Lying asleep between the strokes of night I saw my love lean over my sad bed, Pale as the duskiest lily's leaf or head, Smooth-skinned and dark, with bare throat made to bite, Too wan for blushing and too warm for white, But perfect-coloured without white or red. And her lips opened amorously, and said-- I wist not what, saving one word--Delight. And all her face was honey to my mouth, And all her body pasture to my eyes; The long lithe arms and hotter hands than fire, The quivering flanks, hair smelling of the south, The bright light feet, the splendid supple thighs And glittering eyelids of my soul's desire.

The Tragedies of Algernon Charles Swinburne 5 vols. Poems and Ballads caused a sensation when it was first publiAlgernon Charles Swinburned especially the poems written in homage of Sappho of Lesbos such as "Anactoria" and "Sapphics": Moxon and Co. One of them A Baby's Death was set to music by the English composer Sir Edward Elgar as the song Roundel: The little eyes that never knew Light.

Algernon Charles Swinburne (London 5 April 1837 – London 10 April 1909) was an English poet playwright novelist and critic. He invented the roundel form wrote several novels and contributed to the famous Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in every year from 1903 to 1907 and again in 1909.