Poems and Ballads

Time and Tide, Alfred Thompson Bricher, c.1873
The sea and time are common motifs in Swinburne's poetry.

Poems and Ballads, First Series is the first collection of poems by Algernon Charles Swinburne, published in 1866. The book was instantly popular, and equally controversial. Swinburne wrote about many taboo topics, such as lesbianism, sado-masochism, and anti-theism. The poems have many common elements, such as the Ocean, Time, and Death. Several historical persons are mentioned in the poems, such as Sappho, Anactoria, Jesus (Galilaee, La. "Galilean") and Catullus.^[1]

Poems

Influences

Laus Veneris, c.1875, by Edward Burne-Jones

• Swinburne dedicated Poems and Ballads to fellow Pre-Raphaelite, Edward Burne-Jones.^[3] Burne-Jones' painting "Laus Veneris", first exhibited in 1878, shared the story of Tannhäuser as its inspiration with Swinburne's poem of the same name.^[4]

Sleeping Hermaphroditus, Louvre, Paris

• The Borghese Hermaphroditus at the Louvre inspired Swinburne's poem "Hermaphroditus", subscribed "Au Musée du Louvre, Mars 1863".^[5]
• The Isle of Wight, to the south of the British coast, was Swinburne's home throughout his childhood and later life; his love for the sea appears often in his poetry, where it is a metaphor for time, as in "Love at Sea", written in imitation of Théophile Gautier,^[6] and "The Triumph of Time".
• The first documented use of the word "lesbianism" to refer to female homosexuality is in 1870,^[7] four years after Swinburne published this book, which includes the poem "Sapphics", where he refers to Sappho of Lesbos and her lover Anactoria as "Lesbians". Although use of the term lesbian in this way was present as early as 1732,^[8] "sapphic" or "tribade" were more commonly used until the late 19th century, when Swinburne was among the first to popularize the term lesbian.

See also

• Poems and Ballads, Second Series
• Poems and Ballads, Third Series
• Algernon Charles Swinburne

References

Wikisource has original text related to this article: Poems and Ballads

1. ↑ Walsh, John (2012), An Introduction to Algernon Charles Swinburne, Bloomington: The Algernon Charles Swinburne Project, retrieved 5 December 2015 
2. ↑ Swinburne, Algernon Charles, Poems and Ballads, pp. viii–viii 
3. ↑ Swinburne, Algernon Charles, Poems and Ballads, pp. v 
4. ↑ Kim, Hae-In. "Laus Veneris: The Poem and the Painting". Victorian Web. 
5. ↑ Swinburne, Algernon Charles, "Hermaphroditus", Poems and Ballads 
6. ↑ Swinburne, Algernon Charles, "Love at Sea", Poems and Ballads 
7. ↑ Zimmerman, pp. 776–777.
8. ↑ Rictor Norton (Ed.), "The Toast, 1732," Homosexuality in Eighteenth-Century England: A Sourcebook. 4 June 2004 <http://rictornorton.co.uk/eighteen/toast.htm>.

External links

• Poems and Ballads at Internet Archive
• Works by Algernon Swinburne at Project Gutenberg (plain text and HTML)
• Works by or about Algernon Charles Swinburne at Internet Archive
• Works by Algernon Charles Swinburne at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)