“Swinburne, by the way, when a very young man, had gone to Walter Savage Landor, then a very old man, and been given the poet’s blessing he asked for; and Landor when a child had been patted on the head by Dr Samuel Johnson; and Johnson when a child had been taken to London to be touched by Queen Anne for scrofula, the King’s evil; and Queen Anne when a child...”

“Nor had I any illusions about Algernon Charles Swinburne, who often used to stop my perambulator when he met it on Nurses’ Walk, at the edge of Wimbledon Common, and pat me on the head and kiss me: he was an inveterate pram-stopper and patter and kisser.”

“The child alone a poet is:Spring and Fairyland are his.”

“Love without hope, as when the young bird-catcherSwept off his tall hat to the Squire's own daughter,So let the imprisoned larks escape and flySinging about her head, as she rode by.”

“As I walked out one harvest nightAbout the stroke of One,The Moon attained to her full heightStood beaming like the Sun.She exorcised the ghostly wheatTo mute assent in Love's defeatWhose tryst had now begun.The fields lay sick beneath my tread,A tedious owlet cried;The nightingale above my headWith this or that replied,Like man and wife who nightly keepInconsequent debate in sleepAs they dream side by side.Your phantom wore the moon's cold mask,My phantom wore the same,Forgetful of the feverish taskIn hope of which they came,Each image held the other's eyesAnd watched a grey distraction riseTo cloud the eager flame.To cloud the eager flame of love,To fog the shining gate:They held the tyrannous queen aboveSole mover of their fate,They glared as marble statues glareAcross the tessellated stairOr down the Halls of State.And now cold earth was Arctic sea,Each breath came dagger keen,Two bergs of glinting ice were we,The broad moon sailed between;There swam the mermaids, tailed and finned,And Love went by upon the windAs though it had not been.- Full Moon”

“He had had a beautiful and eager young wife and another man had taken her away from him and had fathered his child, and all he had done was to walk away, leaving her in possession of everything he owned, and crawl into a hole in the slums and lie there like a wounded animal and let his intellect bleed away into pious drivel and his strength bleed away into weakness. And he had been good. But his goodness had told me nothing except that I could not live by it. My new father, however, had not been good. He had cuckolded a friend, betrayed a wife, taken a bride, driven a man, though unwittingly, to death. But he had done good.”

“Down, wanton, down! Have you no shameThat at the whisper of Love's name,Or Beauty's, presto! up you raiseYour angry head and stand at gaze?Poor bombard-captain, sworn to reachThe ravelin and effect a breach--Indifferent what you storm or why,So be that in the breach you die!Love may be blind, but Love at leastKnows what is man and what mere beast;Or Beauty wayward, but requiresMore delicacy from her squires.Tell me, my witless, whose one boastCould be your staunchness at the post,When were you made a man of partsTo think fine and profess the arts?Will many-gifted Beauty comeBowing to your bald rule of thumb,Or Love swear loyalty to your crown?Be gone, have done! Down, wanton, down!”