Before the beginning of years There came to the making of man Time, with a gift of tears; Grief, with a glass that ran; Pleasure, with pain for leaven; Summer, with flowers that fell; Remembrance, fallen from heaven, And madness risen from hell; Strength without hands to smite; Love that endures for a breath; Night, the shadow of light, And Life, the shadow of death.

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.