For the crown of our life as it closes Is darkness, the fruit thereof dust; No thorns go as deep as a rose's, And love is more cruel than lust. Time turns the old days to derision, Our loves into corpses or wives; And marriage and death and division Make barren our lives.
Interpretation
This quote explores the complexities of love, suggesting that it can be both beautiful and deeply painful.
In this poignant reflection, Swinburne contemplates the darker aspects of love and life, likening love's intensity to a rose's thorns, which can cause deep pain. He highlights how time transforms our cherished memories into mockery, turning love into loss or mere obligation, and emphasizes the inevitability of sorrow in both marriage and mortality, suggesting that these experiences can leave life feeling barren.
In practice
During a wedding toast, one might reflect on the complexity of love with this quote.
The highest spiritual quality, the noblest property of mind a man can have, is this of loyalty ... a man with no loyalty in him, with no sense of love or reverence or devotion due to something outside and above his poor daily life, with its pains and pleasures, profits and losses, is as evil a case as man can be.
There is no such thing as a dumb poet or a handless painter. The essence of an artist is that he should be articulate.
Wan February with weeping cheer,_x000D_ _x000D_ Whose cold hand guides the youngling year_x000D_ _x000D_ Down misty roads of mire and rime,_x000D_ _x000D_ Before thy pale and fitful face_x000D_ _x000D_ The shrill wind shifts the clouds apace_x000D_ _x000D_ Through skies the morning scarce may climb._x000D_ _x000D_ Thine eyes are thick with heavy tears,_x000D_ _x000D_ But lit with hopes that light the year's.
Before the beginning of years There came to the making of man Time with a gift of tears, Grief with a glass that ran, Pleasure with pain for leaven, Summer with flowers that fell, Remembrance fallen from heaven, And Madness risen from hell, Strength without hands to smite, Love that endures for a breath; Night, the shadow of light, And Life, the shadow of death.
I that have love and no more_x000D_ _x000D_ Give you but love of you, sweet;_x000D_ _x000D_ He that hath more, let him give;_x000D_ _x000D_ He that hath wings, let him soar;_x000D_ _x000D_ Mine is the heart at your feet_x000D_ _x000D_ Here, that must love you to live.
For winter's rains and ruins are over, And all the season of snows and sins; The days dividing lover and lover, The light that loses, the night that wins; And time remembered isgrief forgotten, And frosts are slain and flowers begotten, And in green underwood and cover Blossom by blossom the spring begins.
In the early days of love sometimes, you will report an ecstatic feeling you have met someone who seems to understand you without you needing to speak.
I kissed her, a long hard kiss. Because baby didn't know it, but baby was dead, and in a way I couldn't have loved her more.
Who'll love Aladdin Sane? Battle cries and champagne just in time for sunrise.
Cold inthe earthand the deepsnow piled abovethee, Far, far, removed, cold in the dreary grave! Have I forgot, my only Love, to love thee, Severed at last byTime's all-serving wave?
But, drawn to her at that moment, he felt a quiet like the voice of the rain flow over him. He knew well enough that for her it was in fact no waste of effort, but somehow the final determination that it was had the effect of distilling and purifying the woman's existence.
Great lovers will always be unhappy, because, for them, love is of supreme importance. Consequently they demand of their beloved the same intensity of thought as they have for her, otherwise they feel betrayed.
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