CHAPTER III

STUDIES IN SWINBURNE

A good modern critic has said that the resemblance between Shelley and

Algernon Charles Swinburne is of so astonishing a kind that it tempts

one to believe that Swinburne is Shelley in a new body, that the soul

of the drowned poet really came back to life again, and returned to

finish at Oxford University the studies interrupted by his expulsion at

the beginning of the century. The fancy is pretty; and it is supported

by a number of queer analogies. Swinburne, like Shelley, is well

born; like Shelley, he has been from his early days at Eton a furious

radical; like Shelley, he has always been an enemy of Christianity; and

like Shelley, he has also been an enemy of conventions and prejudices

of every description. At the beginning of the century Swinburne would

certainly have been treated just as Byron and Shelley were treated, but

times are changed to-day; the public has become more generous and more

sensible, and critics generally recognise Swinburne as the greatest

verse writer English literature produced. He will certainly have

justice done him after his death, if not during his life.

If Swinburne were Shelley reborn, we should have to recognise that he

gained a good deal of wisdom from the experiences of his former life.

He is altogether an incomparably stronger character than Shelley. He

kept his radicalism for his poetry, and never in any manner outraged

the conventions of society in such matters as might relate to his

private life. He is also a far greater poet than Shelley--greater than

Tennyson, greater than Rossetti, greater than Browning, greater than

any other Englishman, not excepting Milton, in the mastery of verse.

He is also probably one of the greatest of scholars among the poets of

any country, writing poetry in English or French, in Greek and Latin.

For learning, there are certainly few among the poets of England who

would not have been obliged to bow before him. He is also the greatest

living English dramatist--I might as well say the greatest English

dramatist of the nineteenth century. Except the "Cenci" of Shelley,

there is no other great drama since 1800 to be placed beside the dramas

of Swinburne; and the "Prometheus Unbound" by Shelley is far surpassed

by Swinburne's Greek tragedy of "Atalanta in Calydon." Another feature

of Swinburne's genius is his critical capacity. He is a great critic;

so great that he has been able to make his enemies afraid of him, as

well as to help to distinction struggling young men of talent whose

work he admires. You will perceive what force there must be in the man.

Born in 1837, he has never ceased to produce poetry from the time of

his University days, and he still writes, with the result that the bulk

of his work probably exceeds the work of any other great poet of the

century. If he be indeed the reborn Shelley, it is certain that Shelley

has become a giant.

I may have surprised you by saying that Swinburne is the greatest

of all our poets. But understand that I am speaking of poetry as

distinguished from prose, of poetry as rhythm and rhyme, as melody

and measure. By greatest of poets I mean the greatest master of

verse. If you were to ask me whether Swinburne has as great a quality

as Tennyson or as Rossetti or as Browning, either in the moral or

philosophical sense, I should say no. Greatest of all in the knowledge

and use of words, he is perhaps less than any of the three in the

higher emotional, moral, sympathetic, and philosophical qualities that

give poetry its charm for even those who know nothing about the art

of words. And of all the Victorian poets, Swinburne will be the least

useful to students of these literary classes. The extraordinary powers

that distinguish him are powers requiring not only a perfect knowledge

of English, but a perfect knowledge of those higher forms of literary

expression which are especially the outcome of classical study.

Swinburne's scholarship is one of the great obstacles to his being

understood by any who are not scholars themselves in the very same

direction; in this sense he would be, I think, quite as useless to you

as Milton in the matter of form. In value to you he would be far below

Milton in the matter of thought and sentiment.

There are several ways of studying poetry. The greater number of people

who buy the books of poets, and who find pleasure in them, do not

know anything about the rules of verse. Out of one hundred thousand

Englishmen who read Tennyson, I doubt very much if one thousand know

the worth of his art. English University students, who have taken

a literary course, probably do understand very well; but a poet's

reputation and fortune are not made by scholars, but by the great mass

of half-educated people. They read for sentiment, for emotion, for

imagination; and they are quite satisfied with the pleasure given them

by the poet in this way. They are improving and educating themselves

when they read him, and for this it is not necessary that they should

know the methods, of his work, but only that they should know its

results. The educators of the great mass of any people in Europe are,

in this sense, the poets.

The other way of studying a poet is the scholarly way, the critical

method (I do not mean the philosophical method; that is beside our

subject); we read a poet closely, carefully, observing every new and

unfamiliar word, every beautiful phrase and unaccustomed term, every

device of rhythm or rhyme, sound or colour that he has to give us.

Our capacity to study any poet in this way depends a good deal upon

literary habit and upon educational opportunity. By the first method

I doubt whether you could find much in Swinburne. He is like Shelley,

often without substance of any kind. By the second method we can do a

great deal with a choice of texts from his best work. I think it better

to state this clearly beforehand, so that you may not be disappointed,

failing to find in him the beautiful haunting thoughts that you can

find in Rossetti or in Tennyson or in Browning.

Here I must digress a little. I must speak of the worst side of

Swinburne as well as of the best. The worst is nearly all in one book,

not a very large book, which made the greatest excitement in England

that had been made since the appearance of Byron's "Don Juan." It is

the greatest lyrical gift ever given to English literature, this

book; but it is also, in some respects, the most immoral book yet

written by an English poet. The work of Byron, at its worst, is pure

and innocent by comparison with the work of Swinburne in this book. It

is astonishing that the English public could have allowed the book to

exist. Probably it was forgiven on account of its beauty. Some years

ago, I remember, an excellent English review said, in speaking of a

certain French poem, that it was the most beautiful poem of its kind in

the French language, but that, unfortunately, the subject could not be

mentioned in print. Of course when there is a great beauty and great

voluptuousness at the same time, it is the former, not the latter, that

makes the greatness of the work. There must be something very good

to excuse the existence of the bad. Much of the work of Swinburne is

like that French poem, valuable for the beauty and condemnable for the

badness in it--and touching upon subjects which cannot be named at all.

Why he did this work we must try to understand without prejudice.

First, as to the man himself. We must not suppose that a person is

necessarily immoral in his life because he happens to write something

which is immoral, any more than we should suppose a person whose

writings are extremely moral to be incapable of doing anything of

a vicious or foolish kind. Shelley, for example, is a very chaste

poet--there is not one improper line in the whole of his poetry; but

his life was decidedly unfortunate. Exactly the reverse happens in

the case of Swinburne, who has written thousands of immoral lines.

The fact is that many persons are apt to mistake artistic feeling

for vicious feeling, and a spirit of revolt against conventions for a

general hatred of moral law. I must ask you to try to put yourselves

for a moment in the place of a young student, such as Swinburne was

at the time of these writings, and try to imagine how he felt about

things. In every Western boy--indeed, I may say in every civilised

boy--there are several distinct periods, corresponding to the various

periods in the history of human progress. Both psychologically and

physiologically the history of the race is repeated in the history

of the individual. The child is a savage, without religion, without

tenderness, with a good deal of cruelty and cunning in his little soul.

He is this because the first faculties that are developed within him

are the faculties for self-preservation, the faculties of primitive

man. Then ideas of right and wrong and religious feelings are quickened

within him by home-training, and he becomes somewhat like the man

of the Middle Ages--he enters into his mediæval period. Then in the

course of his college studies he is gradually introduced to a knowledge

of the wonderful old Greek civilisation, civilisation socially and,

in some respects, even morally superior to anything in the existing

world; and he enters into the period of his Renaissance. If he be very

sensitive to beauty, if he have the æsthetic faculty largely developed,

there will almost certainly come upon him an enthusiastic love and

reverence for the old paganism, and a corresponding dislike of his

modern surroundings. This feeling may last only for a short time, or

it may change his whole life. One fact to observe is this, that it is

just about the time when a young man's passions are strongest that the

story of Greek life is suddenly expounded to him in the course of his

studies; and you must remember that the æsthetic faculty is primarily

based upon the sensuous life. Now in Swinburne's case we have an

abnormal æsthetic and scholarly faculty brought into contact with these

influences at a very early age; and the result must have been to that

young mind like the shock of an earth-quake. We must also imagine the

natural consequence of this enthusiasm in a violent reaction against

all literary, religious, or social conventions that endeavour to keep

the spirit of the old paganism hidden and suppressed within narrow

limits, as a dangerous thing. Finally we must suppose the natural

effect of opposition upon this mind, the effect of threats, sneers, or

prohibitions, like oil upon fire. For young Swinburne was, and still

is, a man of exceeding courage, incapable of fear of any sort. A great

idea suddenly came to him, and he resolved to put it into execution.

This idea was nothing less than to attempt to obtain for English

poetry the same liberty enjoyed by French poetry in recent times, to

attempt to obtain the right of absolute liberty of expression in all

directions, and to provoke the contest with such a bold stroke as never

had been dared before. The result was the book that has been so much

condemned.

