Algernon Swinburne Quotations

Where might is, the right is:/ Long purses make strong swords./ Let weakness learn meekness:/ God save the House of Lords!

I am tired of tears and laughter,/ And men that laugh and weep;/ Of what may come hereafter/ For men that sow and reap.

I am that which began:/ Out of me the years roll;/ Out of me God and man;/ I am equal and whole;/ God changes, and man, and the form of them bodily; I am the soul.

Come down and redeem us from virtue,/ Our Lady of Pain.

Time turns the old days to derision, Our loves into corpses or wives; And marriage and death and division Make barren our lives

Pale, beyond porch and portal,/ Crowned with calm leaves, she stands,/ Who gathers all things mortal/ With cold immortal hands.

I have lived long enough, having seen one thing, that love hath an end;/ Goddess and maiden and queen, be near me now and befriend.

I will go back to the great sweet mother,/ Mother and lover of men, the sea.

Before the beginning of years/ There came to the making of man/ Time with a gift of tears,/ Grief with a glass that ran.

Change in a trice. The lilies and languors of virtue. For the raptures and roses of vice;