Dead Love

By Algernon Charles Swinburne 1837–1909

Dead love, by treason slain, lies stark,

White as a dead stark-stricken dove:

None that pass by him pause to mark

Dead love.

His heart, that strained and yearned and strove

As toward the sundawn strives the lark,

Is cold as all the old joy thereof.

Dead men, re-arisen from dust, may hark

When rings the trumpet blown above:

It will not raise from out the dark

Dead love.

Biography

Swinburne was one of the most accomplished lyric poets of the Victorian era and was a preeminent symbol of rebellion against the conservative values of his time. The explicit and often pathological sexual themes of his most important collection of poetry, Poems and Ballads (1866), delighted some, shocked many, and became the dominant feature of Swinburne's image as both an artist and an individual. Nevertheless, critics have . . .

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