We cannot say that Swinburne was successful in this attempt at reform.

He attempted a little too much, and attempted it too soon. Even in

his own time the great French poet Charles Baudelaire was publicly

condemned in a French court for having written verse less daring than

Swinburne's. The great French novelist Flaubert also had to answer

in court for the production of a novel that is now thought to be very

innocent. It was only at a considerably later time that the French

poets obtained such liberty of expression as allowed of the excesses

of writers like Zola or of poets like Richepin. Altogether Swinburne's

fight was premature. He must now see that it was. But I should not like

to say that he was entirely wrong. The result of absolute liberty in

French literature gives us a good idea of what would be the result of

absolute liberty in English literature. Extravagances of immorality

were followed by extravagances of vulgarity as well, and after the

novelty of the thing was over a reaction set in, provoked by disgust

and national shame. Exactly the same thing would happen in England

after a brief period of vicious carnival; the English tide of opinion

would set in the contrary direction with immense force, and would bring

about such a tyrannical conservatism in letters as would signify, for

the time being, a serious check upon progress. As a matter of fact, we

cannot do in English literature what can be done in French literature.

Swinburne might, but there is only one Swinburne. The English language

is not perfect enough, not graceful and flexible enough, to admit

of elegant immorality; and the English character is not refined

enough. A Frenchman can say very daring things, very immoral things,

gracefully; an Englishman cannot. Only one Englishman has approached

the possibility; and that Englishman is Swinburne himself.

I think you will now understand what Swinburne's purpose was, and be

able to judge of it. His mistakes were due not only to his youth but

also to his astonishing genius; for he could not then know how much

superior in ability he actually was to any other English poet. He

imagined that there were many who might do what he could do. The truth

is that hundreds of years may pass before another Englishman is born

capable of doing what Swinburne could do. Men of letters have long ago

forgiven him, because of this astonishing power. They say, "We know the

poems are improper, but we have nothing else like them, and English

literature cannot afford to lose them." The scholars have forgiven him,

because his worst faults are always scholarly; and a common person

cannot understand his worst allusions. Indeed, one must be much of a

classical scholar to comprehend what is most condemnable in the first

series of the "Poems and Ballads." Their extreme laxity will not be

perceived without elaborate explanation, and no one can venture to

explain--I do not mean in a university class room only, I mean even in

printed criticism. When this was attempted by the poet's enemies, he

was able to point out, with great effect, that the explanations were

much more immoral than the poems.

Now in considering Swinburne's poetry in a short course of lectures,

I think it will be well to begin by explaining his philosophical

position; for every poet has a philosophy of his own. As I have

already said, there is less of this visible in Swinburne than in the

other Victorian poets, but the little there is has a particular and

beautiful interest, which we shall be able to illustrate in a series of

quotations. I am presuming a little in speaking about his philosophy

because there has been nothing of importance written about his

philosophy, nor has he himself ever made a plain statement of it. In

such a case I can only surmise, and you need not consider my opinion

as definitive. Swinburne is, like George Meredith, an evolutionist,

and he has something of the spiritual element in him which we notice

in Meredith as a philosopher--but always with this difference, that

Meredith makes evolution preach a moral law, and Swinburne does not.

But here we notice that Swinburne's evolution is something totally

different from Meredith's in its origin. I have said to you that

Meredith expresses evolutional philosophy according to Herbert Spencer;

I consider him the greatest of our philosophical poets for that very

reason. Swinburne does not appear to have felt the influence of Herbert

Spencer; he seems rather to reflect the opinions of Comte--especially

of Comte as interpreted by Lewes, and perhaps by Frederic Harrison.

He speaks of the Religion of Humanity, of the Divinity of Man, and of

other things which indicate the influence of Comte. Furthermore, I must

say, being myself a disciple of Spencer, that Swinburne's sociological

and radical opinions are quite incompatible with evolutional philosophy

as expounded by Spencer. Indeed, Swinburne's views about government,

about fraternity and equality, about liberty in all matters of

thought and action, are heresies for the strictly scientific mind.

The great thinkers of our century have exposed and overthrown the

old fallacies of the French revolutionary school as to the equality

of men and the meaning of liberty and fraternity. Swinburne still

champions, or appears to champion, some of the erroneous ideas of

Rousseau. Otherwise there is little fault to be found with his thoughts

concerning the ultimate nature of things, except in the deep melancholy

that always accompanies them. Meredith is a grand optimist. Swinburne

is something very like a pessimist. There is no joy and no hope in his

tone of speaking about the mystery of death; rather we find ourselves

listening to the tone of the ancient Roman Epicureans, in the time when

faith was dying, and when philosophy attempted, without success, to

establish a religion of duty founded upon pure ethics.

An important test of any writer's metaphysical position is what he

believes about the soul. Swinburne's idea is very well expressed in the

prelude to his "Songs before Sunrise." A single stanza would be enough

in this case; but we shall give two, in order to show the pantheistic

side of the poet's faith.

Because man's soul is man's God still,

What wind soever waft his will

Across the waves of day and night

To port or shipwreck, left or right,

By shores and shoals of good and ill;

And still its flame at mainmast height

Through the rent air that foam-flakes fill

Sustains the indomitable light

Whence only man hath strength to steer

Or helm to handle without fear.

Save his own soul's light overhead,

None leads him, and none ever led,

Across birth's hidden harbour-bar,

Past youth where shoreward shallows are,

Through age that drives on toward the red

Vast void of sunset hailed from far.

To the equal waters of the dead;

Save his own soul he hath no star,

And sinks, except his own soul guide,

Helmless in middle turn of tide.

This is a very plain statement not only that man has no god, and that

he makes his own gods, but that he never had a creator or a god of

any kind. He has no divine help, no one to pray to, no one to trust

except himself. So far this is in tolerable accord with the teaching

of the Buddha, "Be ye lights unto yourselves; seek no refuge but in

yourselves." But the question comes, What is man's soul? Is it divine?

Is it part of the universal soul, a supreme and infinite intelligence?

There is another meaning in the first line of the first stanza which I

quoted to you about man's soul being man's god. Some verses from the

wonderful poem called "On the Downs" will make the meaning plainer.

"No light to lighten and no rod

To chasten men? Is there no God?"

So girt with anguish, iron-zoned,

Went my soul weeping as she trod

Between the men enthroned

And men that groaned.

O fool, that for brute cries of wrong

Heard not the grey glad mother's song

Ring response from the hills and waves,

But heard harsh noises all day long

Of spirits that were slaves

And dwelt in graves.

. . . . . . .

With all her tongues of life and death,

With all her bloom and blood and breath,

From all years dead and all things done,

In the ear of man the mother saith,

"There is no God, O son,

If thou be none."

This is the declaration of a belief in the divinity of man, a doctrine

well known to students of Comte. It is not altogether in disaccord with

Oriental philosophy; you must not suppose Swinburne to be speaking of

individual divinity, but of a universal divinity expressing itself in

human thought and feeling. His view of life is that the essential thing

is to live as excellently as possible, but we must not suppose that

excellence is used in the moral sense. Swinburne's idea of excellence

is the idea of completeness. His notions of right and wrong are not the

religious or the social notions of right and wrong. In this respect

he sometimes seems to think very much like the German philosopher

Nietzsche. Nevertheless he does tell us that the real spirit of

the universe is a spirit of love, a doctrine at which Huxley would

certainly have laughed. But it is beautiful doctrine in its way, even

if not true, and admirably suits the purposes of poetry.

I think that I need not say much more here about Swinburne's

philosophy; you will understand that he is at once a pantheist and

an evolutionist, and that is sufficient for our purposes. But it is

necessary to remember this in order to understand many things in his

verse, and especially in order to understand some of his extraordinary

attitudes in condemning what most men respect, and in praising what

most men condemn. Remember also that his judgments, like those of

Nature, are never moral; they are not always the reverse, but they

are founded entirely upon æsthetic perception. Those who praise him

especially are men in revolt like himself. Therefore he praised Walt

Whitman, at a time when Walt Whitman was being condemned everywhere for

certain faults in his compositions; therefore he sang the praises of

Baudelaire, as none other had done before him (and here he is certainly

right); therefore he praised Théophile Gautier's "Mademoiselle de

Maupin," calling it "the golden book of spirit and sense"; therefore

also he wrote a sonnet praising Burton's translation of the Arabian

Nights, which made a great scandal in England because it translated all

the obscene passages which nobody else had ventured to put into English

or French. The æsthetic judgment in all these cases is correct, but I

will not venture to pronounce upon the moral judgment any further than

to say this, that Swinburne delights in courage, and that literary

courage in his eyes covers a multitude of sins.

