Atalanta in Calydon
Atalanta in Calydon
Original Text
Swinburne's Collected Poetical Works, 2 vols. (London: William Heinemann, 1924): II, 249-50.
67Fills the shadows and windy places
68 With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain;
70Is half assuaged for Itylus,
71For the Thracian ships and the foreign faces,
72 The tongueless vigil, and all the pain.
73Come with bows bent and with emptying of quivers,
75With a noise of winds and many rivers,
76 With a clamour of waters, and with might;
77Bind on thy sandals, O thou most fleet,
78Over the splendour and speed of thy feet;
79For the faint east quickens, the wan west shivers,
80 Round the feet of the day and the feet of the night.
81Where shall we find her, how shall we sing to her,
83O that man's heart were as fire and could spring to her,
84 Fire, or the strength of the streams that spring!
85For the stars and the winds are unto her
86As raiment, as songs of the harp-player;
87For the risen stars and the fallen cling to her,
88 And the southwest-wind and the west-wind sing.
89For winter's rains and ruins are over,
90 And all the season of snows and sins;
91The days dividing lover and lover,
92 The light that loses, the night that wins;
93And time remembered is grief forgotten,
94And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,
95And in green underwood and cover
96 Blossom by blossom the spring begins.
97The full streams feed on flower of rushes,
98 Ripe grasses trammel a travelling foot,
99The faint fresh flame of the young year flushes
100 From leaf to flower and flower to fruit;
101And fruit and leaf are as gold and fire,
104 The chestnut-husk at the chestnut root.
106 Fleeter of foot than the fleet-foot kid,
107Follows with dancing and fills with delight
109And soft as lips that laugh and hide
110The laughing leaves of the trees divide,
112 The god pursuing, the maiden hid.
113The ivy falls with the Bacchanal's hair
114 Over her eyebrows hiding her eyes;
115The wild vine slipping down leaves bare
116 Her bright breast shortening into sighs;
117The wild vine slips with the weight of its leaves,
118But the berried ivy catches and cleaves
119To the limbs that glitter, the feet that scare
120 The wolf that follows, the fawn that flies.
314Before the beginning of years
315 There came to the making of man
317 Grief, with a glass that ran;
318Pleasure, with pain for leaven;
319 Summer, with flowers that fell;
320Remembrance fallen from heaven,
321 And madness risen from hell;
322Strength without hands to smite;
323 Love that endures for a breath;
324Night, the shadow of light,
325 And life, the shadow of death.
326And the high gods took in hand
327 Fire, and the falling of tears,
328And a measure of sliding sand
329 From under the feet of the years;
330And froth and drift of the sea;
331 And dust of the labouring earth;
332And bodies of things to be
333 In the houses of death and of birth;
334And wrought with weeping and laughter,
335 And fashioned with loathing and love
336With life before and after
337 And death beneath and above,
338For a day and a night and a morrow,
339 That his strength might endure for a span
340With travail and heavy sorrow,
341 The holy spirit of man.
342From the winds of the north and the south
343 They gathered as unto strife;
344They breathed upon his mouth,
345 They filled his body with life;
346Eyesight and speech they wrought
347 For the veils of the soul therein,
348A time for labour and thought,
349 A time to serve and to sin;
350They gave him light in his ways,
351 And love, and a space for delight,
352And beauty and length of days,
353 And night, and sleep in the night.
354His speech is a burning fire;
355 With his lips he travaileth;
356In his heart is a blind desire,
357 In his eyes foreknowledge of death;
358He weaves, and is clothed with derision;
359 Sows, and he shall not reap;
360His life is a watch or a vision
361 Between a sleep and a sleep.
Notes
65] This is the first chorus in the drama. It celebrates the goddess of chastity; hunting, and the moon, i.e., Artemis or Diana. See the complete verse drama. Back to Line
66] The mother of months: Artemis, who controls the phases of the moon. Shelley calls her "the mother of months" in his Prometheus Unbound, IV. Back to Line
69] This story is used by Swinburne in "Itylus." Returning to Thrace, King Tereus, husband of Procne, ravished her sister Philomela and cut out her tongue. However, Philomela managed to tell her story in needlework. In revenge the sisters slew Itylus, Tereus's son by Procne, and served him up for Tereus to eat. This was at a place called Daulis (see "Itylus," line 48). The angry gods turned the protagonists into birds, Philomela into a nightingale and Procne into a swallow. Back to Line
74] Artemis, goddess of hunting and patron of unmarried girls. Back to Line
82] A manuscript version of these lines, reproduced in The Complete Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne, ed. Sir Edmund Gosse and Thomas James Wise (London: William Heinemann, 1926): I, 77, reads as follows:
Her who is more than love or than spring?Back to Line
Wine shall we shed for her, wreaths shall we bring to her,
Life shall we give her, and fire shall we bring?
For her feet are fair in the wet sweet ways,
From the sea-bank to the sea-bays;
And the risen stars and the fallen cling to her
102] oat: reed-pipe. Back to Line
103] satyr: half-man, half-beast, a mythical creature of the woods. Back to Line
105] Pan: god of shepherds.
Bacchus: god of wine. Back to Line
Bacchus: god of wine. Back to Line
108] Mænad, Bassarid, and Bacchanal (49) are female worshippers of Bacchus. Back to Line
111] chiastic (Greek, `set out diagonally'): the god is left in sight, and the maiden is screened. Back to Line
316] inversion as a figure of speech: Grief usually sheds tears, and Time usually has an hour-glass. Back to Line
Publication Start Year
1865
Publication Notes
Algernon Charles Swinburne, Atalanta in Calydon; a tragedy (London: E. Moxon, 1865). end S956 A83 1865 Fisher Rare Book Library (Toronto)
RPO poem Editors
P. F. Morgan
RPO Edition
3RP 3.367.
Rhyme