Cor Cordium

by Algernon Charles Swinburne

O heart of hearts, the chalice of love's fire,
__Hid round with flowers and all the bounty of bloom;
____O wonderful and perfect heart, for whom
The lyrist liberty made life a lyre;
O heavenly heart, at whose most dear desire
__Dead love, living and singing, cleft his tomb,
__And with him risen and regent in death's room
All day thy choral pulses rang full choir;
O heart whose beating blood was running song,
__O sole thing sweeter than thine own songs were,
____Help us for thy free love's sake to be free,
True for thy truth's sake, for thy strength's sake strong,
__Till very liberty make clean and fair
____The nursing earth as the sepulchral sea.


Poem that’s always fascinated me, though I don’t think I truly understand it. Yes, I know what Swinburne is saying, per se, but I haven’t mastered it in a sense of internalizing it. Does that make sense? I didn’t think so. I don’t think I even know what I’m trying to say. Other than that it is a beautiful poem. Other-worldly, almost beyond what mankind is capable. What images, what alliteration, what a celebration of visions! It’s even aesthetically pleasing to the eye simply looking at it printed on the page. A poem to be memorized.

“Cor Cordium” is the inscription on Percy Bysshe Shelley’s tomb. An interesting myth (allegedly Shelley told his friends but I do not know whether he committed it in writing in any letter) is that Shelley met his doppleganger. His twin. He met the creature (creature? man?) in Italy. It silently pointed to the sea, to the Mediterranean. A few months later, just before his 30th birthday, Shelley was to drown upon those waters in a boating accident.