Time turns the old days to derision, Our loves into corpses or

In the haunting and lyrical words of Algernon Charles Swinburne, one of the most passionate voices of the Victorian age, we find a meditation on the relentless passage of time and the decay of human passion: “Time turns the old days to derision, Our loves into corpses or wives; And marriage and death and division Make barren our lives.” These lines, drawn from the depths of romantic disillusionment, are both lament and revelation. Swinburne speaks as one who has witnessed the slow erosion of the fire of youth—the transformation of love from the ecstasy of the moment into the weary rituals of permanence, and finally, into the silence of loss. His words are not merely cynical; they are a cry of mourning for what time steals from the human spirit: desire, idealism, and the beauty of impermanence.

The meaning of this quote lies in its portrayal of time as the great destroyer—not only of life, but of the emotions that once animated it. To Swinburne, time mocks the memory of our younger selves. The dreams that once burned brightly become hollow echoes; the passions that once consumed us are either extinguished by death or transformed into the tamer fires of domesticity. “Our loves,” he writes, “turn to corpses or wives”—a line both sorrowful and biting, expressing the poet’s view that marriage, society’s institution of permanence, often drains love of its vitality, transforming passion into duty. It is not an attack on companionship, but on the loss of intensity—the spiritual barrenness that settles when the flame of love is bound by convention or dulled by habit.

The origin of these words reflects the restless soul of Swinburne himself. A poet of the Pre-Raphaelite and Decadent movements, he lived in rebellion against the moral strictures of his age. Obsessed with love, freedom, and death, he saw beauty as something fleeting—a fire that must be lived fully, even if it consumes the soul. His poetry, often daring and sensual, sought to capture the rawness of emotion before society tamed it into propriety. These lines, from his early works, carry the voice of a man both enamored and embittered by love, who saw in the march of time not progress, but corruption—the inevitable withering of passion into obligation, of idealism into compromise.

History offers us many mirrors to Swinburne’s lament. Consider the life of Napoleon Bonaparte, whose youth burned with fire and glory. In his early years, he was a man of immense passion—his love for Josephine was fierce and consuming, his ambition boundless. Yet time, that ancient adversary, reduced him. His empire crumbled, his marriage dissolved, his loves and victories became distant shadows. On the lonely island of Saint Helena, he lived out his final days surrounded not by the triumphs of youth, but by their ghosts. Swinburne’s words might have echoed in his heart: for what once burned brightly had been turned by time to derision. Such is the fate of all who mistake permanence for immortality.

Yet within Swinburne’s darkness, there is a deeper wisdom. He does not simply mourn the loss of passion; he reveals a truth about the impermanence of all human experience. Love, joy, and vitality are transient by nature—what makes them precious is precisely their fragility. When he speaks of “marriage and death and division,” he is naming the inevitable forces that strip life of its illusions. But in recognizing this, we may find liberation. To understand that time will take everything from us is to learn to live more fiercely in the present—to love without hesitation, to create without fear, and to cherish what is fleeting. For though time may render all barren, the act of loving and living deeply defies that barrenness, if only for a moment.

In this way, Swinburne becomes not only a poet of despair, but also a teacher of truth. His words remind us that life’s beauty does not lie in permanence, but in the intensity of its passing. The “old days” will indeed fade, and our loves will change form—some will end in death, others will endure through transformation—but the meaning of living lies not in preservation, but in participation. To try to hold time still is to lose it entirely. To embrace its flow is to be free.

Therefore, O listener, take this lesson into your heart: do not cling too tightly to what must change. Love as though it were the first and last time; speak the truth before silence claims it. When time turns your passions to ashes, remember that the fire once burned brightly, and that its light was worth the pain. Let marriage, or death, or division not make your life barren, but deeper in understanding.

And so, remember the timeless wisdom of Algernon Charles Swinburne: that time is both our tormentor and our teacher. It strips us bare, but in doing so, it reveals what is eternal within us—the capacity to love, to feel, to create beauty even in the face of decay. Though all things wither, the spirit that dares to live fully defies the mockery of time. For while time may turn our days to derision, it can never destroy the courage of those who lived them with passion.