For winter's rains and ruins are over,
And all the season of snows and sins;
The days dividing lover and lover,
The light that loses, the night that wins;
And time remembered is grief forgotten,
And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,
And in green underwood and cover
Blossom by blossom the spring begins.
by Algernon Charles Swinburne
Despite his fragile excitable personality and the strains of being a homosexual in an era when it was not socially acceptable, leading to a breakdown at the age of 42, as a young man Swinburne wrote fine lyric verse. One critic recorded "His mastery of vocabulary, rhyme and metre arguably put him among the most talented English language poets in history". After his breakdown in 1879 at the age of 42 he was taken into care by his friend Theodore Watts, who looked after him for the rest of his life at No. 2 The Pines, Putney in South West London. His better poetry continues to win admirers, although he has also been criticized "for his florid style and word choices that only fit the rhyme scheme rather than contributing to the meaning of the piece."
The short stanza on Spring reproduced here is one of his more charming short poems.
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