Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Poetry of Algernon Charles Swinburne - Volume V: Erechtheus
    The Poetry of Algernon Charles Swinburne - Volume V: Erechtheus
    The Poetry of Algernon Charles Swinburne - Volume V: Erechtheus
    Ebook93 pages1 hour

    The Poetry of Algernon Charles Swinburne - Volume V: Erechtheus

    By Algernon Charles Swinburne

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Algernon Charles Swinburne was born on April 5th, 1837, in London, into a wealthy Northumbrian family. He was educated at Eton and at Balliol College, Oxford, but did not complete a degree. In 1860 Swinburne published two verse dramas but achieved his first literary success in 1865 with Atalanta in Calydon, written in the form of classical Greek tragedy. The following year "Poems and Ballads" brought him instant notoriety. He was now identified with "indecent" themes and the precept of art for art's sake. Although he produced much after this success in general his popularity and critical reputation declined. The most important qualities of Swinburne's work are an intense lyricism, his intricately extended and evocative imagery, metrical virtuosity, rich use of assonance and alliteration, and bold, complex rhythms. Swinburne's physical appearance was small, frail, and plagued by several other oddities of physique and temperament. Throughout the 1860s and 1870s he drank excessively and was prone to accidents that often left him bruised, bloody, or unconscious. Until his forties he suffered intermittent physical collapses that necessitated removal to his parents' home while he recovered. Throughout his career Swinburne also published literary criticism of great worth. His deep knowledge of world literatures contributed to a critical style rich in quotation, allusion, and comparison. He is particularly noted for discerning studies of Elizabethan dramatists and of many English and French poets and novelists. As well he was a noted essayist and wrote two novels. In 1879, Swinburne's friend and literary agent, Theodore Watts-Dunton, intervened during a time when Swinburne was dangerously ill. Watts-Dunton isolated Swinburne at a suburban home in Putney and gradually weaned him from alcohol, former companions and many other habits as well. Much of his poetry in this period may be inferior but some individual poems are exceptional; "By the North Sea," "Evening on the Broads," "A Nympholept," "The Lake of Gaube," and "Neap-Tide." Swinburne lived another thirty years with Watts-Dunton. He denied Swinburne's friends access to him, controlled the poet's money, and restricted his activities. It is often quoted that 'he saved the man but killed the poet'. Algernon Charles Swinburne died on April 10th, 1909 at the age of seventy-two.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPortable Poetry
    Release dateMar 10, 2017
    ISBN9781787371781
    The Poetry of Algernon Charles Swinburne - Volume V: Erechtheus

    Read more from Algernon Charles Swinburne

    Related to The Poetry of Algernon Charles Swinburne - Volume V

    Related ebooks

    Poetry For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Island (catullus 64)

      Mar 1, 2022

      Back then the evergreens tumbled downriverfrom the glaze-white runoff to the boot-stirred puddlesof amber young men who fulfilled our destiny,who clambered into ships, on horses, and in wagonspainting the newfound landscapes ours.Our calling was nobl

      9 min read

    • Article

      In Memory Of Derek Alton Walcott

      Mar 15, 2018

      1 Island traffic slows to a haltas screeching gulls reluctantto lift heavenwardcongregate like mourners in saltcrustedkelp, as the repellentnews spreads to colder shores: Sir Derek is no more.Bandwidths, clogged by streamingtributes, carry the pitcho

      2 min read

    • Article

      Bard In The Woods

      Nov 30, 2020

      Bard In The Woods
      4 min read

    • Article

      Poem Of The Week: The North Wind By Anne Brontë

      May 8, 2023

      That wind is from the North, I know it well;No other breeze could have so wild a swell.Now deep and loud it thunders round my cell,Then faintly dies,And softly sighs,And moans and murmurs mournfully.I know its language; thus is speaks to me – ‘I have

      3 min read

    • Article

      Mountain Time

      Jan 1, 2021

      In the air you don’t know who you are or where My own self feels it is in wind being born These are currents a man made one eighth of smokeless fire fears but chooses A path south from Anchorage to a Mountain House Ungovern the northern land to pass

      10 min read

    • Article

      Meet Your New Favorite Poet

      Feb 20, 2019

      Meet Your New Favorite Poet
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Wild Swans at Coole

      Aug 1, 2023

      The Wild Swans at Coole
      1 min read

    • Article

      Tessa Castro

      Jul 26, 2023

      IN COMPETITION No 295 you were invited to write a poem called Roots. Cherry MacGregor started off in medias res: ‘Has the vine died? My husband had asked,/ As we enjoyed lunch in the garden.’ Another excellent opening came from DM Davis: ‘Roots, oh m