Not a few, however, of these daring songs of praise are among the most

wonderful triumphs of modern lyric verse. I should like, for example,

to quote to you the whole of his ode to Villon, but I fear that because

of its length, and the unfamiliarity of the subject, we cannot afford

the time. I will quote the closing stanza as a specimen of the rest,

and I am sure that you will see its beauty.

Prince of sweet songs made out of tears and fire,

A harlot was thy nurse, a God thy sire;

Shame soiled thy song, and song assoiled thy shame.

But from thy feet now death has washed the mire,

Love reads out first at head of all our quire,

Villon, our sad bad glad mad brother's name.

Each stanza ends with this strange refrain of "sad bad glad mad,"

adjectives which excellently express the changeful and extraordinary

character of that poor student of Paris with whose name modern French

literature properly begins. He lived a terrible and reckless life,

very nearly ending with the gallows; he was an associate at one time

of princes and bishops, at another time of thieves and prostitutes; he

would be one day a spendthrift, the next day a beggar or a prisoner;

and he sang of all these experiences as no man ever sang before or

since. Really Swinburne's praise in this case is not only just--it

represents the best possible estimate of the singer's faults and

virtues combined.

To speak in detail of the great range of subjects chosen by Swinburne

is not possible within the limits of this lecture. I am going to make

selections from every part of his production, except the dramatic, as

well as I can, and the selections will be made with a view especially

to show you the music of his verse and the brilliance of his language.

Most of his poems are above the ordinary lyrical length rather than

below it, and I hope that you will not be disappointed if I do not

often give the whole of a poem, for the selections will contain, I am

sure, the best part of the poem.

Being a descendant of great seamen, Swinburne had every reason to sing

of the sea; and he has sung of it better than any one else. A great

number of his poems are sea-poems, or poems containing descriptions of

the sea in all its moods, splendours, or terrors. Sun, sea, and wind

are favourite subjects with him, and I know of nothing in the whole

of his work finer than his description of the wind as the lover of

the sea. The verses I am going to quote are from a great composition

entitled "By the North Sea." The personal pronoun "he" in the first

line means the wind personified.

The delight that he takes but in living

Is more than of all things that live:

For the world that has all things for giving

Has nothing so goodly to give:

But more than delight his desire is,

For the goal where his pinions would be

Is immortal as air or as fire is,

Immense as the sea.

Though hence come the moan that he borrows

From darkness and depth of the night,

Though hence be the spring of his sorrows,

Hence too is the joy of his might;

The delight that his doom is for ever

To seek and desire and rejoice,

And the sense that eternity never

Shall silence his voice.

That satiety never may stifle

Nor weariness ever estrange

Nor time be so strong as to rifle

Nor change be so great as to change

His gift that renews in the giving,

The joy that exalts him to be

Alone of all elements living

The lord of the sea.

What is fire, that its flame should consume her?

More fierce than all fires are her waves:

What is earth, that its gulfs should entomb her?

More deep are her own than their graves.

Life shrinks from his pinions that cover

The darkness by thunders bedinned;

But she knows him, her lord and her lover,

The godhead of wind.

This titanic personification of sea and wind is sublime, but Swinburne

has many other ways of personifying wind and sea, and sometimes the

element of tenderness and love is not wanting. Sometimes the sea is

addressed as a goddess, but more often she is addressed as a mother,

and some of the most exquisite forms of such address are found in poems

which have, properly speaking, nothing to do with the sea at all. A

good example is in the poem called "The Triumph of Time." The words are

supposed to be spoken by a person who is going to drown himself.

O fair green-girdled mother of mine,

Sea, that art clothed with the sun and the rain,

Thy sweet hard kisses are strong like wine,

Thy large embraces are keen like pain.

Save me and hide me with all thy waves,

Find me one grave of thy thousand graves,

Those pure cold populous graves of thine,

Wrought without hand in a world without stain.

We shall also find great wonder and beauty in Swinburne's hymns to the

sun, which is also for him, as for the poets of old, a living god, and

which certainly is, in a scientific sense, the lord of all life within

this world. The best expression of this feeling is in a poem called

"Off Shore," describing sunrise over the sea, and the glory of light.

Light, perfect and visible

Godhead of God!

God indivisible,

Lifts but his rod,

And the shadows are scattered in sunder, and darkness

is light at his nod.

At the touch of his wand,

At the nod of his head

From the spaces beyond

Where the dawn hath her bed,

Earth, water, and air are transfigured, and rise as one

risen from the dead.

He puts forth his hand,

And the mountains are thrilled

To the heart as they stand

In his presence, fulfilled

With his glory that utters his grace upon earth, and

her sorrows are stilled.

. . . . . . . . .

As a kiss on my brow

Be the light of thy grace,

Be thy glance on me now

From the pride of thy place:

As the sign of a sire to a son be the light on my face

of thy face.

. . . . . . . . .

Fair father of all

In thy ways that have trod,

That have risen at thy call,

That have thrilled at thy nod,

Arise, shine, lighten upon me, O sun that we see to

be God.

. . . . . . . . .

Be praised and adored of us

All in accord,

Father and lord of us

Always adored,

The slayer and the stayer and the harper, the light

of us all and our lord.

Swinburne has no equal in enthusiastic celebration of the beauties of

sky and sea and wood, of light and clouds and waters, of sound and

perfume and blossoming. Indeed, one of his particular characteristics,

a characteristic very seldom found in English masterpieces, though

common in the best French work, is his art for describing odours--the

smell of morning and evening, scents of the seasons, scents also of

life. We shall have many opportunities to notice this characteristic of

Swinburne, even in his descriptions of human beauty. What the French

call the _parfum de jeunesse_ or odour of youth, the pleasant smell of

young bodies, the perfume that we notice, for example, in the hair of a

healthy child, is something which English writers very seldom venture

to treat of; but Swinburne has treated it quite as delicately at times

as a French poet could do, though sometimes a little extravagantly. You

must think of him as one whom no quality of beauty escapes, whether

of colour, odour, or motion; and as one who believes, I think rightly,

that whatever is in itself beautiful and natural is worthy of song. You

will be able to imagine, from what I have already quoted, how he feels

in the presence of wild nature. How he considers human beauty is a more

difficult matter to illustrate by quotation, at least by quotation

before a class. But I shall try to offer some illustrations from the

"Masque of Queen Bersabe." You all know what a masque is. The masque

in question is a perfect imitation, for the most part, of a mediæval

masque, both as to form and language. But there is one portion of it

which is mediæval only in tone, not in language, since there never

lived in the Middle Ages any man capable of writing such verse. It is

from this part that I want to quote. But I must first explain to you

that the name Bersabe is only a mediæval form of the Biblical name

Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, whom King David caused to be murdered.

It is an ugly story. The King committed adultery with Bathsheba;

then he ordered her husband to be put into the front rank during a

battle, in such a place that he must be killed. Afterwards the King

married Bathsheba; but the prophet Nathan heard of the wickedness, and

threatened the King with the punishment of God. This was the subject

of several mediæval religious plays, and Swinburne adopted it for an

imitation of such play. The first part of his conception is that at

the command of the prophet the ghosts of all the beautiful and wicked

queens who ever lived come before Bathsheba, to reproach her with her

sin, and to tell her how they had been punished in other time for

sins of the same kind. Each one speaks in turn; and though I cannot

quote all of what they said, I can quote enough to illustrate the

magnificence of the work. Each verse is a portrait in words, uttered by

the subject.

CLEOPATRA

I am the queen of Ethiope.

Love bade my kissing eyelids ope

That men beholding might praise love.

My hair was wonderful and curled;

My lips held fast the mouth o' the world

To spoil the strength and speech thereof.

The latter triumph in my breath

Bowed down the beaten brows of death,

Ashamed they had not wrath enough.

. . . . . . . . .

AHOLAH

I am the queen of Amalek.

There was no tender touch or fleck

To spoil my body or bared feet.

My words were soft like dulcimers,

And the first sweet of grape-flowers

Made each side of my bosom sweet.

My raiment was as tender fruit

Whose rind smells sweet of spice-tree root,

Bruised balm-blossom and budded wheat.

. . . . . . . . .

SEMIRAMIS

I am the queen Semiramis.

The whole world and the sea that is

In fashion like a chrysopras,

The noise of all men labouring,

The priest's mouth tired through thanksgiving,

The sound of love in the blood's pause,

The strength of love in the blood's beat,

All these were cast beneath my feet

And all found lesser than I was.

. . . . . . . . .

PASITHEA

I am the queen of Cypriotes.

Mine oarsmen, labouring with brown throats,

Sang of me many a tender thing.

My maidens, girdled loose and braced

With gold from bosom to white waist,

Praised me between their wool-combing.

