The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Tale of Balen, by Algernon Charles
Swinburne

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Title: The Tale of Balen

Author: Algernon Charles Swinburne

Release Date: December 24, 2008 [eBook #2136]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TALE OF BALEN***

Transcribed from the 1896 Chatto & Windus edition by David Price, email
ccx074@pglaf.org

PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
LONDON

THE TALE OF BALEN

BY
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE

* * * * *

LONDON
CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY
1896

Copyright in the United States, 1896, by CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS.

DEDICATION

TO MY MOTHER

Love that holds life and death in fee,
Deep as the clear unsounded sea
And sweet as life or death can be,
Lays here my hope, my heart, and me
Before you, silent, in a song.
Since the old wild tale, made new, found grace,
When half sung through, before your face,
It needs must live a springtide space,
While April suns grow strong.

_March_ 24, 1896.

THE TALE OF BALEN

I

In hawthorn-time the heart grows light,
The world is sweet in sound and sight,
Glad thoughts and birds take flower and flight,
The heather kindles toward the light,
The whin is frankincense and flame.
And be it for strife or be it for love
The falcon quickens as the dove
When earth is touched from heaven above
With joy that knows no name.

And glad in spirit and sad in soul
With dream and doubt of days that roll
As waves that race and find no goal
Rode on by bush and brake and bole
A northern child of earth and sea.
The pride of life before him lay
Radiant: the heavens of night and day
Shone less than shone before his way
His ways and days to be.

And all his life of blood and breath
Sang out within him: time and death
Were even as words a dreamer saith
When