Analysis of Satia te Sanguine
Algernon Charles Swinburne 1837 (London) – 1909 (London)
IF YOU loved me ever so little,
I could bear the bonds that gall,
I could dream the bonds were brittle;
You do not love me at all.
O beautiful lips, O bosom
More white than the moon’s and warm,
A sterile, a ruinous blossom
Is blown your way in a storm.
As the lost white feverish limbs
Of the Lesbian Sappho, adrift
In foam where the sea-weed swims,
Swam loose for the streams to lift,
My heart swims blind in a sea
That stuns me; swims to and fro,
And gathers to windward and lee
Lamentation, and mourning, and woe.
A broken, an emptied boat,
Sea saps it, winds blow apart,
Sick and adrift and afloat,
The barren waif of a heart.
Where, when the gods would be cruel,
Do they go for a torture? where
Plant thorns, set pain like a jewel?
Ah, not in the flesh, not there!
The racks of earth and the rods
Are weak as foam on the sands;
In the heart is the prey for gods,
Who crucify hearts, not hands.
Mere pangs corrode and consume,
Dead when life dies in the brain;
In the infinite spirit is room
For the pulse of an infinite pain.
I wish you were dead, my dear;
I would give you, had I to give,
Some death too bitter to fear;
It is better to die than live.
I wish you were stricken of thunder
And burnt with a bright flame through,
Consumed and cloven in sunder,
I dead at your feet like you.
If I could but know after all,
I might cease to hunger and ache,
Though your heart were ever so small,
If it were not a stone or a snake.
You are crueller, you that we love,
Than hatred, hunger, or death;
You have eyes and breasts like a dove,
And you kill men’s hearts with a breath.
As plague in a poisonous city
Insults and exults on her dead,
So you, when pallid for pity
Comes love, and fawns to be fed.
As a tame beast writhes and wheedles,
He fawns to be fed with wiles;
You carve him a cross of needles,
And whet them sharp as your smiles.
He is patient of thorn and whip,
He is dumb under axe or dart;
You suck with a sleepy red lip
The wet red wounds in his heart.
You thrill as his pulses dwindle,
You brighten and warm as he bleeds,
With insatiable eyes that kindle
And insatiable mouth that feeds.
Your hands nailed love to the tree,
You stript him, scourged him with rods,
And drowned him deep in the sea
That hides the dead and their gods.
And for all this, die will he not;
There is no man sees him but I;
You came and went and forgot;
I hope he will some day die.
Scheme | ABAB CDCD EFEF GHGH IJIJ AKAK LMLM NONO PXPX QRQR BSBS TUTU GVGV EWXW XJXJ AYAY GLGL Z1 Z1 |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain (94%) |
Metre | 111110110 1110111 11101010 1111111 11001110 1110101 010010010 1111001 10111001 10100101 0110111 1110111 1111001 1111101 01011001 101001 0101101 1111101 1001001 0101101 11011110 11110101 11111010 1100111 0111001 1111101 00110111 110111 1101001 1111001 001001011 101111001 1110111 11111111 1111011 11101111 111010110 0110111 0101010 1111111 11111101 11111001 11101011 110101101 1111111 1101011 11101101 01111101 110010010 01001101 11110110 1101111 1011101 1111111 11101110 0111111 11101101 11110111 11101011 0111011 11111010 11001111 101001110 00100111 1111101 1111111 0111001 1101011 01111111 11111111 1101001 1111111 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 2,314 |
Words | 478 |
Sentences | 20 |
Stanzas | 18 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 72 |
Letters per line (avg) | 25 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 101 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 26 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 2:23 min read
- 78 Views
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"Satia te Sanguine" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/1392/satia-te-sanguine>.
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