother to lie forlorn, And the wind wears o'er the heather. Between the bent and the burn and the broom, Sweet fruits are sere to gather.

Starting point is 03:24:15 He's laid him to sleep till dawn of doom, And the wind wears o'er the heather. He's tain him o'er the waters wide, Sweet fruits are sere to gather. A far to fleet, and a far to buy, and the wind wears o'er the heather. His hair was yellow, his cheek was red, sweet fruits are sere to gather, when he set his face to the wind and fled, and the wind wears o'er the heather. His bains were stark and his e'en were bright, sweet fruits are sere to gather, when he set his face

Starting point is 03:24:54 to the sea by night, and the wind wears o'er the heather. His cheek was wan, and his hair was gray, Sweet fruits are sere to gather, When he came back hem, Fray the wide world's way, And the wind wears o'er the heather. His bains were weary, His e'en were dim, Sweet fruits are sere to gather, And Neyman lived and had mind of him, And the wind wears o'er the heather. Oh, what in a wreck! What they seek on land! Sweet fruits are sere to gather, That they hoke the turf to the seaward hand, And the wind wears o'er the heather.

Starting point is 03:25:36 Oh, what in a prey what they think to take? Sweet fruits are sere to gather, That they delve the dykes for a dead man's sake, And the wind wears o'er the heather. A bane of the dead in his hand he's tain, Sweet fruits are sere to gather, And the red blood brackfrey the dead, white bane, and the wind wears o'er the heather. He's cast it forth of his old faint hand,

Starting point is 03:26:05 sweet fruits are sere to gather, and the red blood ran on the wan wet sand, and the wind wears o'er the heather. Oh, what in a slayer is this, they said, sweet fruits are sere to gather, that the strake of his hand should raise his dead, and the wind wears o'er the heather. Oh, wheel is me for the sign I take, sweet fruits are sere to gather, that now I may die for my old sins sake, and the wind wears o'er the heather. For the dead was in wait now fifty year, sweet fruits are sere to gather, and now shall I die for his blood's sake here, and the wind wears o'er the heather. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain.

Starting point is 03:27:34 and if we live we live the faith our fathers fought for the kings our fathers new we fight but as they fought for we seek the goal they sought for the chance they hailed and knew the praise they strove and wrought for to leave their blood as due on fields that flower anew men live that serve the stranger hounds live that huntsmen tame these life-days of our living are days of god's good giving where death smiles soft on danger and life scowls dark on shame and what would you do other sweet wife if you were i and how should you be other my sister than your brother if you were man as i born of our sire and mother with choice to cower and fly and chance to strike and die no churls our old world name is the lands we leave are fair but fairer far than these are but wide as all the seas are but high as heaven the fame is that if we die we share our name the knight may swallow our lands the churril may take but night nor death may swallow nor hells nor heaven's dim hollow the star whose height we take the star who's light we follow for faith some faltering sake till hope that sleeps awake soft hopes like lure we serve not nor follow feign to find dark times last word may smite her dead air man's falsehood blight her but though she die we swerve not who cast not eye behind faith's

Starting point is 03:29:51 speaks when hope dissembles faith lives when hope lies dead if death as life dissembles and all that night assembles of stars at dawn lie dead faint hope that smiles and trembles may tell not well for dread but faith has heard it said now who will fight and fly not and grudge not life to give and who will strike beside us if life's or deaths light guide us for if we live we die not and if we die we live end of poem this recording is in the public domain the ballad of dead men's bay by algernon charles swinburne read for liverybox dot org by allan mapstone the sea swings oar the slants of sand all white with winds that drive the sea swirls up to the still dim strand where nays man comes alive at the grey soft edge of the fruitless surf a light flame sinks and springs at the grey soft rim of the flowerless turf a low flame leaps and clings what light is this on a sunless shore what gleam on a starless sea was it earth's or hell's waste wound that bore such births as should not be as lithe snakes turning as bright stars burning they bicker and beckon and call as wild waves churning as wild winds yearning they flicker and climb and fall a soft strange cry from the landward rings what ails the sea to shine a keen sweet note from the spray's rim springs what's

Starting point is 03:32:11 fires are these of thine a soul am i that was born on earth for i day's waysome span death bound me fast on the born of birth ere i were christened man alight by night i fleet and fare till the day of wrath and woe on the hems of earth and the skirts of air winds hurl me to and fro oh well is thee though the weird be strange that bids thee flit and flee for hope is child of the womb of change and hope keeps watch with thee when the years are gone and the time is come god's grace may give thee grace and thy soul may sing though thy soul were dumb and shine before god's face but i that lighten and revel and roll with the foam of the plunging sea no sign is mine of a breathing soul that god should pity me nor death nor heaven nor hell nor birth hath part in me nor mine strong lords of these of the living earth and loveless lords of thine but i that know nor lord nor life more sure than storm or spray whose breath is made of sport and strife whereon shall i find stay and wouldst thou change thy doom with me full fame with thee would i for the life that lightens and lifts the sea is more than earth or sky

