6 QUEEN'S QUARTERLY. 



I that have love and no more 

 Give you but love of you, sweet, 

 He that hath more, let hira give ; 

 He that hath wings, let him soar; 

 Mine is the heart at your feet _ 

 Here, that must love you to live. 



The reader who cares to do so will find it interesting to com- 

 pare with this Shelley's well-known lines, beginning, ' One word is 

 too often profaned.' It is in a similar ecstatic strain. With the 

 music of ' Annie Laurie ' in my ears, I am not so sure that ' The 

 Oblation ' is our greatest love song. I confess it leaves me cold. 

 And perhaps the fatal objection to the great bulk of Swinburne's 

 poetry is just that— it leaves you cold. You admire the exquisite 

 workmanship, but your feelings are not touched. 



Yet within a certain limited range of subjects, Swinburne has 

 the power to move the heart. Perhaps the only point where he 

 touches the ordinary interests of life is in his memorial verses. The 

 short poem, ' In Memory of Walter Savage Landor,' is absolutely 

 sincere and, in my opinion, worth a whole volume of such elaborately 

 wrought verse as the much praised ' Ave atque Vale.' But there are 

 very few of his numerous elegies that at all approach it in depth of 

 feeling. What we may call his sea poetry forms a much larger sec- 

 tion of work that is profoundly felt and wonderfully expressed. 

 Scattered throughout his poems are numberless references to the sea 

 and in them all is the note of sincerity, the true Norseman's love of 

 the ocean. We can almost feel ' the salt sweet foam on our lips ' as 

 we push out 



' In the teeth of the hard glad weather, 

 In the blown wet face of the Sea.' 



It is in a third region still more remote from the ordinary in- 

 terests of men that Swinburne is greatest. In what we might call 

 the poetry of desolation, almost of despair, he is supreme. There is 

 nothing in the language to put beside such poems as ' The Garden 

 of Proserpine ' and ' A Forsaken Garden.' The strange, morbid feel- 

 ing for death and the sombre, haunting melody combine to produce 

 an effect of utter sadness almost beyond the reach of expression. 



' From too much love of living. 



From hope and fear set free. 

 We thank with brief thanksgiving 



Whatever gods may be. 

 That no life lives forever ; 

 That dead men rise up never ; 

 That even the weariest river 



Winds somewhere safe to sea.' 



