Posthumous Poems/The Ghost of It
THE GHOST OF IT[1]
In my poems, with ravishing rapture,
Storm strikes me, and strokes me, and stings;
But I'm scarcely the bird you might capture
Out of doors in the thick of such things.
I prefer to be well out of harm's way,
When tempest makes tremble the tree,
And the wind with armipotent arm-sway
Makes soap of the sea.
Storm strikes me, and strokes me, and stings;
But I'm scarcely the bird you might capture
Out of doors in the thick of such things.
I prefer to be well out of harm's way,
When tempest makes tremble the tree,
And the wind with armipotent arm-sway
Makes soap of the sea.
Hanging hard on the rent rags of others
Who before me did better, I try
To believe them my sisters and brothers,
Though I know what a low lot am I.
Truth dawns on time's resonant ruin
Frank, fulminant, fragrant and free,
And apparently this is the doing
Of wind on the sea.
Who before me did better, I try
To believe them my sisters and brothers,
Though I know what a low lot am I.
Truth dawns on time's resonant ruin
Frank, fulminant, fragrant and free,
And apparently this is the doing
Of wind on the sea.
Fame flutters in front of pretension
Whose flag-staff is flagrantly fine,
And it cannot be needful to mention
That such beyond question is mine.
It's plain as a newspaper leader
That a rhymester who scribbles like me
May feel perfectly sure that his reader
Is sick of the sea.[2]
Whose flag-staff is flagrantly fine,
And it cannot be needful to mention
That such beyond question is mine.
It's plain as a newspaper leader
That a rhymester who scribbles like me
May feel perfectly sure that his reader
Is sick of the sea.[2]
- ↑ This parody of a chorus in By the North Sea, was written in 1880, and was originally intended to occupy a position in Heptalogia, published in that year. It was, however, ultimately discarded in favour of Nephelidia.
- ↑ Upon the reverse of one of the leaves of the Manuscript of By the North Sea Swinburne has written these last four lines and headed them "The Ghost of it."