Starting point is 03:34:05 and what if the day of doubt and doom shall save nor smite not me i would not rise from the slain world's tomb if there be no more sea take he my soul that gave my soul and give it thee to keep and me while seas and stars shall roll thy life that falls on sleep that word went up through the murk mid-sky and even to god's own ear and the lord was ware of the keen twing cry and wroth was he to hear he's tamed the soul of the unsane child that fled to death from birth he's tamed the light of the one sea wild and bid it burn on earth he's given the gaste of the babe new-born the gift of the water sprite to ride on revel from morn to morn and roll from night to night he's given the sprite of the wild one sea the gift of the new-born man a soul forever to bide and be when the years have filled their span when a year was gone and a year was come o loud and loud cried they for the lee lang year thou hast held us dumb take now thy gifts away o loud and lang they cried on him and sair and sear they prayed is the face of thy grace as the knight's face grim for those thy wrath hath made

Starting point is 03:35:58 a cry more bitter than tears of men from the rim of the dim gray sea give me my living soul again the soul thou gavest me the doom and the dole of kindly men to bide my weird and be a cry more keen from the wild-glow land and the wail of waves that roll take back the gift of a love loveless hand thy gift of doom and dull the weird of men that bide on land take from me take my soul the hands that smite are the hands that spare they build and break the tomb they turn to darkness and dust and air the fruits of the waste earth's womb but never the gift of a granted prayer the dole of a spoken doom winds may change at a word unheard but none may change the tides the prayer once heard is as god's own word the doom once dealt abides and ever a cry goes up by day and ever a wail by night and nay ship comes by the weary bay but her shipmen hear there wail and prey and see with earthly sight the two-fold flames of the twin lights play where the sea-banks green and the sea-floods grey are proud of peril and fain of prey and the sand quakes ever and ill fare they that look upon that light end of poem this recording

Starting point is 03:37:58 is in the public domain. in the swing of the sea whose wrecks are of memories that wither as leaves of the tree we hear not and hail not with greeting the sound of the wings of the years the storm of the sound of them beating that none till it pass from him hears but tempest nor calm can imperil the treasures that fade not or fly change bids them not change and be sterile death bids them not to die hearts plighted in youth to the royal high service of hope and of song sealed fast for endurance as loyal and proved of the years as they throng conceive not believe not and fear not that age may be other than youth that faith and that friendship may hear not and utter not truth not yesterday's light nor to-morrows gleams nearer or clearer than gleams though joys be forgotten and sorrows forgotten as changes of dreams the dawn of the days unforgotten that noon could eclipse not or slay whose fruits were as children begotten of dawn upon day the years that were flowerful and fruitless the years that were fruitful and dark the hopes that were radiant and rootless the hopes that were winged for the mark lie soft in the sepulchres fashioned of hours that arise and and subside, absorbed and subdued and impassioned, in pain or in pride. But far in the night

Starting point is 03:40:10 that entombs them, the starshine as sunshine is strong, and clear through the cloud that resumes them, remembrance, a light, and a song, rings lustrous as music and hovers as birds that impend on the sea, and thoughts that their prison-house covers, arise and are free. Forgetfulness, deep as a prison, holds days that are dead for us fast, till the sepulchre sees virazin, the spirit whose reign is the past. This entrampled of darkness, and kindled with life that is mightier than death, when the life that obscured it has dwindled and passed as a breath. But time, nor oblivion may darken remembrance whose name will be joy, while memory forgets not to hearken, while manhood forgets not the boy, who heard and exulted in hearing, the songs of it.

Starting point is 03:41:01 of the sunrise of youth, ring radiant above him, unfearing and joyous as truth. Truth winged and enkindled with rapture and sense of the radiance of yore, fulfilled you with power to recapture what never might singer before, the life, the delight and the sorrow of troublous and chivalrous years that knew not of night or of morrow, of hopes or of fears. But wider the wing and the vision that quickened the spirit have spread, since memory be held with derision, man's hope to be more than his dead.

Starting point is 03:41:36 From the mists and the snows and the thunders, your spirit has brought for us forth light, music, and joy in the wonders and charms of the north. The wars and the woes and the glories that quicken, enlighten, and rain from the clouds of its chronicle stories. The passion, the pride, and the pain, whose echoes were mute and the token, was lost of the spells that they spake,

Starting point is 03:42:00 rise bright at your bidding unbroken of ages that break for you and for none of us other time is not the dead that must live hold commune with you as a brother by the grace of the life that you give the heart that was in them is in you their soul in your spirit endures the strength of their song is the sinew of this that is yours hence is it that life everlasting as light and his music abides in the sound of the surge of it casting sound back to the surge of the tides till sons of the sons of the norsmen watch hurling to the windward and lee round england unbacked of her horsemen the steeds of the sea end of astrophel and other poems by algernan charles winburn

Classic Audiobook Collection - Astrophel and Other Poems by Algernon Charles Swinburne ~ Full Audiobook [poetry]

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