The Poetry Corner

Algernon Charles Swinburne.

By Francis William Lauderdale Adams

Shrieks out of smoke, a flame of dung-straw fire That is not quenched but hath for only fruit What writhes and dies not in its rotten root: Two things made flesh, the visible desire To match in filth the skunk, the ape in ire, {87a} Mouthing before the mirrors with wild foot Beyond all feebler footprint of pursuit, The perfect twanger of the Chinese lyre! A heart with generous virtues run to seed In vices making all a jumbled creed: A soul that knows not love nor trust nor shame, But cuts itself with knives to bawl and bleed - If thou we've known of late, art still the same, What need, O soul, to sign thee with thy name? Once on thy lips the golden-honeyed bees Settling made sweet the heart that was not strong, And sky and earth and sea burst into song: {87b} Once on thine eyes the light of agonies Flashed through the soul and robbed the days of ease. {87c} But tunes turn stale when love turns babe, and long The exiled gentlemen grow fat with wrong. And peasants, workmen, beggars, what are these? {87d} O you who sang the Italian smoke above, - Mud-lark of Freedom, pipe of that vile band Whose envy slays the tyrant, not the love Of these poor souls none have the keeping of - It is your hand - it is your pandar hand Smites the bruised mouth of pilloried Ireland!