The Full Text of “A Leave-Taking”
1Let us go hence, my songs; she will not hear.
2Let us go hence together without fear;
3Keep silence now, for singing-time is over,
4And over all old things and all things dear.
5She loves not you nor me as all we love her.
6Yea, though we sang as angels in her ear,
7 She would not hear.
8Let us rise up and part; she will not know.
9Let us go seaward as the great winds go,
10Full of blown sand and foam; what help is here?
11There is no help, for all these things are so,
12And all the world is bitter as a tear.
13And how these things are, though ye strove to show,
14 She would not know.
15Let us go home and hence; she will not weep.
16We gave love many dreams and days to keep,
17Flowers without scent, and fruits that would not grow,
18Saying 'If thou wilt, thrust in thy sickle and reap.'
19All is reaped now; no grass is left to mow;
20And we that sowed, though all we fell on sleep,
21 She would not weep.
22Let us go hence and rest; she will not love.
23She shall not hear us if we sing hereof,
24Nor see love's ways, how sore they are and steep.
25Come hence, let be, lie still; it is enough.
26Love is a barren sea, bitter and deep;
27And though she saw all heaven in flower above,
28 She would not love.
29Let us give up, go down; she will not care.
30Though all the stars made gold of all the air,
31And the sea moving saw before it move
32One moon-flower making all the foam-flowers fair;
33Though all those waves went over us, and drove
34Deep down the stifling lips and drowning hair,
35 She would not care.
36Let us go hence, go hence; she will not see.
37Sing all once more together; surely she,
38She too, remembering days and words that were,
39Will turn a little toward us, sighing; but we,
40We are hence, we are gone, as though we had not been there.
41Nay, and though all men seeing had pity on me,
42 She would not see.
The Full Text of “A Leave-Taking”
1Let us go hence, my songs; she will not hear.
2Let us go hence together without fear;
3Keep silence now, for singing-time is over,
4And over all old things and all things dear.
5She loves not you nor me as all we love her.
6Yea, though we sang as angels in her ear,
7 She would not hear.
8Let us rise up and part; she will not know.
9Let us go seaward as the great winds go,
10Full of blown sand and foam; what help is here?
11There is no help, for all these things are so,
12And all the world is bitter as a tear.
13And how these things are, though ye strove to show,
14 She would not know.
15Let us go home and hence; she will not weep.
16We gave love many dreams and days to keep,
17Flowers without scent, and fruits that would not grow,
18Saying 'If thou wilt, thrust in thy sickle and reap.'
19All is reaped now; no grass is left to mow;
20And we that sowed, though all we fell on sleep,
21 She would not weep.
22Let us go hence and rest; she will not love.
23She shall not hear us if we sing hereof,
24Nor see love's ways, how sore they are and steep.
25Come hence, let be, lie still; it is enough.
26Love is a barren sea, bitter and deep;
27And though she saw all heaven in flower above,
28 She would not love.
29Let us give up, go down; she will not care.
30Though all the stars made gold of all the air,
31And the sea moving saw before it move
32One moon-flower making all the foam-flowers fair;
33Though all those waves went over us, and drove
34Deep down the stifling lips and drowning hair,
35 She would not care.
36Let us go hence, go hence; she will not see.
37Sing all once more together; surely she,
38She too, remembering days and words that were,
39Will turn a little toward us, sighing; but we,
40We are hence, we are gone, as though we had not been there.
41Nay, and though all men seeing had pity on me,
42 She would not see.
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“A Leave-Taking” Introduction
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Algernon Charles Swinburne's "A Leave-Taking" illustrates the pain and frustration of unrequited love. The poem's angsty speaker laments that the woman he loves is totally unmoved by the beautiful songs he sings for her. In fact, she doesn't seem to acknowledge his existence at all. Finally deciding that enough is enough, he declares his intention to drown himself in the sea—an action he laments still won't get her attention, let alone her pity. "A Leave-Taking" was published in Swinburne's first poetry collection, Poems and Ballads, First Series, in 1866.