All that praise Venus all night long

With lips like speech and lids like song

Praised me till song lost heart to sing.

. . . . . . . . .

ALACIEL

I am the queen Alaciel.

My mouth was like that moist gold cell

Whereout the thickest honey drips.

Mine eyes were as a grey-green sea;

The amorous blood that smote on me

Smote to my feet and finger-tips.

My throat was whiter than the dove,

Mine eyelids as the seals of love,

And as the doors of love my lips.

ERIGONE

I am the queen Erigone.

The wild wine shed as blood on me

Made my face brighter than a bride's.

My large lips had the old thirst of earth,

Mine arms the might of the old sea's girth

Bound round the whole world's iron sides.

Within mine eyes and in mine ears

Were music and the wine of tears,

And light, and thunder of the tides.

So pass the strange phantoms of dead pride and lust and power, together

with many more of whom the descriptions are not less beautiful and

strange, though much less suitable for quotation. I have made the

citations somewhat long, but I have done so because they offer the

best possible illustration of two things peculiar to Swinburne, the

music and colour of his verse, and the peculiar mediæval tone which he

sometimes assumes in dealing with antique subjects. These descriptions

are quite unlike anything done by Tennyson, or indeed by any other

poet except Rossetti. They represent, in a certain way, what has been

called Pre-Raphaelitism in poetry. Swinburne was, with Rossetti, one of

the great forces of the new movement in literature. Observe that the

illustrations are chiefly made by comparisons--that the descriptions

are made by suggestion; there is no attempt to draw a clear sharp line,

nothing is described completely, but by some comparison or symbolism

in praise of a part, the whole figure is vaguely brought before the

imagination in a blaze of colour with strange accompaniment of melody.

For example, you will have noticed that no face is fully pictured;

you find only some praise of the eyes or the mouth, the throat or

the skin, but that is quite enough to bring to your fancy the entire

person. But there is another queer fact which you must be careful to

notice--namely, that no comparison is modern. The language and the

symbolism are Biblical or mediæval in every case. The European scholar

who had made a special study of the literature of the Middle Ages would

notice even more than this; he would notice that the whole tone is

not of the later but of the earlier Middle Ages, that the old miracle

plays, the old French romances, and the early Italian poets, have all

contributed something to this splendour of expression. It is modern art

in one sense, of course, but there is nothing modern about it except

the craftsmanship; the material is all quaint and strange, and gives us

the sensation of old tapestry or of the paintings that were painted in

Italy before the time of Raphael.

Here I must say a word about the Pre-Raphaelite movement in nineteenth

century literature. To explain everything satisfactorily, I ought to

have pictures to show you; and that is unfortunately impossible. But I

think I can make a very easy explanation of the subject. First of all

you must be quite well aware that the literature of all countries seeks

for a majority of its subjects in the past. The everyday, the familiar,

does not attract us in the same way as that which is not familiar and

not of the present. Distance, whether of space or time, lends to things

a certain tone of beauty, just as mountains look more beautifully

blue the further away they happen to be. This seeking for beauty in

the past rather than in the present represents much of what is called

romanticism in any literature.

Necessarily, even in this age of precise historical knowledge, the

past is for us less real than the present; time has spread mists of

many colours between it and us, so that we cannot be sure of details,

distances, depths, and heights. But in other generations the mists were

heavier, and the past was more of a fairy-land than now; it was more

pleasant also to think about, because the mysterious is attractive to

all of us, and men of letters delighted to write about it, because they

could give free play to the imagination. Such stories of the past as we

find even in what have been called historical novels, were called also,

and rightly called, romances--works of imagination rather than of fact.

But still you may ask, why such words as romance and romantic? The

answer is that works of imagination, dealing with past events, were

first written in languages derived from the Latin, the Romance

languages; and at a very early time it became the custom to distinguish

work written in these modern tongues upon fanciful or heroic subjects,

by this name and quality. The romantic in the Middle Ages signified

especially the new literature of fancy as opposed to the old classical

literature. Remember, therefore, that this meaning is not yet

entirely lost, though it has undergone many modifications. "Romantic"

in literature still means "not classical," and it also suggests

imagination rather than fact, and the past rather than the present.

When we say "mediæval" in speaking of nineteenth century poetry, we

mean of course nineteenth century literature having a romantic tone,

as well as reflecting, so far as imagination can, the spirit of the

Middle Ages. But what is the difference between the Pre-Raphaelite

and Mediæval? The time before Raphael, the Pre-Raphaelite period,

would necessarily have been mediæval. As a matter of fact, the term

Pre-Raphaelite does not have the wide general meaning usually given

to it. It is something of a technical term, belonging to art rather

than to literature, and first introduced into literature by a company

of painters. The Pre-Raphaelite painters, in the technical sense,

were a special group of modern painters, distinguished by particular

characteristics.

So much being clear, I may say that there was a school of painting

before Raphael of a very realistic and remarkable kind. This school

came to existence a little after the true religious spirit of the

Middle Ages had begun to weaken. It sought the emotion of beauty as

well as the emotion of religion, but it did not yet feel the influence

of the Renaissance in a strong way; it was not Greek nor pagan. It

sought beauty in truth, studying ordinary men and women, flowers and

birds, scenery of nature or scenery of streets; and it used reality

for its model. It was much less romantic than the school that came

after it; but it was very great and very noble. With Raphael the

Greek feeling, the old pagan feeling for sensuous beauty, found full

expression, and this Renaissance tone changed the whole direction and

character of art. After Raphael the painters sought beauty before all

things; previously they had sought for truth and sentiment even before

beauty. Raphael set a fashion which influenced all arts after him

down to our own time; for centuries the older painters were neglected

and almost forgotten. Therefore Ruskin boldly declared that since

Raphael's death Western art had been upon the decline and that the

school of painters immediately before Raphael were greater than any who

came after him. Gradually within our own time a new taste came into

art-circles, a new love for the old forgotten masters of the fourteenth

and fifteenth centuries. It was discovered that they were, after all,

nearer to truth in many respects than the later painters; and then was

established, by Rossetti and others, a new school of painting called

the Pre-Raphaelite school. It sought truth to life as well as beauty,

and it endeavoured to mingle both with mystical emotion.

At first this was a new movement in art only, or rather in painting

and drawing only, as distinguished from literary art. But literature

and painting and architecture and music are really all very closely

related, and a new literary movement also took place in harmony

with the new departure in painting. This was chiefly the work of

Rossetti, Swinburne, and William Morris. They tried to make poems and

to write stories according to the same æsthetic motives which seem

to have inspired the school of painters before Raphael. This is the

signification of the strange method and beauty of those quotations

which I have been giving to you from Swinburne's masque. They represent

very powerfully the Pre-Raphaelite feelings in English poetry.

I know that this digression is somewhat long, but I believe that

it is of great importance; without knowing these facts, it would

be impossible for the student to understand many curious things

in Swinburne's manner. Throughout even his lighter poems we find

this curious habit of describing things in ways totally remote from

nineteenth century feeling, and nevertheless astonishingly effective.

Fancy such comparisons as these for a woman's beauty in the correct age

of Wordsworth:

I said "she must be swift and white,

And subtly warm, and half perverse,

And sweet like sharp soft fruit to bite,

And like a snake's love lithe and fierce."

Men have guessed worse.

Or take the following extraordinary description of a woman's name,

perhaps I had better say of the sensation given by the name Félise,

probably an abbreviation of Felicita, but by its spelling reminding one

very much of the Latin word _felis_, which means a cat:

Like colors in the sea, like flowers,

Like a cat's splendid circled eyes

That wax and wane with love for hours,

Green as green flame, blue-grey like skies,

And soft like sighs.

The third line refers to the curious phenomenon of the enlarging and

diminishing of the pupil in a cat's eye according to the decrease or

increase of light. It is said that you can tell the time of day by

looking at a cat's eyes. Now all these comparisons are in the highest

degree offences against classical feeling. The classical poet, even

the half-classical poet of the beginning of our own century, would

have told you that a woman must not be compared to a snake or a cat;

that you must not talk about her sweetness being like the sweetness of

fruit, or the charm of her presence being like the smell of perfume.

