The Poetry of Algernon Charles Swinburne - Volume V: Erechtheus

Erechtheus by Algernon Charles Swinburne

A TRAGEDY

Algernon Charles Swinburne was born on April 5th, 1837, in London, into a wealthy Northumbrian family.  He was educated at Eton and at Balliol College, Oxford, but did not complete a degree.

In 1860 Swinburne published two verse dramas but achieved his first literary success in 1865 with Atalanta in Calydon, written in the form of classical Greek tragedy. The following year Poems and Ballads brought him instant notoriety. He was now identified with indecent themes and the precept of art for art's sake.

Although he produced much after this success in general his popularity and critical reputation declined. The most important qualities of Swinburne's work are an intense lyricism, his intricately extended and evocative imagery, metrical virtuosity, rich use of assonance and alliteration, and bold, complex rhythms.

Swinburne's physical appearance was small, frail, and plagued by several other oddities of physique and temperament. Throughout the 1860s and 1870s he drank excessively and was prone to accidents that often left him bruised, bloody, or unconscious. Until his forties he suffered intermittent physical collapses that necessitated removal to his parents' home while he recovered.

Throughout his career Swinburne also published literary criticism of great worth. His deep knowledge of world literatures contributed to a critical style rich in quotation, allusion, and comparison. He is particularly noted for discerning studies of Elizabethan dramatists and of many English and French poets and novelists. As well he was a noted essayist and wrote two novels.

In 1879, Swinburne's friend and literary agent, Theodore Watts-Dunton, intervened during a time when Swinburne was dangerously ill. Watts-Dunton isolated Swinburne at a suburban home in Putney and gradually weaned him from alcohol, former companions and many other habits as well.

Much of his poetry in this period may be inferior but some individual poems are exceptional; By the North Sea, Evening on the Broads, A Nympholept, The Lake of Gaube, and Neap-Tide.

Swinburne lived another thirty years with Watts-Dunton. He denied Swinburne's friends access to him, controlled the poet's money, and restricted his activities. It is often quoted that 'he saved the man but killed the poet'.

Swinburne died on April 10th, 1909 at the age of seventy-two.

Index of Contents

The Persons

ERECHTHEUS

Algernon Charles Swinburne – A Short Biography

Algernon Charles Swinburne – A Concise Bibliography

THE PERSONS

ERECHTHEUS

CHORUS OF ATHENIAN ELDERS.

PRAXITHEA

CHTHONIA

HERALD OF EUMOLPUS

MESSENGER.

ATHENIAN HERALD.

ATHENA.

ERECHTHEUS

ERECHTHEUS

Mother of life and death and all men's days,

Earth, whom I chief of all men born would bless,

And call thee with more loving lips than theirs

Mother, for of this very body of thine

And living blood I have my breath and live,

Behold me, even thy son, me crowned of men,

Me made thy child by that strong cunning God

Who fashions fire and iron, who begat

Me for a sword and beacon-fire on thee,

Me fosterling of Pallas, in her shade                            

Reared, that I first might pay the nursing debt,

Hallowing her fame with flower of third-year feasts,

And first bow down the bridled strength of steeds

To lose the wild wont of their birth, and bear

Clasp of man's knees and steerage of his hand,

Or fourfold service of his fire-swift wheels

That whirl the four-yoked chariot; me the king

Who stand before thee naked now, and cry,

O holy and general mother of all men born,

But mother most and motherliest of mine,                         

Earth, for I ask thee rather of all the Gods,

What have we done? what word mistimed or work

Hath winged the wild feet of this timeless curse

To fall as fire upon us? Lo, I stand

Here on this brow's crown of the city's head

That crowns its lovely body, till death's hour

Waste it; but now the dew of dawn and birth

Is fresh upon it from thy womb, and we

Behold it born how beauteous; one day more

I see the world's wheel of the circling sun                      

Roll up rejoicing to regard on earth

This one thing goodliest, fair as heaven or he,

Worth a God's gaze or strife of Gods; but now

Would this day's ebb of their spent wave of strife

Sweep it to sea, wash it on wreck, and leave

A costless thing contemned; and in our stead,

Where these walls were and sounding streets of men,

Make wide a waste for tongueless water-herds

And spoil of ravening fishes; that no more

Should men say, Here was Athens. This shalt thou                 

Sustain not, nor thy son endure to see,

Nor thou to live and look on; for the womb

Bare me not base that bare me miserable,

To hear this loud brood of the Thracian foam

Break its broad strength of billowy-beating war

Here, and upon it as a blast of death

Blowing, the keen wrath of a fire-souled king,

A strange growth grafted on our natural soil,

A root of Thrace in Eleusinian earth

Set for no comfort to the kindly land,                           

Son of the sea's lord and our first-born foe,

Eumolpus; nothing sweet in ears of thine

The music of his making, nor a song

Toward hopes of ours auspicious; for the note

Rings as for death oracular to thy sons

That goes before him on the sea-wind blown

Full of this charge laid on me, to put out

The brief light kindled of mine own child's life,

Or with this helmsman hand that steers the state

Run right on the under shoal and ridge of death                  

The populous ship with all its fraughtage gone

And sails that were to take the wind of time

Rent, and the tackling that should hold out fast

In confluent surge of loud calamities

Broken, with spars of rudders and lost oars

That were to row toward harbour and find rest

In some most glorious haven of all