Time & Brevity

Anonymous Plays

by Algernon Charles Swinburne 1837–1909

From Sonnets, and Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets (1590-1650)

Time & Brevity

More yet and more, and yet we mark not all:
The Warning fain to bid fair women heed
Its hard brief note of deadly doom and deed;
The verse that strewed too thick with flowers the hall
Whence Nero watched his fiery festival;
That iron page wherein men's eyes who read
See, bruised and marred between two babes that bleed,
A mad red-handed husband's martyr fall;
The scene which crossed and streaked with mirth the strife
Of Henry with his sons and witchlike wife;
And that sweet pageant of the kindly fiend,
Who, seeing three friends in spirit and heart made one,
Crowned with good hap the true-love wiles he screened
In the pleached lanes of pleasant Edmonton.

MLA

Swinburne, Algernon Charles. “Anonymous Plays.” Poetry Codex, poetrycodex.com/poem/swinburne/37/.

Chicago

Swinburne, Algernon Charles. “Anonymous Plays.” Poetry Codex. https://poetrycodex.com/poem/swinburne/37/.

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