A Cameo

By Algernon Charles Swinburne 1837–1909

There was a graven image of Desire

Painted with red blood on a ground of gold

Passing between the young men and the old,

And by him Pain, whose body shone like fire,

And Pleasure with gaunt hands that grasped their hire.

Of his left wrist, with fingers clenched and cold,

The insatiable Satiety kept hold,

Walking with feet unshod that pashed the mire.

The senses and the sorrows and the sins,

And the strange loves the suck the breasts of Hate

Till lips and teeth bite in their sharp indenture,

Followed like beasts with flap of wings and fins.

Death stood aloof behind a gaping grate,

Upon whose lock was written Peradventure.

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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