Transcriber's note
The line in number VII
To far outshines the sun,
appears thus in the original. It may be a misprint.
A Dark Month / From Swinburne's Collected Poetical Works Vol. V
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About This Book
The speaker records a period of acute grief over the absence of a young child, rendering bright spring days as dim and the month as though stripped of sunlight and song. Natural imagery—May blossoms, birds, wind, a firefly—contrasts external fertility with interior desolation. Memories of shared stories and readings, with literary allusion, intensify longing; small signs, a hand at the door, and imagined returns alternate with despair. Time bends under sorrow, yielding elegiac reflections on hope, the insufficiency of outward beauty, and the ache for the child’s voice to restore life and meaning.