All such comparisons seemed monstrous, unnatural. If such a critic were

asked why one must not compare a woman to a snake or a cat, the critic

would probably answer, "Because a snake is a hateful reptile and a cat

is a hateful animal." What would Ruskin or Swinburne then say to the

critic? He would say simply, "Did you ever look at a snake? Did you

ever study a cat?" The classicist would soon be convicted of utter

ignorance about snakes and cats. He thought them hateful simply because

it was not fashionable to admire them a hundred years ago. But the

old poets of the early Middle Ages were not such fools. They had seen

snakes and admired them, because for any man who is not prejudiced, a

snake is a very beautiful creature, and its motions are as beautiful

as geometry. If you do not think this is true, I beg of you to watch

a snake, where its body can catch the light of the sun. Then there is

no more graceful or friendly or more attractively intelligent animal

than a cat. The common feeling about snakes and cats is not an artistic

one, nor even a true one; it is of ethical origin, and unjust. These

animals are not moral according to our notions; they seem cruel and

treacherous, and forgetting that they cannot be judged by our code

of morals, we have learned to speak of them contemptuously even from

the physical point of view. Well, this was not the way in the early

Middle Ages. People were less sensitive on the subject of cruelty

than they are to-day, and they could praise the beauty of snakes and

tigers and all fierce or cunning creatures of prey, because they could

admire the physical qualities without thinking of the moral ones. In

Pre-Raphaelite poetry there is an attempt to do the very same thing.

Swinburne does it more than any one else, perhaps even too much; but

there is a great and true principle of art behind this revolution.

Now we can study Swinburne in some other moods. I want to show you the

splendour of his long verse, verse of fourteen and sixteen syllables,

of a form resurrected by him after centuries of neglect; and also verse

written in imitation of Greek and Roman measures with more success than

has attended similar efforts on the part of any other living poet.

But in the first example that I shall offer, you will find matter of

more interest than verse as verse. The poem is one of Swinburne's

greatest, and the subject is entirely novel. The poet attempts to

express the feeling of a Roman pagan, perhaps one of the last Epicurean

philosophers, living at the time when Christianity was first declared

the religion of the Empire, and despairing because of the destruction

of the older religion and the vanishing of the gods whom he loved. By

law Christianity has been made the state-religion, and it is forbidden

to worship the other gods; the old man haughtily refuses to become a

Christian, even after an impartial study of Christian doctrine; on the

contrary, he is so unhappy at the fate of the religion of his fathers

that he does not care to live any longer without his gods. And he

prays to the goddess of death to take him out of this world, from

which all the beauty and art, all the old loved customs and beliefs

are departing. We cannot read the whole "Hymn to Proserpine"; but we

shall read enough to illustrate the style and feeling of the whole. At

the head of the poem are the words _Vicisti_, _Galilæe!_--"Thou hast

conquered, O Galilean"--words uttered by the great Roman Emperor Julian

at the moment of his death in battle. Julian was the last Emperor

who tried to revive and purify the decaying Roman religion, and to

oppose the growth of Christianity. He was, therefore, the great enemy

of Christianity. His dying words were said to have been addressed to

Christ, when he felt himself dying, but it is not certain whether he

really ever uttered these words at all.

I have lived long enough, having seen one thing, that love

hath an end;

Goddess and maiden and queen, be near me now and

befriend.

Thou art more than the day or the morrow, the seasons

that laugh or that weep;

For these give joy and sorrow; but thou, Proserpina, sleep.

Sweet is the treading of wine, and sweet the feet of the

dove:

But a goodlier gift is thine than foam of the grapes or love.

After speaking to the goddess of death, he speaks thus

to Christ:

Wilt thou yet take all, Galilean? but these thou shalt not

take,

The laurel, the palms and the paean, the breasts of the

nymphs in the brake;

Breasts more soft than a dove's, that tremble with tenderer

breath;

And all the wings of the Loves, and all the joy before

death;

All the feet of the hours that sound as a single lyre,

Dropped and deep in the flowers, with strings that flicker

like fire.

More than these wilt thou give, things fairer than all

these things?

Nay, for a little we live, and life hath mutable wings.

A little while and we die; shall life not thrive as it may?

For no man under the sky lives twice, outliving his day.

And grief is a grievous thing, and a man hath enough of

his tears:

Why should he labour, and bring fresh grief to blacken his

years?

Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean; the world has grown

grey from thy breath;

We have drunken of things Lethean, and fed on the fulness

of death.

Or, in other words, the pagan says: "O Christ, you would wish to

take everything from us, yet some things there are which you cannot

take: not the inspiration of the poet, nor the spirit of art, nor the

glory of heroism, nor the dreams of youth and love, nor the great and

gracious gifts of time--the beauty of the seasons, the splendour of

night and day. All these you cannot deprive us of, though you wish to;

and what is better than these? Can you give us anything more precious?

Assuredly you cannot. For these things are fitted to human life; and

what do we know about any other life? Life passes quickly; why should

we make it miserable with the evil dreams of a religion of sorrow?

Short enough is the time in which we have pleasure, and the world is

already full enough of pain; wherefore should we try to make ourselves

still more unhappy than we already are? Yet you have conquered; you

have destroyed the beauty of life; you have made the world seem grey

and old, that was so beautiful and eternally young. You have made us

drink the waters of forgetfulness and eat the food of death. For your

religion is a religion of death, not of life; you yourself and the

Christian gods are figures of death, not figures of life."

And how does he think of this new divinity, Christ? As a Roman citizen

necessarily, and to a Roman citizen Christ was nothing more than a

vulgar, common criminal executed by Roman law in company with thieves

and murderers. Therefore he addresses such a divinity with scorn, even

in the hour of his triumph:

O lips that the live blood faints in, the leavings of racks

and rods!

O ghastly glories of saints, dead limbs of gibbeted Gods!

Though all men abase them before you in spirit, and all

knees bend,

I kneel not neither adore you, but standing, look to the end!

To understand the terrible bitterness of this scorn, it is necessary

for the student to remember that a Roman citizen could not be tortured

or flogged or gibbeted. Such punishments and penalties were reserved

for slaves and for barbarians. Therefore to a Roman the mere fact

of Christ's death and punishment--for he was tortured before being

crucified--was a subject for contempt; accordingly he speaks of such

a divinity as the "leavings of racks and rods"--that is, so much of

a man's body as might be left after the torturers and executioners

had finished with it. Should a Roman citizen kneel down and humble

himself before that? A little while, some thousands of years, perhaps,

Christianity may be a triumphant religion, but all religions must

die and pass away, one after another, and this new and detestable

religion, with its ugly gods, must also pass away. For although the

old Roman has studied too much philosophy to believe in all that his

fathers believed, he believes in a power that is greater than man and

gods and the universe itself, in the unknown power which gives life

and death, and makes perpetual change, and sweeps away everything

that man foolishly believes to be permanent. He gives to this law of

impermanency the name of the goddess of death, but the name makes

little difference; he has recognised the eternal law. Time will sweep

away Christianity itself, and his description of this mighty wave of

time is one of the finest passages in all his poetry:

All delicate days and pleasant, all spirits and sorrows are

cast

Far out with the foam of the present that sweeps to the

surf of the past:

. . . . . . . . .

Where, mighty with deepening sides, clad about with the

seas as with wings,

And impelled of invisible tides, and fulfilled of unspeakable

things,

White-eyed and poisonous-finned, shark-toothed and serpentine-curled,

Rolls, under the whitening wind of the future, the wave of

the world.

The depths stand naked in sunder behind it, the storms flee

away;

In the hollow before it the thunder is taken and snared as

a prey;

In its sides is the north-wind bound; and its salt is of all

men's tears;

With light of ruins and sound of changes, and pulse of

years:

With travail of day after day, and with trouble of hour

upon hour;

And bitter as blood is the spray; and the crests are as fangs

that devour:

And its vapour and storm of its steam as the sighing of

spirits to be;

And its noise as the noise in a dream; and its depth as the

roots of the sea:

And the height of its heads as the height of the utmost stars

of the air:

And the ends of the earth at the might thereof tremble, and

time is made bare.

When the poet calls this the wave of the world, you must not understand

world to mean our planet only, but the universe, the cosmos; and the

wave is the great wave of impermanency, including all forces of time

and death and life and pain. But why these terrible similes of white

eyes and poisonous things and shark's teeth, of blood and bitterness

and terror? Because the old philosopher dimly recognises the cruelty

of nature, the mercilessness of that awful law of change which, having

swept away his old gods, will just as certainly sweep away the new gods

that have appeared. Who can resist that mighty power, higher than the

stars, deeper than the depths, in whose motion even gods are but as

bubbles and foam? Assuredly not Christ and his new religion. Speaking

to the new gods the Roman cries:

All ye as a wind shall go by, as a fire shall ye pass and be

past;

Ye are Gods, and behold, ye shall die, and the waves be

upon you at last.

. . . . . . . . .

Yet thy kingdom shall pass, Galilean, thy dead shall go

down to thee dead.

