Songs of the Springtides/Notes to Birthday Ode

by Algernon Charles Swinburne

NOTES.

v.33.Odes et Ballades, 1822–1824.
57.Les Orientales, 1829.
69.Les Feuilles d'Automne, 1831.
71.Les Chants du Crépuscule, 1835.
73.Les Voix Intérieures, 1837.
81.Les Rayons et les Ombres, 1840.
101.Hernani, 1830.
105.Marion de Lorme, 1831.
109.Le Roi s'amuse, 1832.
113.Lucrèce Borgia, 1833.
121.Marie Tudor, 1835.
127.Angelo, Tyran de Padoue, 1835.
129.La Esmeralda, 1836.
133.Ruy Blas, 1838.
137.Les Burgraves, 1842.

153.Cromwell, 1827: Étude sur Mirabeau, 1834 (Littérature et Philosophie mêlées, 1819–1834).

177.Han d'Islande, 1823. Bug-Jargal, 1826.

182.Le Dernier Jour d'un Condamné, 1829: Claude Gueux,1834.

193.Notre-Dame de Paris, 1831.

205.Le Rhin, 1845.

216.Napoléon le Petit, 1852. Châtiments, 1853. Histoire d'un Crime, 1877. In this place I must take occasion to relieve my conscience from a sense of duty unfulfilled so long as I for one have not uttered my own poor private protest—worthless and weightless though it may seem, if cast as a grain into the scale of public opinion—against a projected insult at once to contemporary France and to the present only less than to past generations of Englishmen.

On the proposed desecration of Westminster Abbey
by the erection of a monument
to the son of Napoleon III.

'Let us go hence.' From the inmost shrine of grace
Where England hold the elect of her dead
There comes a word like one of old time said
By gods of old cast out. Here is no place
At once for these and one of poisonous race.
Let each rise up from his dishallowed bed
And pass forth silent. Each divine veiled head
Shall speak in silence with averted face.
'Scorn everlasting and eternal shame
Eat out the rotting record of his name
Who had the glory of all these graves in trust
And turned it to a hissing. His offence
Makes havoc of their desecrated dust
Whose place is here no more. Let us go hence.'

Feb. 25, 1880.

v.297.Les Contemplations, 1856

321.La Légende des Siècles. Premeière série, 1859; nouvelle'série, 1877.

392.Les Misérables, 1862.

409.Les Travailleurs de la Mer, 1866.
417.L'Homme qui Rit, 1869.
433.Quatre-vingt-treize, 1874.
441.William Shakespeare, 1864.

448.Actes et Paroles; Avant l'Exil, 1841-1851; Pendant l'Exil, 1852-1870; Depuis l'Exil, 1870-1876.

452.Paris, 1867.

455.Mes Fils, 1875.
456.Pour un Soldat, 1875.
457.Les Chansons des Rues et des Bois, 1865.
462.L'Année Terrible, 1872.
464.L'Art d'être Grandpère, 1877.
470.Le Pape, 1878.

497.'Septidi ventôse an X de la République (26 février 1802).' Victor Hugo raconté par un témoin de sa vie, 1863, tome 1, p. 28.

At the end of such a list so incomparable as to seem incredible, of one great man's good works, we may be forgiven the alteration of a word even in a verse from Æschylus which we cannot choose but apply once more to this leader in the advance of men made perfect through doom of trial and long wayfaring, whose progress he furthers by example and stimulates by song:—

κύριός ἐστι θροεῖν ὅδιον κράτος αἴσιον ἀνδρῶν

ἐκτελέων· ἔτι γὰρ θεόθεν καταπνείει
πειθὼ μολπᾶν
ἀλκᾷ σύμφυτος αἰών. Æsch. Agam. 104-8.

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