And all the rippling green grew royal gold
Between him and the far sun's rising rim.
And like the sun his heart rejoiced in him,
And brightened with a broadening flame of mirth:
And hardly seemed its life a part of earth,
But the life kindled of a fiery birth

And passion of a new-begotten son
Between the live sea and the living sun.

And mightier grew the joy to meet full-faced Each wave, and mount with upward plunge, and taste

The rapture of its rolling strength, and cross Its flickering crown of snows that flash and toss Like plumes in battle's blithest charge, and thence

To match the next with yet more strenuous

sense;

Till on his eyes the light beat hard and bade

His face turn west and shoreward through the glad

Swift revel of the waters golden-clad,

And back with light reluctant heart he bore Across the broad-backed rollers in to shore, Strong-spirited for the chance and cheer of fight,

And donned his arms again, and felt the might In all his limbs rejoice for strength, and praised God for such life as that whereon he gazed, And wist not surely its joy was even as fleet As that which laughed and lapsed against his feet,

The bright thin grey foam-blossom, glad and hoar,

That flings its flower along the flowerless shore On sand or shingle, and still with sweet strange

snows

As where one great white storm-dishevelled rose

May rain her wild leaves on a windy land,
Strews for long leagues the sounding slope of
strand,

And flower on flower falls flashing and anew
A fresh light leaps up whence the last flash flew,
And casts its brief glad gleam of life away
To fade not flowerwise but as drops the day
Storm-smitten, when at once the dark devours
Heaven and the sea and earth with all their flow-
ers;

No star in heaven, on earth no rose to see,

But the white blown brief blossoms of the sea, That make her green gloom starrier than the sky,

Dance yet before the tempest's tune, and die. And all these things he glanced upon, and knew How fair they shone, from earth's least flake of dew

To stretch of seas and imminence of skies,

Unwittingly, with unpresageful eyes,

For the last time. The world's half heavenly face,

The music of the silence of the place,

The confluence and refluence of the sea,

The wind's note ringing over wold and lea,

Smote once more through him keen as fire that

smote,

Rang once more through him one reverberate note,

That faded as he turned again and went,

Fulfilled by strenuous joy with strong content, To take his last delight of labor done

That yet should be beholden of the sun.

Algernon Charles Swinburne

SWIMMING AT SUNRISE

S one that ere a June day rise

AS

Makes seaward for the dawn, and tries The water with delighted limbs

That taste the sweet dark sea, and swims Right eastward under strengthening skies, And sees the gradual rippling rims

Of waves whence day breaks blossom-wise
Take fire ere light peer well above,
And laughs from all his heart with love;

And softlier swimming with raised head
Feels the full flower of morning shed

And fluent sunrise round him rolled
That laps and laves his body bold
With fluctuant heaven in water's stead,
And urgent through the growing gold
Strikes, and sees all the spray flash red,
And his soul takes the sun, and yearns
For joy wherewith the sea's heart burns;

So the soul seeking through the dark
Heavenward, a dove without an ark,
Transcends the unnavigable sea

Of years that wear out memory;
So calls, a sunward-singing lark,

In the ear of souls that should be free; So points them toward the sun for mark Who steer not for the stress of waves, And seek strange helmsmen, and are slaves.

For if the swimmer's eastward eye
Must see no sunrise- must put by

The hope that lifted him and led
Once, to have light about his head,
To see beneath the clear low sky

The green foam-whitened wave wax red And all the morning's banner fly.

Then, as earth's helpless hopes go down,
Let earth's self in the dark tides drown.

Yea, if no morning must behold
Man, other than were they now cold,
And other deeds than past deeds done,
Nor any near or far-off sun

Salute him risen and sunlike-souled,
Free, boundless, fearless, perfect, one,
Let man's world die like worlds of old,
And here in heaven's sight only be
The sole sun on a worldless sea.

Algernon Charles Swinburne

CHORUS

FROM Hippolytus

NOULD I take me to some cavern for mine

Chiding,

In the hill-tops where the Sun scarce hath

trod;

Or a cloud make the home of mine abiding,
As a bird among the bird-droves of God!
Could I wing me to my rest amid the roar
Of the deep Adriatic on the shore,
Where the water of Eridanus is clear,
And Phaethon's sad sisters by his grave
Weep into the river, and each tear

Gleams, a drop of amber, in the wave.

To the strand of the Daughters of the Sunset, The Apple-tree, the singing and the gold; Where the mariner must stay him from his on

set,

And the red wave is tranquil as of old;

Yea, beyond that Pillar of the End
That Atlas guardeth, would I wend;
Where a voice of living waters never ceaseth
In God's quiet garden by the sea,

And Earth, the ancient life-giver, increaseth
Joy among the meadows like a tree.

Euripides

Translation by Gilbert Murray

CHORUS.

FROM The Bacchae

WHCyprus, set in the sea,

7HERE is the Home for me?

Aphrodite's home In the soft sea-foam,
Would I could wend to thee;
Where the wings of the Loves are furled,
And faint the heart of the world.

Aye, unto Paphos' isle,

Where the rainless meadows smile
With riches rolled From the hundred-fold
Mouths of the far-off Nile,

Streaming beneath the waves
To the roots of the sea-ward caves.

But a better land is there
Where Olympus cleaves the air,

The high still dell Where the Muses dwell,
Fairest of all things fair!

O there is Grace, and there is the Heart's De

sire,

And peace to adore thee, thou Spirit of Guiding

Fire!

Euripides

Translation by Gilbert Murray