Algernon Charles Swinburne Art Quotations

In the world of dreams, I have chosen my part. To sleep for a season and hear no word Of true love's truth or of light love's art, Only the song of a secret bird.

There lived a singer in France of old By the tideless dolorous midland sea. In a land of sand and rain and gold There shone one woman, and none but she.

Yet leave me not; yet, if thou wilt, be free; love me no more, but love my love of thee.

Heart's ease of pansy, pleasure or thought, Which would the picture give us of these? Surely the heart that conceived it sought Heart's ease.

There grows No herb of help to heal a coward heart.

She knows not loves that kissed her She knows not where. Art thou the ghost, my sister, White sister there, Am I the ghost, who knows? My hand, a fallen rose, Lies snow-white on white snows, and takes no care.

Ask nothing more of me sweet; All I can give you I give; Heart of my heart were it more, More would be laid at your feet..

But now, you are twain, you are cloven apart Flesh of his flesh, but heart of my heart.

O Love, O great god Love, what have I done, That thou shouldst hunger so after my death? My heart is harmless as my life's first day: Seek out some false fair woman, and plague her Till her tears even as my tears fill her bed.

Fruits fail and love dies and time ranges;Thou art fed with perpetual breath, and alive after infinite changes,And fresh from the kisses of death,Of langours rekindled and rallied, Of barren delights and unclean,Things monstrous and fruitless, a pallidAnd poisonous queen.

No blast of air or fire of sun Puts out the light whereby we run With girdled loins our lamplit race, And each from each takes heart of grace And spirit till his turn be done.

In hawthorn-time the heart grows light.

There is no such thing as a dumb poet or a handless painter. The essence of an artist is that he should be articulate.