Tristram of Lyonesse and Other Poems/After Looking into Carlyle's Reminiscences

by Algernon Charles Swinburne

AFTER LOOKING INTO CARLYLE'S
REMINISCENCES.

 

I.

Three men lived yet when this dead man was young

Whose names and words endure for ever: one
Whose eyes grew dim with straining toward the sun,
And his wings weakened, and his angel’s tongue
Lost half the sweetest song was ever sung,
But like the strain half uttered earth hears none,
Nor shall man hear till all men’s songs are done:
One whose clear spirit like an eagle hung
Between the mountains hallowed by his love
And the sky stainless as his soul above:
And one the sweetest heart that ever spake
The brightest words wherein sweet wisdom smiled.
These deathless names by this dead snake defiled
Bid memory spit upon him for their sake.

II.

Sweet heart, forgive me for thine own sweet sake,

Whose kind blithe soul such seas of sorrow swam,
And for my love’s sake, powerless as I am
For love to praise thee, or like thee to make
Music of mirth where hearts less pure would break,
Less pure than thine, our life-unspotted Lamb.
Things hatefullest thou hadst not heart to damn,
Nor wouldst have set thine heel on this dead snake.
Let worms consume its memory with its tongue,
The fang that stabbed fair Truth, the lip that stung
Men’s memories uncorroded with its breath.
Forgive me, that with bitter words like his
I mix the gentlest English name that is,
The tenderest held of all that know not death.