SWINBURNE ALGERNON: DESCRIPTION TO FOLLOW....

SWINBURNE ALGERNON: DESCRIPTION TO FOLLOW....

SWINBURNE A. C.: (1837-1909) English Poet. Autograph Quotation, unsigned, one page, 4to, n.p., n.d. (post 1867). Swinburne has penned a quotation of twenty-two lines which he identifies at the head as being an extract from A Song of Italy, further adding ‘inscribed with all devotion and reverence to Giuseppe Mazzini, 1867’, the quotation commencing ‘Thou too, O little laurelled town of towers/ Clothed with the flame of flowers’ and concluding ‘The fame that waits and watches and is wise/ A virgin with chaste eyes/ A goddess who takes hands with great men’s grief;/ Praise her, and him, our chief’. Rare in this form. A few very small, minor tears to the lower edge, not affecting the text, otherwise VG

 

Swinburne had met the Italian patriot Giuseppe Mazzini (1805-1872) in March 1867 and A Song of Italy, written in the same year, when a free and united Italy was almost a consummated fact, is primarily a song of praise to Mazzini, the foremost of Swinburne’s heroes.