Classic and Contemporary Poetry
IN HARBOR, by ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: Goodnight and goodbye to the life whose signs denote us Last Line: Outside? Subject(s): Death; Grief; Life; Roundels; Dead, The; Sorrow; Sadness | ||||||||
I. GOODNIGHT and goodbye to the life whose signs denote us As mourners clothed with regret for the life gone by; To the waters of gloom whence winds of the dayspring float us Goodnight and goodbye. A time is for mourning, a season for grief to sigh; But were we not fools and blind, by day to devote us As thralls to the darkness, unseen of the sundawn's eye? We have drunken of Lethe at length, we have eaten of lotus; What hurts it us here that sorrows are born and die? We have said to the dream that caressed and the dread that smote us Goodnight and goodbye. II. Outside of the port ye are moored in, lying Close from the wind and at ease from the tide, What sounds come swelling, what notes fall dying Outside? They will not cease, they will not abide: Voices of presage in darkness crying Pass and return and relapse aside. Ye see not, but hear ye not wild wings flying To the future that wakes from the past that died? Is grief still sleeping, is joy not sighing Outside? | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...SONOMA FIRE by JANE HIRSHFIELD AS THE SPARKS FLY UPWARDS by JOHN HOLLANDER WHAT GREAT GRIEF HAS MADE THE EMPRESS MUTE by JUNE JORDAN CHAMBER MUSIC: 19 by JAMES JOYCE DIRGE AT THE END OF THE WOODS by LEONIE ADAMS A BALLAD OF DEATH by ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE |
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