4 QUEEN'S QUARTERLY. 



should be conspicuous by its absence — there and only there is the 

 best and highest poetry." Wliat is the result if we apply even this 

 limited canon to his own poetry? The sensuous imagery of the lines 

 quoted above from the ' Ode on the Insurrection in Canada,' is a fair 

 specimen of his imagination just as the stanza from ' Atalanta ' is a 

 fine illustration of his music. That its melody is fresh and captivat- 

 ing no one can deny; whether the quality of harmony is present in 

 the highest degree anyone with an ear can decide for himself by 

 turning from it to read aloud the first twenty-five lines' of ' Paradise 

 Lost.' Listen to the passage : 



' if Sion hill 



Delight thee more, and Siloa's brook that flow'd 



Fast by the oracle of God,' 



and then to this other : 



' And chiefly thou, O Spirit, that dost prefer 

 Before all temples th' upright heart and pure, 

 Instruct me, for thou know'st.' 



A new stop in the organ has been pulled out and the deeper tone is 

 in exact accord with the more solemn thought. In Swinburne's verse 

 the melody is generally independent of the thought and runs through 

 stanza after stanza with almost exactly the same effect, the only dif- 

 ference being that it is d's and f's and b's instead of I's and m's and 

 t's that are used for the ever present alliteration. Some of his 

 stanzaic forms, for instance the one he invented for the ' Eve of 

 Revolution,' are used in poem after poem till there are several hun- 

 dred stanzas, each so exact a reproduction of the melody of every 

 ■other that we get the impression of their being produced by a kind 

 of glorified gramophone. A single stanza or couplet is striking, even 

 astonishing, in its beauty of sound and imagery, for instance the 

 couplet, 



' And hushed the torrent-tongued ravines 

 With thunders of our tambourines,' 

 or, 



' With Death for helmsman and Despair for star, 

 And the white foam to cover the White Tsar.' 



Yet each loses much when read in its context, just because it is only 



one of many couplets equally brilliant and equally mechanical. It is 



bare justice, however, to say that they are constructed by the most 



scientific master of metre in the long roll of English poets. 



Great poetry must have something more than harmony and 



imagination, certainly much more than brilliant metrical effects and 



sensuous imagery. As Arnold long ago pointed out, poetry is the 



