If a man does not hear the melody of Swinburne’s verse, he must be deaf; he would not hear the melody of any verse. But if, as many do, he thinks its melody the best, he must have a gross ear. The man who now calls Swinburne the most musical of poets would, if he had been born one hundred and fifty years earlier, have said the same of Pope. To the ears of his contemporaries Pope’s verse was perfection: the inferiority of Milton’s and Shakespeare’s was not a thing to be disputed about but to be explained and excused. The melody of Pope and of Swinburne have this in common, and owed their acceptation to this, that they address themselves frankly and almost exclusively to what may be called the external ear. This, in different ways and by different methods, they fill and delight: it is a pleasure to hear them, and a pleasure to read them aloud. But there, in that very fact, you can tell that their music is only of the second order. To read aloud poets whose music is of the first, poets so much unlike one another as Blake and Milton, is not a pleasure but an embarrassment, because no reader can hope to do them justice. Their melody is addressed to the inner chambers of the sense of hearing, to the junction between the ear and the brain; and you should either hire an angel from heaven to read them to you, or let them read themselves in silence.
A. E. HOUSMAN: Swinburne
George Frederic Watts’s penetrating portrait of Swinburne hangs in the National Portrait Gallery. Swinburne was small of stature with flaming red hair, and was nicknamed ‘dear little Carrots’ by Edward Burne-Jones, to whom the poet dedicated his Poems & Ballads (1866). Of aristocratic parentage – his father was Admiral Charles Swinburne, his mother Lady Jane Ashburnham – Swinburne was educated at Eton, where he was bullied and beaten. Despite leaving Balliol College, Oxford, without a degree, he developed a fascination for languages (he learned Latin, Greek, French and Italian) and the intricacies of poetic form. He was at Oxford at the same time as Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones, William Morris and Holman Hunt, who attempted, unsuccessfully, to fresco the walls of the Oxford Union. He lived for a while with Rossetti and George Meredith at Cheyne Walk in Chelsea and was influenced to some degree by all these friends. His early publications were plays – The Queen-Mother and Rosamund (1860) and Chastelard (1865) – but it was only with the publication of his Poems and Ballads (1866), which celebrated ‘the roses and raptures of vice’ and contained such pagan poems as ‘The Garden of Proserpine’, ‘Hymn to Proserpine’, ‘Laus Veneris’ and others that celebrate physical love and moral and spiritual rebellion, that he made his mark. Bourgeois Victorian society, which was used to such poems as Tennyson’s Maud, was outraged. Swinburne’s break with contemporary taste continued apace. Ave Atque Vale followed in 1868, Songs Before Sunrise (1871), Erechtheus (1876), Poems and Ballads: Second Series (1878). His addiction to alcohol threatened to kill him, but he was rescued by Theodore Watts-Dunton, who cared for him at his home in Putney. He recovered sufficiently to publish ten more collections of verse in the next two decades. He wrote too much, and much of what he did write suffers from over-elaborate diction and a gratuitous interest in metrical pyrotechnics; but he provided much-needed opposition to the prudery of the age, attempted to rejuvenate what he felt was an outworn poetic language, and wrote some undisputed gems.
Kissing her hair I sat against her feet,
Wove and unwove it, wound and found it sweet;
Made fast therewith her hands, drew down her eyes,
Deep as deep flowers and dreamy like dim skies;
With her own tresses bound and found her fair,
Kissing her hair.
Sleep were no sweeter than her face to me,
Sleep of cold sea-bloom under the cold sea;
What pain could get between my face and hers?
What new sweet thing would love not relish worse?
Unless, perhaps, white death had kissed me there,
Kissing her hair?
Some die singing, and some die swinging,
And weel mot a’ they be:
Some die playing, and some die praying,
And I wot sae winna we, my dear,
And I wot sae winna we.
Some die sailing, and some die wailing,
And some die fair and free:
Some die flyting2, and some die fighting,
But I for a fause love’s fee, my dear,
But I for a fause love’s fee.
Some die laughing, and some die quaffing,
And some die high on tree:
Some die spinning, and some die sinning,
But faggot and fire for ye, my dear,
Faggot and fire for ye.
Some die weeping, and some die sleeping,
And some die under sea:
Some die ganging, and some die hanging,
And a twine of a tow for me, my dear,
A twine of a tow for me.
O weary fa’ the east wind,
And weary fa’ the west:
And gin I were under the wan waves wide
I wot weel wad I rest.
O weary fa’ the north wind,
And weary fa’ the south:
The sea went ower my good lord’s head
Or ever he kissed my mouth.
Weary fa’ the windward rocks,
And weary fa’ the lee:
They might hae sunken sevenscore ships,
And let my love’s gang free.
And weary fa’ ye, mariners a’,
And weary fa’ the sea:
It might hae taken an hundred men,
And let my ae love be.
(Hart)
If love were what the rose is,
And I were like the leaf,
Our lives would grow together
In sad or singing weather,
Blown fields or flowerful closes,
Green pleasure or grey grief;
If love were what the rose is,
If I were what the words are,
And love were like the tune,
With double sound and single
Delight our lips would mingle,
With kisses glad as birds are
That get sweet rain at noon;
If I were what the words are,
And love were like the tune.
If you were life, my darling,
And I your love were death,
We’d shine and snow together
Ere March made sweet the weather
With daffodil and starling
And hours of fruitful breath;
If you were life, my darling,
And I your love were death.
If you were thrall to sorrow,
And I were page to joy,
We’d play for lives and seasons
With loving looks and treasons
And tears of night and morrow
And laughs of maid and boy;
If you were thrall to sorrow,
And I were page to joy.
If you were April’s lady,
And I were lord in May,
We’d throw with leaves for hours
And draw for days with flowers,
Till day like night were shady
And night were bright like day;
If you were April’s lady,
And I were lord in May.
If you were queen of pleasure,
And I were king of pain,
We’d hunt down love together,
And teach his feet a measure,
And find his mouth a rein;
If you were queen of pleasure,
And I were king of pain.
(Cowen)
Baby, baby dear,
Earth and heaven are near
Now, for heaven is here.
Heaven is every place
Where your flower-sweet face
Fills our eyes with grace.
Till your own eyes deign
Earth a glance again,
Earth and heaven are twain.
Now your sleep is done,
Shine, and show the sun
Earth and heaven are one.