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1837–1909

V

Algernon Charles Swinburne

Among the wondrous ways of men and time He went as one that ever found and sought And bore in hand the lamplike spirit of thought To illume with instance of its fire sublime

The dusk of many a cloudlike age and clime. No spirit in shape of light and darkness wrought, No faith, no fear, no dream, no rapture, nought That blooms in wisdom, nought that burns in crime,

No virtue girt and armed and helmed with light, No love more lovely than the snows are white, No serpent sleeping in some dead soul's tomb, No song-bird singing from some live soul's height,

But he might hear, interpret, or illume With sense invasive as the dawn of doom.

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V · Algernon Charles Swinburne · Poetry Cove