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Ave Atque Vale: 07

Algernon Charles Swinburne

Hast thou found any likeness for thy vision?
    O gardener of strange flowers, what bud, what bloom,
    Hast thou found sown, what gathered in the gloom?
What of despair, of rapture, of derision,
    What of life is there, what of ill or good?
    Are the fruits grey like dust or bright like blood?
Does the dim ground grow any seed of ours,
    The faint fields quicken any terrene root,
    In low lands where the sun and moon are mute
And all the stars keep silence? Are there flowers
    At all, or any fruit?
Online text © 1998-2008 Poetry X. All rights reserved.
From Swinburne’s Collected Poetical Works | William Heinemann, 1924
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