Selected Verse

Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909) was one of English poetry's truly distinctive stylists, a supreme technician, with an unbelievable mastery over sound (Edith Sitwell). He was one of the major poets of the Victorian era, and almost certainly the most provocative. His pagan sensualism and masochistic fantasies thrilled and outraged his readers, while the musical textures of his verse both deli...