      2 min read

    • Article

      Until The Sea Closed Over Us And The Light Was Gone

      Jul 1, 2020

      —Dante, Canto XXVI But if the truth is dreamed of toward the morning—El Paso Although it was really last summer’s song,all this summer Despacito played on as slower then I turned myself to gazeupon Juarez. The summer everything hurts my eyes, a dozen

      6 min read

    • Article

      Death

      Mar 2, 2023

      Death
      1 min read

    • Article

      RHYME & REASON

      May 17, 2021

      RHYME & REASON
      1 min read

    • Article

      The Epic Of Gilgamesh

      Jan 1, 2020

      My friends, who can reach heaven? The monster bellows like a river swollen with flood.Many are consumed in his fiery breath. My friends, who can reach heaven? Let us ask the mountain for a sign.Let us cut the spirits from the cedars. My friends, who

      3 min read

    • Article

      Something About John Coltrane

      Sep 1, 2021

      Something about a tree in shallow sleepListening for what it wants to remember: The note of a seed, its neck sliding throughDirt and its confusion—nothing cleansed Of struggle. The weight lost after death,A confrontation of death. John Coltrane Even

      5 min read

    • Article

      from 36 WAYS OF WRITING A VIETNAMESE POEM

      Feb 28, 2023

      You can’t go far wrong with violence.You’ll go far, my boy.You’ll cross oceans, my boy. Start with the Fall, go back or forth,Through bombs or boats,Across all the killing fields of thought. You can’t make it upBecause it’s all yours—by blood.By righ

      4 min read

    • Article

      Chitchat

      Nov 24, 2023

      Chitchat
      12 min read

    • Article

      Stars Come Out

      Nov 3, 2022

      Stars Come Out
      5 min read

    • Article

      Echo and Narcissus

      Mar 7, 2022

      Echo and Narcissus
      7 min read

    • Article

      from BLACK PASTORAL

      Nov 1, 2023

      somewheres, some lifetimes ago I have run so far, so long.There is nowhere I haven’t beenBut here, in this field, a bodyLength from the ragged brinkThat gives way to forest.I collapsed here, the thin, hard slipOf me whittled at both ends.I want badly

      4 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems

      May 1, 2019

      Like the way Galway Kinnell fell asleep in 1968 in Athens, Ohio,reading from a wadded-up new poem pulled from his pocket,started too late at night the night before—the occasion, exactly, the Ohio Poetry Circuit,calling for, often, two readings a day,

      2 min read

    • Article

      Portrait Of An Island

      Jun 3, 2021

      AN ISLAND provides refuge for refugees. Their roofs, tablecloths, and bedsheets wave from the port’s breeze. Temporarily permanent, adjacent to the water, each tent kneels behind the mayor’s office and in front of a tenth-century castle. The locals p

      4 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems by Rowan Ricardo Phillips

      Jun 15, 2018

      And, after the explosion, made spheres sing,A pure expression of pure poetry,Like rising rain or a nation with noFlag—. Something that whispers as the airDoes just before the lightning comes. A pureExpression of the breaks in the blank lakesOn Neptun

      2 min read

    • Article

      Toby Martinez De Las Rivas

      Dec 15, 2018

      III. Is belief, like love, first a touch, a feeling,an inclination toward rightness?But I have known—known—myself right somany times & been so, só wrong.Is it a mode of dying? Of benediction?Acceptance of suffering?It is benediction.I am ill. There i

      2 min read

    • Article

      The Pink

      Sep 22, 2023

      The Pink
      1 min read

    • Article

      The Call Of The Wild

      Nov 30, 2020

      The Call Of The Wild
      2 min read

    • Article

      The Sedge Warbler

      May 31, 2023

      The Sedge Warbler
      2 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Poetry of Algernon Charles Swinburne - Volume V

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      The Poetry of Algernon Charles Swinburne - Volume V - Algernon Charles Swinburne

      Erechtheus by Algernon Charles Swinburne

      A TRAGEDY

      Algernon Charles Swinburne was born on April 5th, 1837, in London, into a wealthy Northumbrian family.  He was educated at Eton and at Balliol College, Oxford, but did not complete a degree.

      In 1860 Swinburne published two verse dramas but achieved his first literary success in 1865 with Atalanta in Calydon, written in the form of classical Greek tragedy. The following year Poems and Ballads brought him instant notoriety. He was now identified with indecent themes and the precept of art for art's sake.

      Although he produced much after this success in general his popularity and critical reputation declined. The most important qualities of Swinburne's work are an intense lyricism, his intricately extended and evocative imagery, metrical virtuosity, rich use of assonance and alliteration, and bold, complex rhythms.

