17 Quotes by Algernon Swinburne

Pale, beyond porch and portal,/ Crowned with calm leaves, she stands,/ Who gathers all things mortal/ With cold immortal hands.

Time turns the old days to derision, Our loves into corpses or wives; And marriage and death and division Make barren our lives

The thorns he spares when the rose is taken;/ The rocks are left when he wastes the plain./ The wind that wanders, the weeds wind-shaken,/ These remain.

A creed is a rod,/ And a crown is of night:/ But this thing is God:/ To be man with thy might,/ To grow straight in the strength of thy spirit, and live out thy life as the light.

A little soul for a little bears up this corpse which is man.

Before the beginning of years/ There came to the making of man/ Time with a gift of tears,/ Grief with a glass that ran.

Change in a trice. The lilies and languors of virtue. For the raptures and roses of vice;

Come down and redeem us from virtue,/ Our Lady of Pain.