GOLDFINCHES AT RYME INTRINSICA 225 



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 artless- 

 ness. 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 Proctor is a long 

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

 entitled " The Child and the Bird," which, if not pre- 

 cisely a translation, strikes me as a very close imitation 

 of the "Phyllis and her Goldfinch" of Melendez, 

 or of some other Continental poet, probably Spanish, 

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