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Algernon Charles Swinburne |
from Poems and Ballads (1866)
When I discovered the musicality of Swinburne's verses during my graduate studies
in chemistry at Cornell, I shared them with my sister. She liked
"Chorus from Atalanta in Calydon"
and we both memorized
the opening stanza: "Before the beginning of years, /
There came to the making of man / Time, with a gift of tears; /
Grief, with a glass that ran;" Later, I found Swinburne's "Rococo"
to my liking and memorized the entire 80-lines poem. I would recite the lines
to the stars during my walks home across the Cornell campus from Baker Lab of
Chemistry to my apartment in Ithaca. I gave my paperback copy of
Swinburne to my sister and bought the complete 6-volume set of
Swinburne's Poems (London, 1904) in a used Manhattan bookshop on Fourth Avenue.
When I attended my first poetry workshop at Foothill College Summer
Writing Conference (1987), a poetry instructor asked the class to
name their favorite poet, I said "Algernon Swinburne".
Nobody in the class knew who he was. The instructor told me,
"He's out of fashion. People rarely read him these days."
When I brought my rhyming verses to class, everyone told me
that my style was archaic, that I had better learn to write
free verse. I left Swinburne behind, and began reading
modern poets, and typed over a few hundred poems in learning
the craft of free verse.
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Rococo (1866)
Take hands and part with laughter;
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