222 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS 



verse flows more freely, with a more natural music 

 than ours; it is less mechanical and monotonous in 

 sound, and as it is less distinct from prose and speech 

 in form we are never so conscious of the artistry. The 

 feeling appears more genuine, more from the heart, 

 because of the seeming artlessness. We see it all in 

 this little goldfinch poem and say at once that it is 

 untranslatable, or that it would be impossible to 

 render its spirit, because in English verse the tender 

 feeling, even if it could be expressed so delicately 

 and beautifully, would not convey the same air of 

 sincerity. Swinburne could not do it, which may 

 seem a bold thing to say, seeing that he has given a 

 music to our language it never knew before. It is a 

 music which in certain supreme passages makes one 

 wonder, as if it did not consist in the mere cunning 

 collocation of words but in a magic power to alter 

 their very sound, producing something of a strange, 

 exotic effect, incomparably beautiful and altogether 

 new in our poetry. But great as it is, it never allows 

 us to escape from the sense of the art in it, and is 

 unlike the natural music of Melendez as the finest 

 operatic singing is unlike the spontaneous speech, 

 intermingled with rippling laughter, of a young girl 

 with a beautiful fresh sparkling voice. 



From Swinburne to Adelaide Anne Procter is a 

 long drop, but in this lady's works there is a 

 little poem entitled The Chili and the Bird, which, 

 if not precisely a translation, strikes me as a very 

 close imitation of the Phyllis and her Goldfinch 

 of Melendez, or of some other continental poet, 



