WITH VICTORIAN POETRY 385 



rhetoric, idyllic picture-painting. Modes of complicated 

 expression, involving serried reasoning, audacious metaphors 

 elliptical imagery, and rapid modulation from one key of 

 feeling to another, which a playwright like Shakespeare 

 employed only in his dramatic dialogue, find themselves at 

 home in the lyrical poetry of our age. 



VI 



For another point of comparison, let us take some 

 of those ' lyrical interbreathings ' in Elizabethan dramatic 

 dialogue which are surcharged with sweetness, and contrast 

 these with the sweetness of Victorian verse. I might select 

 Shakespeare's lines upon the flowers scattered by Perdita 

 in The Winter's Tale. But I prefer to choose my examples 

 from less illustrious sources. Here, then, is the sweetness of 

 Fletcher : 



I do her wrong, much wrong ; she's young and blessed, 

 Fair as the spring, and as his blossoms tender ; 

 But I, a nipping north-wind, my head hung 

 With hails and frosty icicles : are the souls so too, 

 When they depart hence lame, and old, and loveless ? 

 Ah, no ! 'tis ever youth there : age and death 

 Follow our flesh no more ; and that forced opinion, 

 That spirits have no sexes, I believe not. 



Here is the sweetness of Ford : 



For he is like to something I remember, 

 A great while since, a long, long time ago. 



Here is the sweetness of Dekker : 



No, my dear lady, I could weary stars, 

 And force the wakeful moon to lose her eyes 

 By my late watching, but to wait on you. 

 When at your prayers you kneel before the altar, 

 Methinks I'm singing with some quire in heaven, 

 So blest I hold me in your company. 



Here is the sweetness of Massinger : 



This beauty, in the blossom of my youth, 

 When my first fire knew no adulterate incense, 



C C 



