2 QUEEN'S QUARTERLY. 



"When the hounds of Spring are on Winter's traces, 

 The Mother of Months in meadow or plain * 



Fills the shadows and windy nl.iccs 

 With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain; 

 And the bright brown nightingale amorous 

 Is half assiiaged for Ilylus, 

 For the Thracian ships and the foreign faces, 

 The tongueless vigil and all the pain." 



The alliteration and luxuriant diction were but the defects of youth- 

 ful work and it was thought that the poet would learn to prune the 

 too numerous shoots of his fancy as Tennyson had his early style 

 of 'double-shotted' adjectives. In 1866 the first series of 'Poems 

 and Ballads ' was published under the title of ' Laus Veneris.' It is 

 perhaps not too much to say that no volume of verse before or since 

 has caused such an uproar among the critics. The majority of them 

 declared that several of the poems, notably ' Laus Veneris,' ' Anac- 

 toria,' and ' Dolores,' were positively indecent, not fit to be read by 

 any respectable person. Naturally enough the book ran through 

 seven editions within a year. 



Mazzini is credited with turning Swinburne's energies from the 

 praise of women's love to what may be called the second period of 

 his poetic activity. The Italian patriot asked the young poet why he 

 did not sing the greater love — the love of liberty. Swinburne re- 

 sponded with a series of volumes devoted to the praise of liberty 

 and its leaders, Mazzini and Garibaldi. ' A Song of Italy,' 1867, was 

 followed by the ' Ode on the Proclamation of the French Republic,' 

 1870, and ' Songs before Sunrise,' 1871. With the death of Mazzini 

 in 1872 this period of Swinburne's work may be said to close, for the 

 ' Songs of Two Nations,' 1875, is largely a reprint of poems pub- 

 lished before. Undoubtedly these revolutionary odes represent, not 

 inadequately, the widespread unrest in European political ideas about 

 the year 1870. For the modern reader, however, their purely 

 intellectual passion for republicanism has little interest. The open- 

 ing stanza of an ' Ode on the Insurrection in Canada ' is character- 

 istic of this group of poems : 



"I laid my laurel leaf 

 At the white feet of Grief, 



W^hl„'r7verT:!i\=°aT^' '^" ^""^ P'"-^'-= --^^. 

 Veiled, as one who mourns his' dead 

 Lay Freedom, couched between the ihrones of kings - 

 A weaned lion without lair '^"'SS'. 



And bleeding from base wounds, and vexed with alien air 

 From the publication of ' Bothwell,' in 1874, Swinburne's chief 

 •effort m poetry has been dramatic. In addition to the 400 pages of 



