She can start our franklins' daughters, In her sleep, with shrieks and Laughters, And on sweet St. Anna's night Feed them with a promised sight- Some of husbands, some of lovers, Which an empty dream discovers.
"The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream'"
Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
I smell the breathing battle sharp with blows, With shriek of shafts and snapping short of bows; The fair pure sword smites out in subtle ways, Sounds and long lights are shed between the rows Of beautiful mailed men; the edged light slips, Most like a snake that takes short breath and dips Sharp from the beautifully bending head, With all its gracious body lithe as lips That curl in touching you; right in this wise My sword doth, seeming fire in mine own eyes, Leaving all colours in them brown and red And flecked with death; then the keen breaths like sighs, The caught-up choked dry Laughters following them, When all the fighting face is grown a flame For pleasure, and the pulse that stuns the ears, And the heart's gladness of the goodly game.
"Poems & Ballads (First Series)"
Algernon Charles Swinburne
He breaks out, almost like a mad man, into imprecations, into vehement tirades, into sarcasms, ironies, the hellish Laughters that arise from a heart that is not broken once for all but that is newly broken every day while the Monster that devours the lives of the young continues its ravages.
"Counter-Attack and Other Poems"
Siegfried Sassoon