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“A Leave-Taking” Summary
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Let's get out of here, my songs; she's not listening to us anyway. Let's be brave and get out of here in silence because the time for singing songs is over; the time for everything held dear is over. She doesn't love us the way we love her. Indeed, even though we sang like angels to her, she refused to listen.
Let's get up and out of here; she won't even realize we're gone. Let's go to the sea like strong winds do, swirling up sand and foam as they blow. What else can we do here? There's nothing to be done because this is just how things are, and the whole world is miserable. I tried to explain all of this to her through you, my songs, but she wouldn't understand.
Let's go home and away from this place; she won't cry for us. We spent so much time trying to woo her, but it was like growing flowers that had no fragrance or fruits that wouldn't ripen. We asked her to dig in her blade and harvest our love, but there's nothing left now, no grass for cutting. And you and me—the ones who planted those seeds—if we died, she wouldn't cry.
Let's get out of here and rest, since it's clear she's never going to love us. She wouldn't hear us if we were to sing right now, nor would she notice how painful love can be. Get out of here, give it up; enough is enough. Love is a desolate ocean, nothing but deep unhappiness. Even though heaven bloomed for her, she still wouldn't love us.
Let's give up and go down into the sea; she won't care. Even if the stars turned the air into shimmering gold, and the sea watched the moon emerge above it like a giant blossom whose light made the seafoam look like pretty little flowers, and even if the waves swept over our suffocating lips and drowning hair and pushed us down into the ocean's depths, she still wouldn't care.
Let's get out of here right now, this very moment; she won't notice. Let's sing one more song together; surely, hearing our song, she'll remember the times we spent together and turn slightly toward us with a sigh. But by then we'll already be long gone, leaving no trace that we'd ever been there at all. No, that won't happen; even though anyone else watching would feel sorry for me, she wouldn't even notice.
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“A Leave-Taking” Themes
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The Pain of Unrequited Love
The angsty "A Leave-Taking" recounts the pain of unrequited love. The poem's speaker laments that nothing he does will make the woman he longs for love him back. In fact, he declares that she wouldn't even notice if he weren't around—a thought so devastating to the speaker that he considers drowning himself. It's possible to read "A Leave-Taking” as a sincere admission of the immense pain of loving someone who can't or won't return your affections. Yet it’s also possible to take it as a satire of short-sighted, melodramatic poetry that treats love as a very serious matter of life and death. Either way, it's clear that the speaker cannot force his beloved to feel for him what he feels for her.
The speaker makes it very clear that the woman he loves isn't interested in him and never will be. He "sang as angels in her ear," but beautiful, lovelorn music makes no difference to someone who refuses to "hear" it. He recalls giving "love many dreams and days to keep," suggesting that he's spent a lot of time and energy thinking about this woman and the life they could have together. But his dreams are like "Flowers without scent" and "fruits that would not grow"; they can't be "reap[ed]"—metaphorically, they can't come true—without her loving him back, and she just doesn't. She'll never "see love's ways," so loving her is a lost cause.
Since he can't win her love and attention, the speaker dramatically declares that he's going to drown himself in the ocean. He resolves to "rise up" and “go seaward," where he will "lie still" as the "waves" wash over him and "stifl[e]" his "lips" for good. His suicidal ideation reflects his feeling that "Love is a barren sea, bitter and deep." The pain of unrealized love is so great he'll end his life to escape it.
The speaker doesn't actually drown himself in the poem, however; he only says that he's going to do so. To that end, he spends the whole poem saying he's going to leave but he never follows through on any of his threats. In repeating "Let us go hence" at the top of each stanza, he might just be trying to give his beloved one more chance to make him stay (saying, essentially, "No, really, this time I'm really going to leave—I mean it! Here I go!"). Indeed, after saying he's going to drown himself, he decides to stick around to sing one more song—one that "surely" will get his beloved's attention. He briefly imagines how she'll "turn a little toward us, sighing" only to find that the speaker is gone for good. In other words, he fantasizes about how she'll be sorry to have failed to notice him until it's too late. Yet though he believes his situation would inspire "pity" in any man, he ultimately realizes that the woman he loves would still fail to "see" him, let alone feel any sort of sympathy toward him. Even in death, he’d remain invisible to her.
