The Tale of Balen

Transcribed from the 1896 Chatto & Windus edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
printed by spottiswoode and co., new-street square london
by ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
LONDON CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY 1896
Copyright in the United States, 1896, by Charles Scribner’s Sons.
Love that holds life and death in fee, Deep as the clear unsounded sea And sweet as life or death can be, Lays here my hope, my heart, and me Before you, silent, in a song. Since the old wild tale, made new, found grace, When half sung through, before your face, It needs must live a springtide space, While April suns grow strong.
March 24, 1896.
In hawthorn-time the heart grows light, The world is sweet in sound and sight, Glad thoughts and birds take flower and flight, The heather kindles toward the light, The whin is frankincense and flame. And be it for strife or be it for love The falcon quickens as the dove When earth is touched from heaven above With joy that knows no name.
And glad in spirit and sad in soul With dream and doubt of days that roll As waves that race and find no goal Rode on by bush and brake and bole A northern child of earth and sea. The pride of life before him lay Radiant: the heavens of night and day Shone less than shone before his way His ways and days to be.
And all his life of blood and breath Sang out within him: time and death Were even as words a dreamer saith When sleep within him slackeneth, And light and life and spring were one. The steed between his knees that sprang, The moors and woods that shone and sang, The hours where through the spring’s breath rang, Seemed ageless as the sun.
But alway through the bounteous bloom That earth gives thanks if heaven illume His soul forefelt a shadow of doom, His heart foreknew a gloomier gloom Than closes all men’s equal ways, Albeit the spirit of life’s light spring With pride of heart upheld him, king And lord of hours like snakes that sting And nights that darken days.