The Poetry Corner

A Double Ballad Of August

By Algernon Charles Swinburne

All Afric, winged with death and fire, Pants in our pleasant English air. Each blade of grass is tense as wire, And all the woods loose trembling hair Stark in the broad and breathless glare Of hours whose touch wastes herb and tree. This bright sharp death shines everywhere; Life yearns for solace toward the sea. Earth seems a corpse upon the pyre; The sun, a scourge for slaves to bear. All power to fear, all keen desire, Lies dead as dreams of days that were Before the new-born world lay bare In heavens wide eye, whereunder we Lie breathless till the season spare: Life yearns for solace toward the sea. Fierce hours, with ravening fangs that tire On spirit and sense, divide and share The throbs of thoughts that scarce respire, The throes of dreams that scarce forbear One mute immitigable prayer For cold perpetual sleep to be Shed snowlike on the sense of care. Life yearns for solace toward the sea. The dust of ways where men suspire Seems even the dust of deaths dim lair. But though the feverish days be dire The sea-wind rears and cheers its fair Blithe broods of babes that here and there Make the sands laugh and glow for glee With gladder flowers than gardens wear. Life yearns for solace toward the sea. The music dies not off the lyre That lets no soul alive despair. Sleep strikes not dumb the breathless choir Of waves whose note bids sorrow spare. As glad they sound, as fast they fare, As when fates word first set them free And gave them light and night to wear. Life yearns for solace toward the sea. For there, though night and day conspire To compass round with toil and snare And changeless whirl of change, whose gyre Draws all things deathwards unaware, The spirit of life they scourge and scare, Wild waves that follow on waves that flee Laugh, knowing that yet, though earth despair, Life yearns for solace toward the sea.