- See where this theme is active in the poem.
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “A Leave-Taking”
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Lines 1-4
Let us go hence, my songs; she will not hear.
Let us go hence together without fear;
Keep silence now, for singing-time is over,
And over all old things and all things dear."A Leave-Taking" begins with apostrophe: the speaker addresses his own "songs"—that is, the songs he's apparently been singing to woo his beloved. The speaker personifies these songs, speaking to them as if they were a close friend. Since she won't listen, it seems he's decided to talk to himself instead!
"Let's get out of here," the speaker says, because he's tired of pining after someone who doesn't notice him. The speaker then repeats the phrase "Let us go hence" at the top of line 2, creating anaphora:
Let us go hence, my songs; she will not hear.
Let us go hence together without fear.This anaphora has two main effects:
- First, it heightens the poem's language and makes the scene more dramatic. The speaker is fed up and wants to get away from this situation that's making him miserable. He commands that he and his songs "go hence together without fear"—that they bravely forge ahead.
- At the same time, however, repeatedly telling himself to go calls attention to the fact that he hasn't actually left yet. He will continue this pattern throughout the poem—declaring that he's about to leave and then staying right where he is, creating the sense, perhaps, that he's really just trying to give his beloved a chance to tell him to stay.
The speaker next tells himself/his songs to be quiet because o the time for singing songs "is over." In fact, the time for "all old things and all things dear" is over. The dramatic diacope of "over" and "all" in lines 3-4 makes the speaker sound downright hyperbolic:
[...] for singing-time is over,
And over all old things and all things dear.In his estimation, everything good and precious has seeped out of the world. Everything he once held dear—or dreamed of holding—is now out of reach. He has no hope of impressing this woman with his songs, so he might as well be on his way.
These opening lines are also filled with sibilance:
Let us go hence, my songs; she will not hear.
Let us go hence together without fear;
Keep silence now, for singing-time is over,These smooth, whispery /s/ sounds evoke the very "silence" the speaker is anticipating now that he has no reason left to sing.
The poem is made up of six septets (seven-line stanzas) written in a rough iambic pentameter. This means that lines contain five iambs, poetic feet with two syllables arranged in an unstressed-stressed pattern: da-DUM. The meter is quite irregular and ambiguous at points, however. Here's one potential scansion of these opening lines:
Let us go hence, my songs; she will not hear.
Let us go hence together without fear;
Keep silence now, for singing-time is over,
And over all old things and all things dear.Again, some of these feet are open to interpretation. For example, the opening phrase "Let us" might be read as an iamb ("Let us") or a trochee ("Let us"). The overarching pattern is iambic, however, and this adds a steady, driving heartbeat to the poem.
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Lines 5-7
She loves not you nor me as all we love her.
Yea, though we sang as angels in her ear,
She would not hear. -
Lines 8-14
Let us rise up and part; she will not know.
Let us go seaward as the great winds go,
Full of blown sand and foam; what help is here?
There is no help, for all these things are so,
And all the world is bitter as a tear.
And how these things are, though ye strove to show,
She would not know. -
Lines 15-21
Let us go home and hence; she will not weep.
We gave love many dreams and days to keep,
Flowers without scent, and fruits that would not grow,
Saying 'If thou wilt, thrust in thy sickle and reap.'
All is reaped now; no grass is left to mow;
And we that sowed, though all we fell on sleep,
She would not weep. -
Lines 22-25
Let us go hence and rest; she will not love.
She shall not hear us if we sing hereof,
Nor see love's ways, how sore they are and steep.
Come hence, let be, lie still; it is enough. -
Lines 26-28
Love is a barren sea, bitter and deep;
And though she saw all heaven in flower above,
She would not love. -
Lines 29-35
Let us give up, go down; she will not care.
Though all the stars made gold of all the air,
And the sea moving saw before it move
One moon-flower making all the foam-flowers fair;
Though all those waves went over us, and drove
Deep down the stifling lips and drowning hair,
She would not care. -
Lines 36-42
Let us go hence, go hence; she will not see.
