A Century of Roundels

Name: A Century of Roundels
Author: Algernon Charles Swinburne

by Algernon Charles Swinburne

Pages: about 28
Category: Literature & Fiction
Language: English
Reading time: 31 min at 250 wpm

Start readingThe whole book, as cards or one word at a time. 17 min at 450 wpm in Read mode.

From the opening

GOODNIGHT and goodbye to the life whose signs denote us As mourners clothed with regret for the life gone by; To the waters of gloom whence winds of the dayspring float us Goodnight and goodbye.
A time is for mourning, a season for grief to sigh; But were we not fools and blind, by day to devote us As thralls to the darkness, unseen of the sundawn’s eye?
We have drunken of Lethe at length, we have eaten of lotus; What hurts it us here that sorrows are born and die? We have said to the dream that caressed and the dread that smote us Goodnight and goodbye.
Outside of the port ye are moored in, lying Close from the wind and at ease from the tide, What sounds come swelling, what notes fall dying Outside?
They will not cease, they will not abide: Voices of presage in darkness crying Pass and return and relapse aside.
Ye see not, but hear ye not wild wings flying To the future that wakes from the past that died? Is grief still sleeping, is joy not sighing Outside?
THE wind’s way in the deep sky’s hollow None may measure, as none can say How the heart in her shows the swallow The wind’s way.
Hope nor fear can avail to stay Waves that whiten on wrecks that wallow, Times and seasons that wane and slay.
Life and love, till the strong night swallow Thought and hope and the red last ray, Swim the waters of years that follow The wind’s way.
HAD I wist, when life was like a warm wind playing Light and loud through sundawn and the dew’s bright trust, How the time should come for hearts to sigh in saying ‘Had I wist’—
Surely not the roses, laughing as they kissed, Not the lovelier laugh of seas in sunshine swaying, Should have lured my soul to look thereon and list.

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A Century of Roundels

From the opening

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