Last week, I simply forgot to do a poetry post. Sorry! I know some of you like these posts, and so do I, so that was just an accident. This week, I scheduled this post early so I wouldn’t just forget to do it. And when I thought, “So, poems, poems, hmm, what should I do this week?” I thought of Swinburn.

Everyone knows this stanza, right?

Till the slow sea rise and the sheer cliff crumble,
Till terrace and meadow the deep gulfs drink,
Till the strength of the waves of the high tides humble
The fields that lessen, the rocks that shrink,
Here now in his triumph where all things falter,
Stretch’d out on the spoils that his own hand spread,
As a god self-slain on his own strange altar,
Death lies dead.

This is such a fantastic poem, one of my very favorites, though of course rather grim. It’s fantastic because of the language, and especially the rhythm. It’s bleak because, well, Swinburne. It’s also ten stanzas long, because Swinburne was not exactly into haiku. Ten stanzas actually counts as pretty short, for him. This is just such a perfect poem to read out loud.

But surely Swinburn wrote some poems that were actually short? It turns out that he did! Lots of them! Here is one:

***

A roundel is wrought as a ring or a starbright sphere,
With craft of delight and with cunning of sound unsought,
That the heart of the hearer may smile if to pleasure his ear
A roundel is wrought.
Its jewel of music is carven of all or of aught —
Love, laughter, or mourning — remembrance of rapture or fear —
That fancy may fashion to hang in the ear of thought.
As a bird’s quick song runs round, and the hearts in us hear
Pause answer to pause, and again the same strain caught,
So moves the device whence, round as a pearl or tear,
A roundel is wrought.

***

Look at that! Swinburne, being playful as he explains the poetic form he is just-now inventing!

I didn’t actually know that Swinburne invented this form, but apparently so! Eleven lines, three stanzas (quatrain, tercet, quatrain), the opening of the first line becomes a refrain of the fourth and eleventh lines and rhymes with lines two, five, seven, and nine, which means the rhyme pattern is

abab bab abab but the endings of the two quatrains match and also those lines are short compared to the other lines.

Swinburne wrote roundels to his friend Christina Rosetti and I’m sure it won’t surprise you that she began to write poems in this form too, because of course she did, who wouldn’t:

Sleeping at last, the trouble and tumult over,
Sleeping at last, the struggle and horror past,
Cold and white, out of sight of friend and of lover,
Sleeping at last.

No more a tired heart downcast or overcast,
No more pangs that wring or shifting fears that hover,
Sleeping at last in a dreamless sleep locked fast.

Fast asleep. Singing birds in their leafy cover
Cannot wake her, nor shake her the gusty blast.
Under the purple thyme and the purple clover
Sleeping at last.

***

If you’d like a collection of roundels, look here, a free ebook called A Century of Roundels at Amazon. This book offers sixty or so of Swinburne’s roundel poems. It’s also available from Project Gutenberg.

The post Poetry Thursday: Short Poems by Swinburne appeared first on Rachel Neumeier.