      Swinburne's physical appearance was small, frail, and plagued by several other oddities of physique and temperament. Throughout the 1860s and 1870s he drank excessively and was prone to accidents that often left him bruised, bloody, or unconscious. Until his forties he suffered intermittent physical collapses that necessitated removal to his parents' home while he recovered.

      Throughout his career Swinburne also published literary criticism of great worth. His deep knowledge of world literatures contributed to a critical style rich in quotation, allusion, and comparison. He is particularly noted for discerning studies of Elizabethan dramatists and of many English and French poets and novelists. As well he was a noted essayist and wrote two novels.

      In 1879, Swinburne's friend and literary agent, Theodore Watts-Dunton, intervened during a time when Swinburne was dangerously ill. Watts-Dunton isolated Swinburne at a suburban home in Putney and gradually weaned him from alcohol, former companions and many other habits as well.

      Much of his poetry in this period may be inferior but some individual poems are exceptional; By the North Sea, Evening on the Broads, A Nympholept, The Lake of Gaube, and Neap-Tide.

      Swinburne lived another thirty years with Watts-Dunton. He denied Swinburne's friends access to him, controlled the poet's money, and restricted his activities. It is often quoted that 'he saved the man but killed the poet'.

      Swinburne died on April 10th, 1909 at the age of seventy-two.

      Index of Contents

      The Persons

      ERECHTHEUS

      Algernon Charles Swinburne – A Short Biography

      Algernon Charles Swinburne – A Concise Bibliography

      THE PERSONS

      ERECHTHEUS

      CHORUS OF ATHENIAN ELDERS.

      PRAXITHEA

      CHTHONIA

      HERALD OF EUMOLPUS

      MESSENGER.

      ATHENIAN HERALD.

      ATHENA.

      ERECHTHEUS

      ERECHTHEUS

      Mother of life and death and all men's days,

      Earth, whom I chief of all men born would bless,

      And call thee with more loving lips than theirs

      Mother, for of this very body of thine

      And living blood I have my breath and live,

      Behold me, even thy son, me crowned of men,

      Me made thy child by that strong cunning God

      Who fashions fire and iron, who begat

      Me for a sword and beacon-fire on thee,

      Me fosterling of Pallas, in her shade                            

      Reared, that I first might pay the nursing debt,

      Hallowing her fame with flower of third-year feasts,

      And first bow down the bridled strength of steeds

      To lose the wild wont of their birth, and bear

      Clasp of man's knees and steerage of his hand,

      Or fourfold service of his fire-swift wheels

      That whirl the four-yoked chariot; me the king

      Who stand before thee naked now, and cry,

      O holy and general mother of all men born,

      But mother most and motherliest of mine,                         

      Earth, for I ask thee rather of all the Gods,

      What have we done? what word mistimed or work

      Hath winged the wild feet of this timeless curse

      To fall as fire upon us? Lo, I stand

      Here on this brow's crown of the city's head

      That crowns its lovely body, till death's hour

      Waste it; but now the dew of dawn and birth

      Is fresh upon it from thy womb, and we

      Behold it born how beauteous; one day more

      I see the world's wheel of the circling sun                      

      Roll up rejoicing to regard on earth

      This one thing goodliest, fair as heaven or he,

      Worth a God's gaze or strife of Gods; but now

      Would this day's ebb of their spent wave of strife

      Sweep it to sea, wash it on wreck, and leave

      A costless thing contemned; and in our stead,

      Where these walls were and sounding streets of men,

      Make wide a waste for tongueless water-herds

      And spoil of ravening fishes; that no more

      Should men say, Here was Athens. This shalt thou                 

      Sustain not, nor thy son endure to see,

      Nor thou to live and look on; for the womb

      Bare me not base that bare me miserable,

      To hear this loud brood of the Thracian foam

      Break its broad strength of billowy-beating war

      Here, and upon it as a blast of death

      Blowing, the keen wrath of a fire-souled king,

      A strange growth grafted on our natural soil,

      A root of Thrace in Eleusinian earth

      Set for no comfort to the kindly land,                           

      Son of the sea's lord and our first-born foe,

      Eumolpus; nothing sweet in ears of thine

      The music of his making, nor a song

      Toward hopes of ours auspicious; for the note

      Rings as for death oracular to thy sons

      That goes before him on the sea-wind blown

      Full of this charge laid on me, to put out

      The brief light kindled of mine own child's life,

      Or with this helmsman hand that steers the state

      Run right on the under shoal and ridge of death                  

      The populous ship with all its fraughtage gone

      And sails that were to take the wind of time

      Rent, and the tackling that should hold out fast

      In confluent surge of loud calamities

      Broken, with spars of rudders and lost oars

      That were to row toward harbour and find rest

      In some most glorious haven of all

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1