Before the beginning of years

Algernon Charles Swinburne

Before the beginning of years

   There came to the making of man

Time, with a gift of tears;

   Grief, with a glass that ran;

Pleasure, with pain for leaven;

   Summer, with flowers that fell;

Remembrance fallen from heaven,

   And madness risen from hell;

Strength without hands to smite;

   Love that endures for a breath;

Night, the shadow of light,

   And life, the shadow of death.

And the high gods took in hand

   Fire, and the falling of tears,

And a measure of sliding sand

   From under the feet of the years;

And froth and the drift of the sea;

   And dust of the labouring earth;

And bodies of things to be

   In the houses of death and of birth;

And wrought with weeping and laughter,

   And fashioned with loathing and love,

With life before and after,

   And death beneath and above,

For a day and a night and a morrow,

   That his strength might endure for a span

With travail and heavy sorrow,

   The holy spirit of man.

From the winds of the north and the south

   They gathered as unto strife;

They breathed upon his mouth,

   They filled his body with life;

Eyesight and speech they wrought

   For the veils of the soul therein,

A time for labour and thought,

   A time to serve and to sin;

They gave him light in his ways,

   And love, and a space for delight,

And beauty, and length of days,

   And night, and sleep in the night.

His speech is a burning fire;

   With his lips he travaileth;

In his heart is a blind desire,

   In his eyes foreknowledge of death;

He weaves, and is clothed with derision;

   Sows, and he shall not reap;

His life is a watch or a vision

   Between a sleep and a sleep.

Fonte (estrofe 1): Carpeaux, O. M. 2011. História da literatura ocidental, vol. 3. Brasília, Senado Federal. O trecho acima integrada uma obra mais extensa, intitulada Atalanta in Calydon (1865).