Locrine: A Tragedy

Transcribed from the 1887 Chatto & Windus edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
A TRAGEDY
BY ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
London CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY 1887
PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE LONDON
TO ALICE SWINBURNE.
The love that comes and goes like wind or fire Hath words and wings wherewith to speak and flee. But love more deep than passion’s deep desire, Clear and inviolable as the unsounded sea, What wings of words may serve to set it free, To lift and lead it homeward? Time and death Are less than love: or man’s live spirit saith False, when he deems his life is more than breath.
No words may utter love; no sovereign song Speak all it would for love’s sake. Yet would I Fain cast in moulded rhymes that do me wrong Some little part of all my love: but why Should weak and wingless words be fain to fly? For us the years that live not are not dead: Past days and present in our hearts are wed: My song can say no more than love hath said.
Love needs nor song nor speech to say what love Would speak or sing, were speech and song not weak To bear the sense-belated soul above And bid the lips of silence breathe and speak. Nor power nor will has love to find or seek Words indiscoverable, ampler strains of song Than ever hailed him fair or shewed him strong: And less than these should do him worse than wrong.
We who remember not a day wherein We have not loved each other,—who can see No time, since time bade first our days begin, Within the sweep of memory’s wings, when we Have known not what each other’s love must be,— We are well content to know it, and rest on this, And call not words to witness that it is. To love aloud is oft to love amiss.
But if the gracious witness borne of words Take not from speechless love the secret grace That binds it round with silence, and engirds Its heart with memories fair as heaven’s own face, Let love take courage for a little space To speak and be rebuked not of the soul, Whose utterance, ere the unwitting speech be whole, Rebukes itself, and craves again control.