Anyone care for Swinburne?

[LitNetIsGreat]

I can't say that I have ever taken much to Swinburne's poetry, though I only have a small collected works to base my opinion on (though that seems enough). He appears to me nothing but a watered down version of Shelley or Wordsworth, false sentiments of nature and not much depth or real substance. Would anyone agree or disagree with these thoughts, perhaps to make me re-examine him?

Some selections at random from the opening of a few pieces:


Itylus

Swallow, my sister, O sister swallow,
How can thine heart be full of the spring?
A thousands summers are over and dead.
What hast thou found in the spring to follow?
What hast thou found in thine heart to sing?
What wilt thou do when the summer is shed?


Fragoletta

O Love! what shall be said of thee?
The son of grief begot by joy?
Being sightless, wilt thou see?
Being sexless, wilt thou be
Maiden or boy?


Anima Ancepts

Till death have broken
Sweet life's love-token,
Till all be spoken
That shall be said,
What dost thou praying,
O soul, and playing
with song and saying,
Things flown and fled?
For this we know not -
That fresh springs flow not
And fresh griefs grow not

[Silas Thorne]

I'm not sure I like all of Swinburne, but I think there's a driving rhythm in some of his works which is almost obsessive, which attracts me. And there's a certain sadomasochism about some of his pieces too.

Just a few stanzas from the middle of 'Dolores, Our Lady of Pain' :
...
There are sins it may be to discover,
There are deeds it may be to delight.
What new work wilt thou find for thy lover,
What new passions for daytime or night?
What spells that they know not a word of
Whose lives are as leaves overblown?
What tortures undreamt of, unheard of,
Unwritten, unknown?

Ah beautiful passionate body
That never has ached with a heart!
On thy mouth though the kisses are bloody,
Though they sting till it shudder and smart,
More kind than the love we adore is,
They hurt not the heart or the brain,
O bitter and tender Dolores,
Our Lady of Pain.

As our kisses relax and redouble,
From the lips and the foam and the fangs
Shall no new sin be born for men's trouble,
No dream of impossible pangs?
With the sweet of the sins of old ages
Wilt thou satiate thy soul as of yore?
Too sweet is the rind, say the sages,
Too bitter the core.

...