Sing all once more together; surely she,
She too, remembering days and words that were,
Will turn a little toward us, sighing; but we,
We are hence, we are gone, as though we had not been there.
Nay, and though all men seeing had pity on me,
She would not see.
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“A Leave-Taking” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Parallelism
"A Leave-Taking" is a very repetitive poem. Each stanza sounds a lot like the last, and the extensive use of parallelism helps to convey the speaker's angst and desperation. He keeps saying what amounts to the same thing, using very similar wording, over and over again, hammering home the fact that this woman does not, and will never, love him back.
The first and second lines of stanzas 1 and 2 begin with the phrase "Let us," creating anaphora (in the first stanza, the anaphora encompasses the entire phrase "Let us go hence"):
Let us go hence, my songs; she will not hear.
Let us go hence together without fear;[...]
Let us rise up and part; she will not know.
Let us go seaward as the great winds go,"Let us" or "Let us go" in fact begins every stanza in the poem, and they're always followed by the phrase "she will not":
Stanza 1: "Let us go hence, my songs; she will not hear."
Stanza 2: "Let us rise up and part; she will not know."
Stanza 3: "Let us go home and hence; she will not weep."
Stanza 4: "Let us go hence and rest; she will not love."
Stanza 5: "Let us give up, go down; she will not care."
Stanza 6: "Let us go hence, go hence; she will not see."On one level, this repetition makes the speaker sound more impassioned. On another, however, this repetition ultimately gets, well, repetitive; the speaker keeps saying he's going to leave but doesn't go anywhere. By the poem's end, readers might doubt that he has any intention of moving at all. His rousing call to "go hence" becomes a reminder that he's still there, right where he began. Nothing about his situation changes over the course of the poem.
The "she will not phrase" that ends the first line of each stanza also gets repeated in the final line of each stanza. This woman's rejection boxes the speaker in:
Stanza 1: "she will not hear." / "She would not hear."
Stanza 2: "she will not know." / "She would not know."
Stanza 3: "she will not weep." / "She would not weep."
Stanza 4: "she will not love." / "She would not love."
Stanza 5: "she will not care." / "She would not care."
Stanza 6: "she will not see." / "She would not see."This parallelism again emphasizes the fact that nothing is changing here: this woman definitively does not love the speaker and never has, despite his repeated attempts to woo her.
Each stanza also contains the word "though" in the second to last line ("though ye strove to show," "though all we fell on sleep," "though she saw all heaven in flower above," etc.). Altogether, parallelism makes the poem at once intensely dramatic and quite formulaic: readers can expect that the speaker will declare his intention to leave because this woman doesn't care about him, no matter what he does or what hypothetical tragedy befalls him.
There are also some one-off moments of parallelism:
- In line 25, the speaker says, "Come hence, let be, lie still." These three phrases are grammatically parallel, and the list is also an example of parataxis. The clipped, blunt statements suggest the speaker's frustration.
- Similarly, in line 29 the speaker says, "Let us give up, go down." The parallelism here suggests that, to the speaker, giving up and drowning himself are one and the same.
- Finally, in line 40, the speaker says, "We are hence, we are gone." Parallelism again creates rhythm and emphasis; the speaker really wants his love to notice that he's disappeared. Reading the poem as an intentional satire, the repetitive language further conveys the over-the-top melodrama of so much love poetry.
- See where this poetic device appears in the poem.
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Repetition
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Metaphor
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Simile
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Alliteration
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Apostrophe
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"A Leave-Taking" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Hence
- Yea
- Ye
- Strove
- If thou wilt
- Thy
- Sickle
- Reap
- Hereof
- Steep
- Barren
- Moon-flower
- Foam-flowers
- Fair
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Away from this place.
- See where this vocabulary word appears in the poem.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “A Leave-Taking”
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Form
"A Leave-Taking" is made up of six septets (seven-line stanzas). The first six lines of each stanza are approximately 10 syllables long, while the last line is always just four syllables. This calls readers' attention to the repetition of "She would not" at the end of each stanza, in turn emphasizing the fact that the source of the speaker's pain, and the inspiration for this poem, is the absence of this woman's attention and affection.
