Poems and Ballads

A Lamentation

Algernon Charles Swinburne

I.
WHO hath known the ways of time
    Or trodden behind his feet?
        There is no such man among men.
For chance overcomes him, or crime
    Changes; for all things sweet
        In time wax bitter again.
Who shall give sorrow enough,
    Or who the abundance of tears?
Mine eyes are heavy with love
    And a sword gone thorough mine ears,
        A sound like a sword and fire,
        For pity, for great desire;
Who shall ensure me thereof,
    Lest I die, being full of my fears?

Who hath known the ways and the wrath,
    The sleepless spirit, the root
        And blossom of evil will,
            The divine device of a god?
Who shall behold it or hath?
    The twice-tongued prophets are mute,
        The many speakers are still;
            No foot has travelled or trod,
No hand has meted, his path.
    Man’s fate is a blood-red fruit,
        And the mighty gods have their fill
            And relax not the rein, or the rod.

Ye were mighty in heart from of old,
    Ye slew with the spear, and are slain.
Keen after heat is the cold,
    Sore after summer is rain,
And melteth man to the bone.
    As water he weareth away,
    As a flower, as an hour in a day,
Fallen from laughter to moan.
But my spirit is shaken with fear
    Lest an evil thing begin,
New-born, a spear for a spear,
    And one for another sin.
Or ever our tears began,
    It was known from of old and said;
One law for a living man,
    And another law for the dead.
For these are fearful and sad,
    Vain, and things without breath;
        While he lives let a man be glad,
            For none hath joy of his death.

II.
Who hath known the pain, the old pain of earth,
    Or all the travail of the sea,
The many ways and waves, the birth
Fruitless, the labour nothing worth?
    Who hath known, who knoweth, O gods? not we.
There is none shall say he hath seen,
    There is none he hath known.
Though he saith, Lo, a lord have I been,
    I have reaped and sown;
I have seen the desire of mine eyes,
    The beginning of love,
The season of kisses and sighs
    And the end thereof.
I have known the ways of the sea,
    All the perilous ways,
Strange winds have spoken with me,
    And the tongues of strange days.
I have hewn the pine for ships;
    Where steeds run arow,
I have seen from their bridled lips
    Foam blown as the snow.
With snapping of chariot-poles
    And with straining of oars
I have grazed in the race the goals,
    In the storm the shores;
As a greave is cleft with an arrow
    At the joint of the knee,
I have cleft through the sea-straits narrow
    To the heart of the sea.
When air was smitten in sunder
    I have watched on high
The ways of the stars and the thunder
    In the night of the sky;
Where the dark brings forth light as a flower,
    As from lips that dissever;
One abideth the space of an hour,
    One endureth for ever.
Lo, what hath he seen or known,
    Of the way and the wave
Unbeholden, unsailed-on, unsown,
    From the breast to the grave?

Or ever the stars were made, or skies,
    Grief was born, and the kinless night,
        Mother of gods without form or name.
And light is born out of heaven and dies,
    And one day knows not another’s light,
        But night is one, and her shape the same.

But dumb the goddesses underground
    Wait, and we hear not on earth if their feet
        Rise, and the night wax loud with their wings;
Dumb, without word or shadow of sound;
    And sift in scales and winnow as wheat
        Men’s souls, and sorrow of manifold things.

III.
Nor less of grief than ours
    The gods wrought long ago
        To bruise men one by one;
But with the incessant hours
    Fresh grief and greener woe
        Spring, as the sudden sun
Year after year makes flowers;
    And these die down and grow,
        And the next year lacks none.

As these men sleep, have slept
    The old heroes in time fled,
        No dream-divided sleep;
And holier eyes have wept
    Than ours, when on her dead
        Gods have seen Thetis weep,
With heavenly hair far-swept
    Back, heavenly hands outspread
        Round what she could not keep,

Could not one day withhold,
    One night; and like as these
        White ashes of no weight,
Held not his urn the cold
    Ashes of Heracles?
        For all things born one gate
Opens, no gate of gold;
    Opens; and no man sees
        Beyond the gods and fate.

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