MIDSUMMER HOLIDAY

AND OTHER POEMS

BY

ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE

THIRD EDITION

London

CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY

1889

CONTENTS.

To Theodore Watts

To Victor Hugo

February 4, 1883.

(To a tune of Blake’s)

‘As a matter of fact, no man living, or who ever lived—not Cæsar or Pericles, not Shakespeare or Michael Angelo—could confer honour more than he took on entering the House of Lords.’—Saturday Review, December 15, 1883.

‘Clumsy and shallow snobbery—can do no hurt.’—Ibid.

December 15.

‘Vidistis ipso rapere de rogo cœnam.’—Catullus, LIX. 3.

‘To publish even one line of an author which he himself has not intended for the public at large—especially letters which are addressed to private persons—is to commit a despicable act of felony.’—Heine.

Ps. xciv. 8.

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