FOR THE FEAST OF GIORDANO BRUNO,
PHILOSOPHER AND MARTYR
Algernon Charles Swinburne
I
Son of the lightning and the light that glows
Beyond the lightning’s or the morning’s light,
Soul splendid with all righteous love of right,
In whose keen fire all hopes and fears and woes
Were clean consumed, and from their ashes rose
Transfigured, and intolerable to sight
Save of purged eyes whose lids had cast off night,
In love’s and wisdom’s likeness when they close,
Embracing, and between them truth stands fast,
Embraced of either; thou whose feet were set
On English earth while this was England yet,
Our friend that art, our Sidney’s friend that wast,
Heart hardier found and higher than all men’s past,
Shall we not praise thee though thine own forget?
II
Lift up thy light on us and on thine own,
O soul whose spirit on earth was as a rod
To scourge off priests, a sword to pierce their God,
A staff for man’s free thought to walk alone,
A lamp to lead him far from shrine and throne
On ways untrodden where his fathers trod
Ere earth’s heart withered at a high priest’s nod
And all men’s mouths that made not prayer made moan.
From bonds and torments and the ravening flame
Surely thy spirit of sense rose up to greet
Lucretius, where such only spirits meet,
And walk with him apart till Shelley came
To make the heaven of heavens more heavenly sweet
And mix with yours a third incorporate name.