Each stanza also begins with the phrase "Let us." Beginning and ending each stanza with the same phrase results in the poem sounding rather formulaic by the end; it all feels a little too dramatic, perhaps, almost as if the poet is making fun of poems where people go overboard expressing their feelings of unrequited love.
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Meter
"A Leave-Taking" mostly uses a rough iambic pentameter: lines of five iambs, poetic feet with two syllables arranged in an unstressed-stressed pattern. Here are lines 3-4 as an example:
Keep si- | lence now, | for sing- | ing-time | is over,
And o- | ver all | old things | and all | things dear.Again, the meter is very irregular. Readers will notice the dangling extra unstressed beat at the end of line 3, and it's also possible to scan that first foot as a spondee ("Keep si-"). Still, that iambic rhythm creates a steady heartbeat throughout the poem.
Many of the poem's feet are ambiguous or open to interpretation; the meter is not strict. The speaker's variations usually take the form of trochees (stressed-unstressed) or spondees, these top-heavy feet making his speech sound more emphatic and dramatic. For example:
- Yea, though | we sang | as an- | gels in | her ear,
- All is | reaped now; | no grass | is left | to mow;
- Love is | a bar- | ren sea, | bitter | and deep;
The last line of every stanza is also much shorter than the rest, containing only two iambs:
She would | not hear.
These lines of iambic dimeter make the end of each stanza, and indeed the end of the entire poem, feel somewhat abrupt and blunt. Regardless of what the speaker does, this woman simply isn't interested.
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Rhyme Scheme
The poem follows an AABABAA rhyme scheme. There are only two rhyming sounds per stanza, and that "A" rhyme gets repeated five times (i.e., in the first stanza: "hear," "fear," "dear," "ear," and "hear"). Most of the poem's rhymes are exact and ring out clearly—"know" and "go," "here" and "tear," etc. There are a few slant rhymes as well ("enough" isn't a perfect match with "love" nor "hereof," for example), and these imperfect rhymes add a touch of subtlety and flexibility to what is, overall, a pretty strict rhyme scheme.
The tight, steady pattern of rhyme makes the poem sound both intense and tense. The repetitive rhyme sounds might subtly evoke the speaker's obsessive, unfulfilled longing; he keeps circling around the same point in each stanza, and nothing has changed by the end of the poem. Note, too, how the two B rhymes in each stanza are kept separate from each other by those A rhymes. The B rhymes might represent the lovers themselves, who will never be togher.
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“A Leave-Taking” Speaker
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The speaker of this poem is utterly lovesick. He has written countless songs for a woman who does not "hear" them; in fact, she doesn't even acknowledge the speaker's existence. He clearly thinks that he's a catch: he claims to have sung like an angel to this woman and shown her "all heaven in flower above." And yet, all of his attempts to woo her have failed. Understanding that nothing he does will ever sway this woman, the speaker resolves to drown himself in the ocean.
He doesn't actually go through with this plan in the poem, however. He only talks about doing so, conjuring a dramatic, deeply romanticized vision of death in which the night sky is bursting with golden stars and the soft moonlight makes the ocean foam below look like pretty little "flowers." While it's possible that speaker really does feel ready to end his life, he also might be making another desperate, dramatic ploy for his beloved's attention. Indeed, he says at the top of each stanza that he's going to leave, but he never goes anywhere. Readers likely get the sense that he's holding out hope that his beloved will finally notice him, realize her terrible oversight, and tell him to stay.
The speaker's inaction combined with his hyperbolic descriptions of his despair suggests that the poem is not necessarily as earnest as it first appears. That is, the speaker might be a caricature meant to satirize the men who pine away for unavailable women in melodramatic, over-the-top sonnets and other traditional love poems.