Here follows a beautiful picture of the contrast between the beauty of

the old gods and the uninviting aspect of the new. It is a comparison

between the Virgin Mary, mother of Christ, and Venus or Aphrodite, the

ancient goddess of love, born from the sea. For to the Roman mind the

Christian gods and saints wanted even the common charm of beauty and

tenderness. All the divinities of the old Greek world were beautiful

to look upon, and warmly human; but these strange new gods from Asia

seemed to be not even artistically endurable. Addressing Christ, he

continues:

Of the maiden thy mother men sing as a goddess with grace

clad around;

Thou art throned where another was king; where another

was queen she is crowned.

Yea, once we had sight of another: but now she is queen,

say these.

Not as thine, not as thine was our mother, a blossom of

flowering seas,

Clothed around with the world's desire as with raiment and

fair as the foam,

And fleeter than kindled fire, and a goddess and mother of

Rome.

For thine came pale and a maiden, and sister to sorrow;

but ours,

Her deep hair heavily laden with odour and colour of

flowers,

White rose of the rose-white water, a silver splendour, a

flame,

Bent down unto us that besought her, and earth grew sweet

with her name.

For thine came weeping, a slave among slaves, and rejected;

but she

Came flushed from the full-flushed wave, and imperial, her

foot on the sea.

And the wonderful waters knew her, the winds and the

viewless ways,

And the roses grew rosier, and bluer the sea-blue stream

of the bays.

Ye are fallen, our lords, by what token? we wist that ye

should not fall.

Ye were all so fair that are broken; and one more fair than

ye all.

Why, by what power, for what reason, should the old gods have passed

away? Even if one could not believe in them all, they were too

beautiful to pass away and be broken, as their statues were broken by

the early Christians in the rage of their ignorant and brutal zeal.

The triumph of Christianity meant much more than the introduction of a

new religion; it meant the destruction of priceless art and priceless

literature, it signified the victory of barbarism over culture and

refinement. Doubtless the change, like all great changes, was for

the better in some ways; but no lover of art and the refinements of

civilisation can read without regret the history of the iconoclasm in

which the Christian fanatics indulged when they got the government and

the law upon their side. It is this feeling of regret and horror that

the poet well expresses through the mouth of the Roman who cares no

more to live, because the gods and everything beautiful must pass away.

But there is one goddess still left for him, one whom the Christians

cannot break but who will at last break them and their religion, and

scatter them as dust--the goddess of death. To her he turns with a last

prayer:

But I turn to her still, having seen she shall surely abide

in the end;

Goddess and maiden and queen, be near me now and

befriend.

O daughter of earth, of my mother, her crown and blossom

of birth,

I am also, I also, thy brother; I go as I came unto earth.

. . . . . . . . .

Thou art more than the Gods who number the days of our

temporal breath;

For these give labour and slumber, but thou, Proserpina,

death.

Therefore now at thy feet I abide for a season in silence.

I know

I shall die as my fathers died, and sleep as they sleep;

even so.

For the glass of the years is brittle wherein we gaze for a

span;

A little soul for a little bears up this corpse which is man.

So long I endure, no longer; and laugh not again, neither

weep.

For there is no God found stronger than death; and death

is a sleep.

The third line from the end, "a little soul for a little," is a

translation from the philosopher Epictetus. It is the Epicurean

philosophy especially which speaks in this poetry. The address to the

goddess of death as the daughter of earth, cannot be understood without

some reference to Greek mythology. Proserpina was the daughter of the

goddess Ceres, whom the ancients termed the Holy Mother--queen of the

earth, but especially the goddess of fruitfulness and of harvests.

While playing in the fields as a young girl, Proserpina was seized

and carried away by the god of the dead, Hades or Pluto, to become

his wife. Everywhere her mother sought after her to no purpose; and

because of the grief of the goddess, the earth dried up, the harvests

failed, and all nature became desolate. Afterwards, finding that her

daughter had become the queen of the kingdom of the dead, Ceres agreed

that Proserpina should spend a part of every year with her husband, and

part of the year with her mother. To this arrangement the Greeks partly

attributed the origin of the seasons.

Incidentally in the poem there is a very beautiful passage describing

the world of death, where no sun is, where the silence is more than

music, where the flowers are white and full of strange sleepy smell,

and where the sound of the speech of the dead is like the sound of

water heard far away, or a humming of bees-whither the old man prays

to go, to rest with his ancestors away from the light of the sun, and

to forget all the sorrow of this world and its changes. But I think

that you will do well to study this poem in detail by yourselves,

when opportunity allows. It happens to be one of the very few poems

in the first series of Swinburne's "Poems and Ballads" to which no

reasonable exception can be made; and it is without doubt one of the

very finest things that he has ever written. I could recommend this

for translation; there are many pieces in the same book which I could

not so recommend, notwithstanding their beauty. For instance, the poem

entitled "Hesperia," with its splendid beginning:

Out of the golden remote wild west where the sea without

shore is,

Full of the sunset, and sad, if at all, with the fulness of joy.

There is nothing more perfect in modern literature than the beginning

of this poem, which gives us an exact imitation in English words of the

sound of the Greek hexameter and pentameter. But much of this work is

too passionate and violent for even the most indulgent ears; and though

I think that you ought to study the beginning, I should never recommend

it for translation.

The comparison of the wave in the hymn to Proserpina must have given

you an idea of Swinburne's power to deal with colossal images. I

know of few descriptions in any literature to be compared with that

picture of the wave; but Swinburne himself in another poem has given

us descriptions nearly as surprising, if not as beautiful. There is

a poem called "Thalassius," a kind of philosophical moral fable in

Greek form, that contains a surprise of this kind. The subject is a

young man's first experience with love. Walking in the meadows he sees

a pretty boy, or rather child, just able to walk--a delicious child,

tender as a flower, and apparently needing kindly care. So he takes the

child by the hand, wondering at his beauty; and he speaks to the child,

but never gets any reply except a smile. Suddenly, at a certain point

of the road the child begins to grow tall, to grow tremendous; his

stature reaches the sky, and in a terrible voice that shakes everything

like an earthquake, he announces that though he may be Love, he is also

Death, and that only the fool imagines him to be Love alone. There is

a bit both of old and of new philosophy in this; and I remarked when

reading it that in Indian mythology there is a similar representation

of this double attribute of divinity, love and death, creation and

destruction, represented by one personage. But we had better read the

scene which I have been trying to describe, the meeting with the child:

That wellnigh wept for wonder that it smiled,

And was so feeble and fearful, with soft speech

The youth bespake him softly; but there fell

From the sweet lips no sweet word audible

That ear or thought might reach;

No sound to make the dim cold silence glad,

No breath to thaw the hard harsh air with heat,

Only the saddest smile of all things sweet,

Only the sweetest smile of all things sad.

And so they went together one green way

Till April dying made free the world for May;

And on his guide suddenly Love's face turned,

And in his blind eyes burned

Hard light and heat of laughter; and like flame

That opens in a mountain's ravening mouth

To blear and sear the sunlight from the south,

His mute mouth opened, and his first word came;

"Knowest thou me now by name?"

And all his stature waxed immeasurable,

As of one shadowing heaven and lightening hell;

And statelier stood he than a tower that stands

And darkens with its darkness far-off sands

Whereon the sky leans red;

And with a voice that stilled the winds he said:

"I am he that was thy lord before thy birth,

I am he that is thy lord till thou turn earth;

I make the night more dark, and all the morrow

Dark as the night whose darkness was my breath:

O fool, my name is sorrow;

Thou fool, my name is death."

By the term "darkness" in the third line from the end of the above

quotation, we must understand the darkness and mystery out of which

man comes into this world, and comes only to die. This monstrous

symbolism may need some explanation, before you see how very fine the

meaning is. Love, that is the attraction of sex to sex, with all its

emotions, heroisms, sacrifices, and nobilities, cannot be understood

by the young. To them, love is only the physical and the moral charm

of the being that is loved. In man the passion of love becomes noble

and specialised by the development in him of moral, æsthetic, and

other feelings that are purely human. But the attraction of sex, that

is behind all this, is a universal and terrible fact, a tremendous

mystery, whose ultimate nature no man knows or ever will know. Why?

Because if we knew the nature and origin of the forces that create, we

could understand the whole universe, and ourselves, and everything that

men now call mystery. But all that we certainly do know is this, that

we come into the world out of mystery and go out of the world again

back into mystery, and that no mortal man can explain the Whence, the

Why, or the Whither. The first sensations of love for another being

are perhaps the most delicious feelings known to men; the person loved

seems for the time to be more beautiful and good than any one else

in the world. This is what the poet means by describing the first

appearance of love as a beautiful, tender child, innocent and dumb.

But later in life the physical illusion passes away; then one learns

the relation of this seeming romance to the awful questions of life

and death. The girl beloved becomes the wife; then she becomes the

mother; but in becoming a mother, she enters into the very shadow of

death, sometimes never to return from it. Birth itself is an agony,

the greatest agony that humanity has to bear. We come into the world

through pains of the most deadly kind, and leave the world later on in

pain; and what all this means, we do not know. We are only certain that

the Greeks were not wrong in representing love as the brother of death.

