| Poetry week post 5- Algernon Charles Swinburne, The Triumph of Time |
[Apr. 21st, 2008|08:15 am] |
Some people think this is Swinburne's greatest poem. I'm not so sure about that, but it is one of the most beautiful- mixing deep, bitter personal sadness (it's now generally accepted that Swinburne was deeply in love with his cousin Mary Gordon, and devastated when she married someone else; he never married himself) with highly poeticized language and a sea-section that evokes the ocean only to find out that it is never going to be enough to make the speaker forget.
The Triumph of Time
Before our lives divide for ever,
While time is with us and hands are free,
(Time, swift to fasten and swift to sever
Hand from hand, as we stand by the sea)
I will say no word that a man might say
Whose whole life's love goes down in a day;
For this could never have been; and never,
Though the gods and the years relent, shall be.
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