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“A Leave-Taking” Setting
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"A Leave-Taking" has no clear setting, beyond taking place sometime after the woman the speaker loves has rejected him (or, maybe, failed to acknowledge him at all). Readers might picture the speaker somewhere physically close to the woman, gearing up to leave her, but there are no specifics about where this is happening or where the speaker will go when he finally departs. This makes the whole scene feel somewhat surreal or frozen in time, which is part of the point: the speaker never goes anywhere, and he ends the poem essentially in the same situation in which he began it.
The only physical place the poem describes is the ocean, where the speaker says he will drown himself. He describes taking to the sea the way "great winds" do, tearing through "sand and foam." The imagery evokes a kind of desperate energy; the speaker feels he has nothing left to live for. If he can't have love, which he compares to "a barren sea, bitter and deep," then he aims to drown his sorrows in the actual sea. He pictures being overtaken by "waves"; he imagines his "stifling lips and drowning hair," and he assumes anyone looking on will feel "pity" for him.
The poem also paints a more metaphorical setting when the speaker envisions his death. He says that "the stars made gold of all the air" and describes the sea sloshing beneath "One moon-flower making all the foam-flowers fair." This seems to describe the moon bathing the ocean in light and making the ocean's frothy waters look like a field of glowing flowers. He's romanticizing his suicide, imagining it as this beautifully tragic, almost heroic moment—another reason to suspect the poem might be critiquing a tradition of melodramatic poems in which speakers pine for women who barely even know they exist.
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Literary and Historical Context of “A Leave-Taking”
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Literary Context
Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909) was an English poet, novelist, playwright, and critic. Swinburne's work was known for its eloquent lyricism, frequent alliteration, and lush imagery, as well as its often daring—Victorians would say outright indecent—themes. He's often linked with the "decadent" school of poetry, which began in late 19th-century France and saw writers using highly stylized language while exploring taboo subjects as a pushback against a deeply moralistic society.
"A Leave-Taking" was published in Swinburne's first collection, Poems and Ballads, First Series, in 1866. The book was well-liked, especially by younger readers, but was also contentious; it flew in the face of conservative Victorian values and flaunted what many people considered to be shockingly graphic sexuality. While his disregard for the puritanical tastes of his time would come to define Swinburne's legacy, "A Leave-Taking" is relatively tame by modern standards. The poem also belongs to a long tradition of poets writing about unrequited love. More specifically, Swinburne may be taking up (and, perhaps, poking a little fun at) the mantle of Petrarchan sonneteers, who often wrote, rather melodramatically, of one-sided love affairs.
Historical Context
Swinburne grew up on the Isle of Wight, an island in the English Channel, and he frequently depicted the sea in his poetry. He published "A Leave-Taking" in 1866, about midway through Queen Victoria's rule.
England reshaped itself considerably under the reign of Victoria, its first truly powerful queen since Elizabeth I. The Victorians were innovators and empire-builders, and the British Empire expanded its reach throughout the 19th century through both trade and imperialist violence. At home, a primarily rural population also made an unprecedented shift to the cities as factory work outpaced farm work, and writers from Dickens to Hardy worried about the human effects of this kind of change.
Perhaps in response to this speedy reconfiguration of the world, Victorian social culture became deeply conservative. It espoused a strict code of morals and high standards of personal conduct. Women, in particular, were expected to be chaste, pliant, and submissive, and any deviation could mean social exile.
Swinburne pushed back against the social mores of his time and indulged his interests in sado-masochism and antitheism (the rejection of belief in any and all gods). He also took an ironic pleasure in encouraging rumors about himself and his sexual preferences. Victorian culture being what it was, Swinburne was largely shunned from high society.
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More “A Leave-Taking” Resources
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External Resources
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Algernon Charles Swinburne's Life and Work — Read a Poetry Foundation biography of Algernon Charles Swinburne.
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An Introduction to the Victorian Era — Read about the historical period in which Swinburne lived and wrote.
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Listen to the Poem Out Loud — "A Leave-Taking" as read by Tom O'Bedlam.
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The Algernon Charles Swinburne Project — Peruse Indiana University's digital collection of Swinburne's work.
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A Collection of Anti-Love Poems — Browse the Poetry Foundation's top picks for poems about breakups, heartache, and unrequited love.
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