Select Poems - 1887 Author:Algernon Charles Swinburne Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: OFF SEOBE. When the might of the summer Is most on the sea; When the days overcome her With joy but to be, With rapture of royal enchantment, and so... more »rcery that sets her not free, But for hours upon hours As a thrall she remains Spell-bound as with flowers And content in their chains, And her loud steeds fret not, and lift not a lock of their deep white manes; Then only, far under In the depths of her hold, Some gleam of its wonder Man's eye may behold, Its wild-weed forests of crimson and russet and olive and gold. Still deeper and dimmer And goodlier they glow For the eyes of the swimmer Who scans them below As he crosses the zone of their Sewerage that knows not of sunshine and snow. Soft blossomless frondage And foliage that gleams As to prisoners in bondage The light of their dreams, The desire of a dawn unbeholden, with hope on the wings of its beams. Not as prisoners entombed Waxen haggard and wizen, But consoled and illumed In the depths of their prison With delight of the light everlasting and vision of dawn on them risen, Prom the banks and the beds Of the waters divine They lift up their heads And the flowers of them shine Through the splendour of darkness that clothes them, of water that glimmers like wine. Bright bank over bank Making glorious the gloom, Soft rank upon rank, Strange bloom after bloom, They kindle the liquid low twilight, the dusk of the dim sea's womb. Through the subtle and tangible Gloom without form, Their branches, infrangible Ever of storm, Spread softer their sprays than the shoots of the woodland when April is warm. As the flight of the thunder, full Charged with its word, Dividing the wonderful Depths like a bird, Speaks wrath...« less