Algernon Charles Swinburne

SHRIEKS out of smoke, a flame of dung-straw fire That is not quenched but hath for only fruit What writhes and dies not in its rotten root: Two things made flesh, the visible desire To match in filth the skunk, the ape in ire, Mouthing before the mirrors with wild foot Beyond all feebler footprint of pursuit, The perfect twanger of the Chinese lyre! A heart with generous virtues run to seed In vices making all a jumbled creed: A soul that knows not love nor trust nor shame, But cuts itself with knives to bawl and bleed — If thou we've known of late, art still the same, What need, O soul, to sign thee with thy name? Once on thy lips the golden-honeyed bees Settling made sweet the heart that was not strong, And sky and earth and sea swooned into song: Once on thine eyes the light of agonies Flashed through the soul and robbed the days of ease. But tunes turn stale when love turns babe, and long The exiled gentlemen grow fat with wrong, And peasants, workmen, beggars, what are these? O you who sang the Italian smoke above — Mud-lark of Freedom, pipe of that vile band Whose envy slays the tyrant, not the love Of these poor souls none have the keeping of — It is your hand — it is your pander hand Smites the bruised mouth of pilloried Ireland!