Posthumous Poems/Memorial Ode on the Death of Leconte de Lisle

by Algernon Charles Swinburne

MEMORIAL ODE ON THE
DEATH OF LECONTE DE LISLE

On the first of June 1885, the greatest poet of the nineteenth century was borne to his rest amid the lamentations and the applause of his countrymen, and of all to whom either the example of a noble life or the triumph of a genius inaccessible and unapproachable seemed worthy of honour and regard. Many earnest and cordial and admirable words of tribute and thanksgiving and farewell were uttered over the hearse of Victor Hugo; none more memorable than those in which a great poet became the spokesman of all his kind in honour of the greatest of them all. Short and simple as was the speech of M. Leconte de Lisle, none of the longer and more elaborate orations was more genuinely eloquent, more seriously valuable, than the admirably terse and apt expression of gratitude and reverence with which he bade "farewell and hail" in the name of all surviving poets to their beloved and beneficent master. Nor could a fitter and a worthier spokesman have been imagined or desired by the most exacting or the most ambitious devotion or design.—A.C.S.

IBeside the lordliest grave in all the world,  A singer crowned with golden years and fame Spake words more sweet than wreaths of incense curled,  That bade an elder yet and mightier name Hail, for whose love the wings of time were furled, And death that heard it died of deadlier shame.

Our father and lord of all the sons of song,  Hugo, supreme on earth, had risen above Earth, as the sun soars noonward: grief and wrong  Had yielded up their part in him to love; And one man's word came forth upon the throng  Brief as the brooding music of the dove.

And he now too, the praiser as the praised,  Being silent, speaks forever. He, whose word Reverberate made the gloom whereon he gazed  Radiant with sound whose song in his we heard, Stands far from us as they whose souls he raised  Again, and darkness carolled like a bird.

IIGolden eastern waters rocked the cradle where he slept Songless, crowned with bays to be of sovereign song,Breathed upon with balm and calm of bounteous seas that kept Secret all the blessing of his birthright, strong, Soft, severe, and sweet as dawn when first it laughed and leapt Forth of heaven, and clove the clouds that wrought it wrong.

Calm and proud and patient even as light that bides its hour All night long till night wax weary, shone the soulCrowned and girt with light, sublime in peace and sure in power, Sunlike, over tidal years and changes; whole,Full, serene, superb as time that kindles fruit from flower, Lord alike of waves that rest and waves that roll.

Sunlight round the soft Virgilian meads where sunbeams sleep Lulled not overlong a spirit of strength to striveRight against the winds that stormier times heard strain and sweep Round the rocks whereon man crucified aliveMan, and bade the soul of manhood cower and chant and weep, Strong in vain to soar and seek, to delve and dive.

III Time and change and death made music as of life and strife and doom When his lyric spell bade ope the graves of ages dead as dust.Cain, a shadow like a sunrise clad in fire whose light was gloom, Towered above the deepening deluge, crying on justice held unjust,Whence his giant sons should find the world their throne become their tomb, And a wider world of waters hide the strongholds of their trust.

Soiled with desert sand and lit with fire of wrath from heaven, the seer Spake for Naboth slain the sentence of the judgment of the Lord:Age on ruining age and year as rolling thunder crashed on year Down the measures of the mighty song that glittered like a sword:Truth and legend strange and fierce as truth or dreams of faith and fear Made their lightnings one to crown it, flashed from stormy chord to chord.

Now the lyre whose lord's wise mastery gave its notes reverberate skill Whence to give again the grace of golden gifts or hands long dead,Now the deep clear soul that all the lore of time could scarce fulfil, Now the sovereign voice that spake it, now the radiant eye that read,Seem to sleep as sleeps the indomitable imperishable will Here, that haply lives and sleeps not, though its word on earth be said.

1894.