Is it worth a tear, is it worth an hour,
To think of things that are well outworn?
Of fruitless husk and fugitive flower,
The dream foregone and the deed forborne?
Though joy be done with and grief be vain,
Time shall not sever us wholly in twain;
Earth is not spoilt for a single shower;
But the rain has ruined the ungrown corn.
The great irony of Swinburne’s career is that one of the most common criticisms of his verse is also one of his biggest strengths. Take a moment to actually read these lines out loud. The musicality is there even when read silently, but when spoken out loud that perfection of rhythm and rhyme is impossible to avoid. So impossible, in fact, that criticism is often leveled against his verse on the charge that it is so musical that a reader can easily lose themselves in the way the words are connected and become alienated from their actual meaning or the poem’s message.
Lo, she was thus when her clear limbs enticed
All lips that now grow sad with kissing Christ,
Stained with blood fallen from the feet of God,
The feet and hands whereat our souls were priced.
Alas, Lord, surely thou art great and fair.
But lo her wonderfully woven hair!
And thou didst heal us with thy piteous kiss;
But see now, Lord; her mouth is lovelier.
She is right fair; what hath she done to thee?
Nay, fair Lord Christ, lift up thine eyes and see;
Had now thy mother such a lip — like this?
Thou knowest how sweet a thing it is to me.
A more serious non-literary criticism of Swinburne’s poetry is that he combines sacrilege with eroticism. Depending on one’s perspective, this is either the best or worst of all possible worlds. For those deeming it the worst, one need examine the unexpectedly sensual nature of these stanzas from a poem that translates into “Praise of Venus.” Swinburne was routinely attacked for suggestive imagery as well as expressing less sacred appreciation of Christian iconography. Since he was writing during the Victorian era, one can see how this might be problematic for the poet.
There are sins it may be to discover,
There are deeds it may be to delight.
What new work wilt thou find for thy lover,
What new passions for daytime or night?
What spells that they know not a word of
Whose lives are as leaves overblown?
What tortures undreamt of, unheard of,
Unwritten, unknown?
Swinburne’s eroticism was pagan-based and he held a great fascination for the works of the Marquis de Sade. He was far less as sadist, however; his affinity leaned toward the other side of the dynamic. The urge toward exploring masochistic pleasures through a truly prodigious obsession with prostitutes is in these lines barely even hidden behind the poetic mask necessary to make them palatable to Victorian mores.
Thee, mother, thee, our queen, who givest
Assurance to the heavens most high
And earth whereon her bondsmen sigh
That by the sea’s grace while thou livest
Hope shall not wholly die.
These lines written for the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1887 seem barely recognizable to the poet who wrote “Dolores” twenty years earlier. The intense patriotic zeal can be overlooked given the occasion, but the passion expressed throughout the long poem for the speaker’s homeland is worthy of attention. The patriotism does not seem forced, yet at the same time it must be mentioned that until this period of life—he has turned 50 not long before writing it—virtually none of Swinburne’s poems expressed anything like the respect toward England that drives this verse.
Seek out Death's face ere the light altereth,
And say “My master that was thrall to Love
Is become thrall to Death.”
Bow down before him, ballad, sigh and groan,
But make no sojourn in thy outgoing;
For haply it may be
That when thy feet return at evening
Death shall come in with thee.
While much of Swinburne’s verse is dedicated to the lively passion of erotic obsession, he also expresses an obsessive interest in death. In addition to this poem, other titles in his canon include “Mourning” “After Death,” and “Dead Love.” In addition, Swinburne composed a number of elegies and eulogies upon the deaths of famous figures like Robert Browning, Richard Wagner and George Eliot. What is notable about most of these poems indulging in his darker obsessions is that he typically eschews that ironic aspect which unites his strength and weakness: rare is the poem touching on death that in which the meaning can be lost amid the rhythm.