The Oriental philosophers went further; they identified love with

death, making them one and the same. One cannot help thinking of the

Indian statue representing the creative power, holding in his hand the

symbol of life, but wearing around his neck a necklace of human skulls.

The poem that introduces the first volume of Swinburne's poems, as

published in America, gave its name to the book, so that thousands of

English readers used to call the volume by the name of this poem, "Laus

Veneris," which means the praise of Venus. I do not think that there

is a more characteristic poem in all Swinburne's work; it is certainly

the most interesting version in any modern language of the old

mediæval story. Without understanding the story you could not possibly

understand the poem, and as the story has been famous for hundreds of

years, I shall first relate it.

After Christianity had made laws forbidding people to worship the old

gods, it was believed that these gods still remained wandering about

like ghosts and tempting men to sin. One of these divinities especially

dreaded by the Christian priests, was Venus. Now in the Middle t Ages

there was a strange story about a knight called Tannhäuser, who, riding

home one evening, saw by the wayside a beautiful woman unclad, who

smiled at him, and induced him to follow her. He followed her to the

foot of a great mountain; the mountain opened like a door, and they

went in, and found a splendid palace under the mountain. The fairy

woman was Venus herself; and the knight lived with her for seven years.

At the end of the seven years he became afraid because of the sin which

he had committed; and he begged her, as Urashima begged the daughter

of the Dragon King, to let him return for a little time to the world

of men. She let him go; and he went to Rome. There he told his story

to different priests, and asked them to obtain for him the forgiveness

of God. But each of the priests made answer that the sin was so great

that nobody except the Pope of Rome could forgive it. Then the knight

went to the Pope. But when the Pope heard his confession, the Pope

said that there was no forgiveness possible for such a crime as that

of loving a demon. The Pope had a wooden staff in his hand, and he

said, "Sooner shall this dry stick burst into blossom than you obtain

God's pardon for such a sin." Then the knight, sorrowing greatly,

went back to the mountain and to Venus. After he had gone, the Pope

was astonished to see that the dry staff was covered with beautiful

flowers and leaves that had suddenly grown out of it, as a sign that

God was more merciful than his priests. At this the Pope became sorry

and afraid, and he sent out messengers to look for the knight. But no

man ever saw him again, for Venus kept him hidden in her palace under

the mountain. Swinburne found his version of the story in a quaint

French book published in 1530. He represents, not the incidents of the

story itself, but only the feelings of the knight after his return from

Rome. There is no more hope for him. His only consolation is his love

and worship for her; but this love and worship is mingled with fear

of hell and regret for his condition. Into the poem Swinburne has put

the whole spirit of revolt of which he and the Pre-Raphaelite school

were exponents. A few verses will show you the tone. The knight praises

Venus:

Lo, this is she that was the world's delight;

The old grey years were parcels of her might;

The strewings of the ways wherein she trod

Were the twain seasons of the day and night.

Lo, she was thus when her clear limbs enticed

All lips that now grow sad with kissing Christ,

Stained with blood fallen from the feet of God,

The feet and hands whereat our souls were priced.

Alas, Lord, surely thou art great and fair.

But lo her wonderfully woven hair!

And thou didst heal us With thy piteous kiss;

But see now, Lord; her mouth is lovelier.

She is right fair; what hath she done to thee?

Nay, fair Lord Christ, lift up thine eyes and see;

Had now thy mother such a lip--like this?

Thou knowest how sweet a thing it is to me.

This calling upon God to admire Venus, this asking Christ whether his

mother was even half as beautiful as Venus, was to religious people

extremely shocking, of course. And still more shocking seemed the

confession in the latter part of the poem that the knight does not

care whether he has sinned or not, since, after all, he has been more

fortunate than any other man. This expression of exultation after

remorse appeared to reverent minds diabolical, the thought of a new

Satanic School. But really the poet was doing his work excellently,

so far as truth to nature was concerned; and these criticisms were as

ignorant as they were out of place. The real fault of the poem was

only a fault of youth, a too great sensuousness in its descriptive

passages. We might say that Swinburne himself was, during those years,

very much in the position of the knight Tannhäuser; he had gone back

to the worship of the old gods because they were more beautiful and

more joyous than the Christian gods; we may even say that he never

came back from the mountain of Venus. But all this poetry of the first

series was experimental; it was an expression of the Renaissance

feeling that visits the youth of every poet possessing a strong sense

of beauty. Before the emotions can be fully corrected by the intellect,

such poets are apt to offend the proprieties, and even to say things

which the most liberal philosopher would have to condemn. It was at

such a time that in another poem, "Dolores," Swinburne spoke of leaving

The lilies and languors of virtue

For the raptures and roses of vice,

--lines that immediately became famous. It was also at such a time that

he uttered the prayer to a pagan ideal:

Come down and redeem us from virtue.

But on the other hand, if all poets were to wait for the age of wisdom

before they began to sing, we should miss a thousand beautiful things

of which only youth is capable, wherefore it were best to forgive the

eccentricities for the sake of the incomparable merits. For example, in

the very poem from which these quotations have been made, we have such

splendid verses as these, referring to the worship of Venus in the time

of Nero:

Dost thou dream, in a respite of slumber,

In a lull of the fires of thy life,

Of the days without name, without number,

When thy will stung the world into strife;

When, a goddess, the pulse of thy passion

Smote kings as they revelled in Rome,

And they hailed thee re-risen, O Thalassian,

Foam-white, from the foam?

Thalassian means the sea-born, derived from the Greek word Thalatta,

the sea. Here--Swinburne might be referring to the times of the

Triumvirate, when Cleopatra succeeded in bewitching the great captain

Cæsar and the great captain Antony, and set the world fighting for

her sake. Then we have a reference to the great games in Rome, the

splendour and the horror of the amphitheatre:

On sands by the storm never shaken,

Nor wet from the washing of tides;

Nor by foam of the waves overtaken,

Nor winds that the thunder bestrides;

But red from the print of thy paces,

Made smooth for the world and its lords,

Ringed round with a flame of fair faces,

And splendid with swords.

The floor of the amphitheatre was covered with sand, which absorbed the

blood of the combatants. But you will ask what had the games to da with

the goddess? All the Roman festivities of this kind were, to a certain

extent, considered as religious celebrations; they formed parts of

holiday ceremony.

There the gladiator, pale for thy pleasure,

Drew bitter and perilous breath;

There torments laid hold on the treasure

Of limbs too delicious for death;

When thy gardens were lit with live torches;

When the world was a steed for thy rein;

When the nations lay prone in thy porches,

Our Lady of Pain.

When with flame all around him aspirant,

Stood flushed, as a harp-player stands,

The implacable beautiful tyrant,

Rose-crowned, having death in his hands;

And a sound as the sound of loud water

Smote far through the flight of the fires,

And mixed with the lightning of slaughter

A thunder of lyres.

The reference here in the third, fourth, and fifth lines of the first

of the above stanzas is to the torture of the Christians by Nero in the

amphitheatre. By "limbs too delicious for death" the poet refers to the

torture of young girls. The "live torches" refers to Nero's cruelty in

having hundreds of Christians wrapped about with combustible material,

tied to lofty poles, and set on fire, to serve as torches during a

great festival which he gave in the gardens of his palace. The second

stanza represents him as the destroyer of Rome. It is said that he

secretly had the city set on fire in a dozen different places, in order

that he might be thereby enabled to imagine the scene of the burning of

Troy, as described by Homer. He wanted to write a poem about it; and

it is said that while the city was burning, he watched it from a high

place, at the same time composing and singing a poem on the spectacle.

The "flight of fires" refers of course to the spreading of fire through

Rome. The "lightning of slaughter" means the flashing of swords in

the work of killing, and is explained by the legend that Nero sent

soldiers to kill anybody who tried to put out the fire. Anything was

possible in the times of which Swinburne sings; for the world was then

governed by emperors who were not simply wicked but mad. But what I

wish to point out is that while a poet can write verses so splendid in

sound and colour as those that I have quoted, even such a composition

as "Dolores" must be preserved, with all its good and bad, among the

treasures of English verse.

In spite of his radicalism in the matter of religion and of ethics,

the Bible has had no more devoted student than Swinburne; he has not

only appreciated all the beauties of its imagery and the strength

of its wonderful English, but he has used for the subjects of not a

few of his pieces, and his more daring pieces, Biblical subjects.

