Tristram of Lyonesse and Other Poems

XVIII.

Anonymous Plays

Algernon Charles Swinburne


MORE yet and more, and yet we mark not all:
    The Warning fain to bid fair women heed
    Its hard brief note of deadly doom and deed;1
The verse that strewed too thick with flowers the hall
Whence Nero watched his fiery festival;2
    That iron page wherein men’s eyes who read
    See, bruised and marred between two babes that bleed,
A mad red-handed husband’s martyr fall;3
The scene which crossed and streaked with mirth the strife
Of Henry with his sons and witchlike wife;4
And that sweet pageant of the kindly fiend,
    Who, seeing three friends in spirit and heart made one,
Crowned with good hap the true-love wiles he screened
    In the pleached lanes of pleasant Edmonton.5


1.    A Warning for Fair Women.    [back]

2.    The Tragedy of Nero.    [back]

3.    A Y60orkshire Tragedy.    [back]

4.    Look about you.    [back]

5.    The Merry Devil of Edmonton.    [back]


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