KING DAVID
by: Algernon Charles Swinburne
(1837-1909)
- ORD GOD,
alas, what shall I sain?
- Lo, thou art as an hundred men
- Both to break and build again:
- The wild ways thou makes plain,
- Thine hands hold the hail and rain,
- And thy fingers both grape and grain;
- Of their largess we be all well fain,
- And of their great pity:
- The sun thou madest of good gold,
- Of clean silver the moon cold,
- All the great stars thou hast told
- As thy cattle in thy fold
- Every one by his name of old;
- Wind and water thou hast in hold,
- Both the land and the long sea;
- Both the green sea and the land
- Lord God, thou hast in hand,
- Both white water and grey sand;
- Upon thy right or thy left hand
- There is no man that may stand;
- Lord, thou rue on me.
- O wise Lord, if thou be keen
- To note things amiss that been,
- I am not worth a shell of bean
- More than an old mare meagre and lean
- For all my wrong-doing with my queen,
- It grew not of our heartès clean,
- But it began of her body.
- For it fell in the hot May
- I stood within a paven way
- Built of fair bright stone, perfay,
- That is as fire of night and day
- And lighteth all my house.
- Therein be neither stones nor sticks,
- Neither red nor white bricks,
- But for cubits five or six
- There is most goodly sardonyx
- And amber laid in rows.
- It goes round about my roofs,
- (If ye list ye shall have proofs)
- There is good space for horse and hoofs,
- Plain and nothing perilous.
- For the fair green weather's heat,
- And for the smell of leaves sweet,
- It is no marvel, will ye weet,
- A man to waxen amorous.
- This I say now by my case
- That spied forth of that royal place;
- There I saw in no great space
- Mine own sweet, both body and face,
- Under the fresh boughs.
- In a water that was there
- She wesshe her goodly body bare
- And dried it with her own hair;
- Both her arms and her knees fair,
- Both bosom and brows;
- Both shoulders and eke thighs
- Tho she wesshe upon this wise;
- Ever she sighed with little sighs,
- And ever she gave God thank.
- Yea, God wot I can well see yet
- Both her breast and her sides all wet
- And her long hair withouten let
- Spread sideways like a drawing net;
- Full dear bought and full far fet
- Was that sweet thing there y-set;
- It were a hard thing to forget
- How both lips and eyen met,
- Breast and breath sank.
- So goodly a sight as there she was,
- Lying looking on her glass
- By wan water in green grass,
- Yet saw never man.
- So soft and great she was and bright
- With all her body waxen white,
- I woxe nigh blind to see the light
- Shed out of it to left and right;
- This bitter sin from that sweet sight
- Between us twain begin.
"King David" is reprinted
from Poetica Erotica. Ed. T.R. Smith. New York: Crown
Publishers, 1921. |
MORE POEMS BY ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE |
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