A Swimmer's Dream
A Swimmer's Dream
Original Text
Swinburne's Collected Poetical Works, 2 vols. (London: William Heinemann, 1924): II, 997-1001.
2 Soft and passionate, dark and sweet.
4 Fair and flawless from face to feet,
5Hailed of all when the world was golden,
6Loved of lovers whose names beholden
7Thrill men's eyes as with light of olden
8 Days more glad than their flight was fleet.
9So they sang: but for men that love her,
10 Souls that hear not her word in vain,
11Earth beside her and heaven above her
12 Seem but shadows that wax and wane.
13Softer than sleep's are the sea's caresses,
14Kinder than love's that betrays and blesses,
15Blither than spring's when her flowerful tresses
16 Shake forth sunlight and shine with rain.
17All the strength of the waves that perish
18 Swells beneath me and laughs and sighs,
19Sighs for love of the life they cherish,
20 Laughs to know that it lives and dies,
21Dies for joy of its life, and lives
22Thrilled with joy that its brief death gives --
23Death whose laugh or whose breath forgives
24 Change that bids it subside and rise.
II
25Hard and heavy, remote but nearing,26 Sunless hangs the severe sky's weight,
27Cloud on cloud, though the wind be veering
28 Heaped on high to the sundawn's gate.
29Dawn and even and noon are one,
30Veiled with vapour and void of sun;
31Nought in sight or in fancied hearing
32 Now less mighty than time or fate.
33The grey sky gleams and the grey seas glimmer,
34 Pale and sweet as a dream's delight,
35As a dream's where darkness and light seem dimmer,
36 Touched by dawn or subdued by night.
37The dark wind, stern and sublime and sad,
38Swings the rollers to westward, clad
39With lustrous shadow that lures the swimmer,
40 Lures and lulls him with dreams of light.
41Light, and sleep, and delight, and wonder,
42 Change, and rest, and a charm of cloud,
43Fill the world of the skies whereunder
44 Heaves and quivers and pants aloud
45All the world of the waters, hoary
46Now, but clothed with its own live glory,
47That mates the lightning and mocks the thunder
48 With light more living and word more proud.
III
49Far off westward, whither sets the sounding strife,50 Strife more sweet than peace, of shoreless waves whose glee
51 Scorns the shore and loves the wind that leaves them free,
52Strange as sleep and pale as death and fair as life,
53 Shifts the moonlight-coloured sunshine on the sea.
54Toward the sunset's goal the sunless waters crowd,
55 Fast as autumn days toward winter: yet it seems
56 Here that autumn wanes not, here that woods and streams
57Lose not heart and change not likeness, chilled and bowed,
58 Warped and wrinkled: here the days are fair as dreams.
IV
59O russet-robed November,60 What ails thee so to smile?
61Chill August, pale September,
62 Endured a woful while,
63And fell as falls an ember
64 From forth a flameless pile:
65But golden-girt November
66 Bids all she looks on smile.
67The lustrous foliage, waning
68 As wanes the morning moon,
69Here falling, here refraining,
70 Outbraves the pride of June
71With statelier semblance, feigning
72 No fear lest death be soon:
73As though the woods thus waning
74 Should wax to meet the moon.
75As though, when fields lie stricken
76 By grey December's breath,
77These lordlier growths that sicken
78 And die for fear of death
79Should feel the sense requicken
80 That hears what springtide saith
81And thrills for love, spring-stricken
82 And pierced with April's breath.
83The keen white-winged north-easter
84 That stings and spurs thy sea
85Doth yet but feed and feast her
86 With glowing sense of glee:
87Calm chained her, storm released her,
88 And storm's glad voice was he:
89South-wester or north-easter,
90 Thy winds rejoice the sea.
V
91A dream, a dream is it all -- the season,92 The sky, the water, the wind, the shore?
93A day-born dream of divine unreason,
94 A marvel moulded of sleep -- no more?
95For the cloudlike wave that my limbs while cleaving
96Feel as in slumber beneath them heaving
97Soothes the sense as to slumber, leaving
98 Sense of nought that was known of yore.
99A purer passion, a lordlier leisure,
100 A peace more happy than lives on land,
101Fulfils with pulse of diviner pleasure
102 The dreaming head and the steering hand.
103I lean my cheek to the cold grey pillow,
104The deep soft swell of the full broad billow,
105And close mine eyes for delight past measure,
106 And wish the wheel of the world would stand.
107The wild-winged hour that we fain would capture
108 Falls as from heaven that its light feet clomb,
109So brief, so soft, and so full the rapture
110 Was felt that soothed me with sense of home.
111To sleep, to swim, and to dream, for ever --
112Such joy the vision of man saw never;
113For here too soon will a dark day sever
114 The sea-bird's wing from the sea-wave's foam.
115A dream, and more than a dream, and dimmer
116 At once and brighter than dreams that flee,
117The moment's joy of the seaward swimmer
118 Abides, remembered as truth may be.
119Not all the joy and not all the glory
120Must fade as leaves when the woods wax hoary;
121For there the downs and the sea-banks glimmer,
122 And here to south of them swells the sea.
Notes
1] In a letter to Edwin Harrison on February 5, 1890, Swinburne said: "... the poem was really begun in my head a little way off shore, out of pure delight in the sense of the sea" (The Complete Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne, ed. Sir Edmund Gosse and Thomas James Wise [London: William Heinemann, 1926]: V, 282). Back to Line
3] the deep sea's daughter: Venus. Back to Line
Publication Start Year
1890
Publication Notes
The New Review (January 1890): 1-5; then Astrophel and Other Poems (London: Chatto and Windus, 1894): 61-68.
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
RPO (1999).
Rhyme