For the crown of our life as it closesIs darkness, the fruit there of dust;No thorns go as deep as the rose's,And love is more cruel than lust.Time turns the old days to derision,Our loves into corpses or wives;And marriage and death and divisionMake barren our lives.

Swinburne, by the way, when a very young man, had gone to Walter Savage Landor, then a very old man, and been given the poet’s blessing he asked for; and Landor when a child had been patted on the head by Dr Samuel Johnson; and Johnson when a child had been taken to London to be touched by Queen Anne for scrofula, the King’s evil; and Queen Anne when a child...