Poems begining by A
/ page 293 of 345 /A Landscape By Courbet
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
Low lies the mere beneath the moorside, still
And glad of silence: down the wood sweeps clear
To the utmost verge where fed with many a rill
Low lies the mere.
A Dialog
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
Death, if thou wilt, fain would I plead with thee:
Canst thou not spare, of all our hopes have built,
One shelter where our spirits fain would be,
Death, if thou wilt?
A Marching Song
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
We mix from many lands,
We march for very far;
In hearts and lips and hands
Our staffs and weapons are;
The light we walk in darkens sun and moon and star.
A Dialogue
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
I
DEATH, if thou wilt, fain would I plead with thee:
Canst thou not spare, of all our hopes have built,
One shelter where our spirits fain would be,
Death, if thou wit?
A Year's Burden -- 1870
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
Fire and wild light of hope and doubt and fear,
Wind of swift change, and clouds and hours that veer
As the storm shifts of the tempestuous year;
Cry wellaway, but well befall the right.
A Channel Crossing
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
Forth from Calais, at dawn of night, when sunset summer on autumn shone,
Fared the steamer alert and loud through seas whence only the sun was gone:
Soft and sweet as the sky they smiled, and bade man welcome: a dim sweet hour
Gleamed and whispered in wind and sea, and heaven was fair as a field in flower,
Autumn And Winter
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
Three months bade wane and wax the wintering moon
Between two dates of death, while men were fain
Yet of the living light that all too soon
Three months bade wane.
An Appeal
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
Art thou indeed among these,
Thou of the tyrannous crew,
The kingdoms fed upon blood,
O queen from of old of the seas,
Ave atque Vale (In memory of Charles Baudelaire)
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
SHALL I strew on thee rose or rue or laurel,
Brother, on this that was the veil of thee?
Or quiet sea-flower moulded by the sea,
Or simplest growth of meadow-sweet or sorrel,
A Clasp Of Hands
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
SOFT, small, and sweet as sunniest flowers
That bask in heavenly heat
When bud by bud breaks, breathes, and cowers,
Soft, small, and sweet.
A Watch In The Night
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
Watchman, what of the night? -
Storm and thunder and rain,
Lights that waver and wane,
Leaving the watchfires unlit.
A Flower-Piece By Fantin
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
Heart's ease or pansy, pleasure or thought,
Which would the picture give us of these?
Surely the heart that conceived it sought
Heart's ease.
A Ballad of Burdens
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
Princes, and ye whom pleasure quickeneth,
Heed well this rhyme before your pleasure tire;
For life is sweet, but after life is death.
This is the end of every man's desire.
A Match
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
If love were what the rose is,
And I were like the leaf,
Our lives would grow together
In sad or singing weather,
A New Year's Message To Joseph Mazzini
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
Send the stars light, but send not love to me.
Shelley.IOut of the dawning heavens that hear
Young wings and feet of the new year
Move through their twilight, and shed round
A Forsaken Garden
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
IN a coign of the cliff between lowland and highland,
At the sea-down's edge between windward and lee,
Walled round with rocks as an inland island,
The ghost of a garden fronts the sea.
A Ballad of Death
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
Kneel down, fair Love, and fill thyself with tears,
Girdle thyself with sighing for a girth
Upon the sides of mirth,
Cover thy lips and eyelids, let thine ears
A Swimmer's Dream
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
III
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-coloured sunshine on the sea.
A Ninth Birthday
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
Three times thrice hath winter's rough white wing
Crossed and curdled wells and streams with ice
Since his birth whose praises love would sing
Three times thrice.
Aperotos Eros
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
Strong as death, and cruel as the grave,
Clothed with cloud and tempest's blackening breath,
Known of death's dread self, whom none outbrave,
Strong as death,