The extraordinary composition "Aholibah" was inspired by a study

of Ezekiel; unfortunately this is one of the pieces especially

inappropriate to the classroom. "A Litany" will suit our purpose

better. It consists of a number of Biblical prophecies, from Isaiah

and other books of the Old Testament, arranged into a kind of

dramatic chorus. God is made the chief speaker, and he is answered

by his people. This is a kind of imitation of a certain part of the

old church-service, in which one band of singers answers another,

such singing being called "antiphonal," and the different parts,

"antiphones." There is very little English verse written in the measure

which Swinburne has adopted for this study, and I hope that you will

notice the peculiar rhythmic force of the stanzas. We need quote only a

few.

All the bright lights of heaven

I will make dark over thee;

One night shall be as seven

That its skirts may cover thee;

I will send on thy strong men a sword,

On thy remnant a rod:

Ye shall know that I am the Lord,

Saith the Lord God.

And the people answer:

All the bright lights of heaven

Thou hast made dark over us;

One night has been as seven,

That its skirt might cover us;

Thou hast sent on our strong men a sword,

On our remnant a rod;

We know that thou art the Lord,

O Lord our God.

But this submission is not enough; for the Lord replies

As the tresses and wings of the wind

Are scattered and shaken,

I will scatter all them that have sinned,

There shall none be taken;

As a sower that scattereth seed,

So will I scatter them;

As one breaketh and shattereth a reed,

I will break and shatter them.

The antiphone is:

As the wings and the locks of the wind

Are scattered and shaken,

Thou hast scattered all them that have sinned;

There was no man taken;

As a sower that scattereth seed,

So hast thou scattered us;

As one breaketh and shattereth a reed,

Thou hast broken and shattered us.

Observe that, simple as this versification looks, there is nothing more

difficult. With, the simplest possible words, the greatest possible

amount of sound and force is here obtained. There are many other

stanzas, and a noteworthy fact is that very few words of Latin origin

are used. Most of the words are Anglo-Saxon; perhaps that is why the

language is so sonorous and strong. But when the poet does use a word

of Latin origin, the result is simply splendid:

Ye whom your lords loved well,

Putting silver and gold on you,

The inevitable hell

Shall surely take hold on you;

Your gold shall be for a token,

Your staff for a rod;

With the breaking of bands ye are broken,

Saith the Lord God.

The use of the Latin adjective "inevitable" here gives an extraordinary

effect, the main accent of the line coming on the second syllable of

the word. But, as if to show his power, in the antiphonal response

the poet does not repeat this effect, but goes back to the simple

Anglo-Saxon with astonishing success:

We whom the world loved well,

Laying silver and gold on us,

The kingdom of death and of hell

Riseth up to take hold on us;

Our gold is turned to a token,

Our staff to a rod;

Yet shalt thou bind them up that were broken,

O Lord our God.

Here the substitution of these much simpler words gives nearly as fine

an effect of sound and a grander effect of sense because of the grim

power of the words themselves.

Besides studies in Biblical English, the poet has made a number of

studies in the Old Anglo-Saxon poets, most of whom were religious men

who liked sad and terrible subjects. In the poem entitled "After Death"

we have an example of this Anglo-Saxon feeling combined with the plain

strength of a later form of language, chiefly Middle English, with here

and there a very quaint use of grammar. It was common in Anglo-Saxon

poetry to depict the horrors of the grave. Here we have a dead man

talking to his own coffin, and the coffin answers him horribly:

The four boards of the coffin lid

Heard all the dead man did.

. . . . . . .

"I had fair coins red and white,

And my name was as great light;

"I had fair clothes green and red,

And strong gold bound round my head.

"But no meat comes in my mouth,

Now I fare as the worm doth;

"And no gold binds in my hair,

Now I fare as the blind fare.

"My live thews were of great strength,

Now am I waxen a span's length;

"My live sides were full of lust,

Now are they dried with dust."

The first board spake and said:

"Is it best eating flesh or bread?"

The second answered it:

"Is wine or honey the more sweet?"

The third board spake and said:

"Is red gold worth a girl's gold head?"

The fourth made answer thus:

"All these things are as one with us."

The dead man asked of them:

"Is the green land stained brown with flame?

"Have they hewn my son for beasts to eat,

And my wife's body for beasts' meat?

"Have they boiled my maid in a brass pan,

And built a gallows to hang my man?"

The boards said to him:

"This is a lewd thing that ye deem.

"Your wife has gotten a golden bed;

All the sheets are sewn with red.

"Your son has gotten a coat of silk,

The sleeves are soft as curded milk.

"Your maid has gotten a kirtle new,

All the skirt has braids of blue.

"Your man has gotten both ring and glove,

Wrought well for eyes to love."

The dead man answered thus:

"What good gift shall God give us?"

The boards answered anon:

"Flesh to feed hell's worm upon."

I doubt very much whether a more terrible effect could be produced

by any change of language. The poem is an excellent illustration of

the force of the Old English, without admixture of any sort. Do not

think that this is simple and easy work; perhaps no other living

man could have done it equally well. It is not only in these simple

forms, however, that Swinburne shows us the results of his Old English

studies. Two of the most celebrated among his early poems, "The Triumph

of Time" and the poem on the swallow, "Itylus," are imitations of very

old forms of English verse, though the language is luxurious and new. I

have already given you a quotation from the former poem, describing the

poet's love of the sea. I now cite a single stanza of "Itylus."

Swallow, my sister, O sister swallow,

How can thine heart be full of the spring?

A thousand summers are over and dead.

What hast thou found in the spring to follow?

What hast thou found in thine heart to sing?

What wilt thou do when the summer is shed?

Probably Swinburne found this measure in early Middle English poetry;

it was used by the old poet Hampole in his "Prick of Conscience." After

it had been forgotten for five hundred years, Swinburne brought it to

life again. Something very close to it forms the splendid and beautiful

chorus of "Atalanta in Calydon":

When the hounds of spring are on winter's traces,

The mother of months in meadow or plain

Fills the shadows and windy places

With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain;

And the brown bright nightingale amorous

Is half assuaged for Itylus,

For the Thracian ships and the foreign faces,

The tongueless vigil, and all the pain.

Here as in all other cases, however, the poet has far surpassed his

model. The measures which he revived take new life only because of the

extraordinary charm which he has put into them.

Passing suddenly from these lighter structures, let us observe the

great power which Swinburne manifests in another kind of revival, the

sixteen syllable line. This is not a modern measure at all. It was used

long ago, but was practically-abandoned and almost forgotten except

by scholars when Swinburne revived it. Nor has he revived it only in

one shape, but in a great many shapes, sometimes using single lines,

sometimes double, or again varying the accent so as to make four or

five different kinds of verse with the same number of syllables. The

poem "The Armada" is a rich example of this re-animation and variation

of the long dead form. In this poem Swinburne describes the god of

Spain as opposed to the god of England, and the most forceful lines are

those devoted to these conceptions. Observe the double rhymes.

Ay, but _we_ that the wind and _sea_ gird round with shelter

of storms and _waves_,

Know not _him_ that ye worship, _grim_ as dreams that quicken

from dead men's _graves_:

God is _one_ with the sea, the _sun_, the land that nursed us,

the love that _saves._

Love whose _heart_ is in ours, and _part_ of all things noble

and all things _fair_:

Sweet and _free_ as the circling _sea_, sublime and kind as the

fostering _air_:

Pure of _shame_ as is England's _name_, whose crowns to come

are as crowns that _were._

Now we have, quite easily, a change in the measure.

We have sixteen syllables still, but the whole music is

changed.

But the Lord of darkness, the God whose love is a flaming

fire,

The master whose mercy fulfils wide hell till its torturers

tire,

He shall surely have heed of his servants who serve him

for love, not hire.

The double rhymes are not used here. Later on, after the English

victory and the storm, they are used again, for the purpose of

additional force. The address is to the Spaniards and to their gods.

Lords of _night_, who would breathe your _blight_ on April's

morning and August's _noon_,

God your _Lord_, the condemned, the _abhorred_, sinks hell-ward,

smitten with deathlike _swoon_,

Death's own _dart_ in his hateful _heart_ now thrills, and night

shall receive him _soon._

God the _Devil_, thy reign of _revel_ is here forever eclipsed

and _fled_;

God the _Liar_, everlasting _fire_ lays hold at last on thee, hand

and _head._

Page after page of constantly varying measures of this kind will be

found in the poem--a poem which notwithstanding its strong violence at

times, represents the power of the verse-maker better than almost any

other single piece in the work of his later years.

From what extracts we have already made, I think you will see enough of

the value and beauty of Swinburne's diction to take in it such interest

as it really deserves. We might continue the study of this author for a

much longer time. But the year is waning, the third term, which is very

short, will soon be upon us; and I wish to turn with you next week to

the study of Browning.