Posthumous Poems/The Ghost of It

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Posthumous Poems
by Algernon Charles Swinburne

The Ghost of It

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4147574Posthumous Poems — The Ghost of ItAlgernon Charles Swinburne

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.

Hanging hard on the rent rags of others Who before me did better, I tryTo 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]

↑ 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."

[1] 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.

[2] 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."

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