I shall not see him or know him alive or dead; But thou, I know thee, O Love, and pray to thee. That shone against the sunlight like the sun. The Complaint of Lisa by Algernon Charles Swinburne There is no woman living who draws breath So sad as I, though all things sadden her. For love of her that gave thee wings and breath, A Ballad of François Villon, Prince of All Ballad-Makers.
of thee.Ah, but, forgetting all things, shall I thee?Wilt thou not be as now about my bedThere underground as here before the sun?Shall not thy vision vex me alive and dead,Thy moving vision without form or breath?I read long since the bitter tale of herWho read the tale of Launcelot on a day,And died, and had no quiet after death,But was moved ever along a weary way,Lost with her love in the underworld; ah me,O my king, O my lordly sunflower,Would God to me too such a thing were done!But if such sweet and bitter things be done,Then, flying from life, I shall not fly from thee.For in that living world without a sunThy vision will lay hold upon me dead,And meet and mock me, and mar my peace in death.Yet if being wroth God had such pity on her,Who was a sinner and foolish in her day,That even in hell they twain should breathe one breath,Why should he not in some wise pity me?So if I sleep not in my soft strait bedI may look up and see my sunflowerAs he the sun, in some divine strange way.O poor my heart, well knowest thou in what wayThis sore sweet evil unto us was done.For on a holy and a heavy dayI was arisen out of my still small bedTo see the knights tilt, and one said to me“The king,” and seeing him, somewhat stopped my breath,And if the girl spake more, I heard not her,For only I saw what I shall see when dead,A kingly flower of knights, a sunflower,That shone against the sunlight like the sun,And like a fire, O heart, consuming thee,The fire of love that lights the pyre of death.Howbeit I shall not die an evil deathWho have loved in such a sad and sinless way,That this my love, lord, was no shame to thee.So when mine eyes are shut against the sun,O my soul’s sun, O the world’s sunflower,Thou nor no man will quite despise me dead.And dying I pray with all my low last breathThat thy whole life may be as was that day,That feast-day that made trothplight death and me,Giving the world light of thy great deeds done;And that fair face brightening thy bridal bed,That God be good as God hath been to her.That all things goodly and glad remain with her,All things that make glad life and goodly death;That as a bee sucks from a sunflowerHoney, when summer draws delighted breath,Her soul may drink of thy soul in like way,And love make life a fruitful marriage-bedWhere day may bring forth fruits of joy to dayAnd night to night till days and nights be dead.And as she gives light of her love to thee,Give thou to her the old glory of days long done;And either give some heat of light to me,To warm me where I sleep without the sun.O sunflower made drunken with the sun,O knight whose lady’s heart draws thine to her,Great king, glad lover, I have a word to thee.There is a weed lives out of the sun’s way,Hid from the heat deep in the meadow’s bed,That swoons and whitens at the wind’s least breath,A flower star-shaped, that all a summer dayWill gaze her soul out on the sunflowerFor very love till twilight finds her dead.But the great sunflower heeds not her poor death,Knows not when all her loving life is done;And so much knows my lord the king of me.Aye, all day long he has no eye for me;With golden eye following the golden sunFrom rose-coloured to purple-pillowed bed,From birthplace to the flame-lit place of death,From eastern end to western of his way.So mine eye follows thee, my sunflower,So the white star-flower turns and yearns to thee,The sick weak weed, not well alive or dead,Trod underfoot if any pass by her,Pale, without colour of summer or summer breathIn the shrunk shuddering petals, that have doneNo work but love, and die before the day.But thou, to-day, to-morrow, and every day,Be glad and great, O love whose love slays me.Thy fervent flower made fruitful from the sunShall drop its golden seed in the world’s way,That all men thereof nourished shall praise theeFor grain and flower and fruit of works well done; Till thy shed seed, O shining sunflower,Bring forth such growth of the world’s garden-bedAs like the sun shall outlive age and death.And yet I would thine heart had heed of herWho loves thee alive; but not till she be dead.Come, Love, then, quickly, and take her utmost breath.Song, speak for me who am dumb as are the dead;From my sad bed of tears I send forth thee,To fly all day from sun’s birth to sun’s deathDown the sun’s way after the flying sun,For love of her that gave thee wings and breath,Ere day be done, to seek the sunflower.