MR. SWINBURNE'S NEW POEMS.*

WITH the buds and blossoms of spring comes another volume of lyrics from Mr. Swinburne's affluent pen. March," maddest

and gladdest of months," is the theme of his first poem ; and the energy of the poet's praise would almost persuade us that the cruelest weeks of the year are the most buoyant with life and mirth :—

"How should not thy lovers rejoice in thee, leader and lord of the year that exults to be born,

So strong in thy strength and so glad of thy gladness whose laughter puts winter and sorrow to scorn ?

Thou ha,st shaken the snows from thy wings, and the frost on thy forehead is molten : thy lips are aglow - As a lover's that kindle with kissing, and earth, with her raiment and tresses yet wasted and torn, Takes breath as she smiles in the grasp of thy passion to feel through her spirit the sense of thee flow."

Mr. Swinburne's extraordinary facility of versification, the way in which he overrides all verbal difficulties, and exults in the swift rush of song, is as remarkable in these poems as in any of his former efforts. If an ear for harmony and a command of language are the highest qualities of poetry, Mr. Swinburne's place among the poets is one of the fore- most. In these respects he has achieved great triumphs. They indicate his strength as a singer, and the measure of that strength. His creative genius is not, we think, remarkable, his vision is not intense, his contributions to poetic wisdom are few indeed. He has neither given a new meaning to Life nor fresh beauty to Nature, and he has written little over which in his serenest moments a man delights to brood. Moreover, Mr. Swinburne's readers are now and then a little in doubt whether his torrent of song carries much meaning with it, and are occasionally tempted to ask whether the meaning is not altogether lost in words ? This third series of Poems and Ballads is, like its predecessors, remarkable for harmony, a quality in which Mr. Swinburne is excelled by Milton and Shelley a!one ; and it has perhaps less of the effusive-

ness that d :tracts from the merit of much of his recent verse. In his tributes of affe3tion, Mr. Swinburne is always happy.

No poet has ever shown a more gelerous remembrance of the men whom he has knosu and honoured ; and in the utterance

of the feelings cal!el fcr.:1 by friendship, few poets have been so happy. John William Inchbold, a man dearly and justly loved by those who knew him best, and a landscape-painter whose rare though uncertain genius cannot fail to be appre- ciated more widely as the days go round, died in January, • 1,,vnis and Ballads. Third Series By . Algernon Charles Switibitrae. I London: Cliatto and Windus. I Commonweal," contains these two fine stanzas:—

1888. Many years ago, Mr. Swinburne had stayed for a while as Inchbold's guest at Tintagel, and there, we believe, some of the lyrical portions of Atalanta were written. In a poem of thirty stanzas, a poem which, although in parts vague and wordy, is full of grateful memories of his dead friend, Mr. Swinburne recalls the happy Cornwall days in some felicitous stanzas :— " I, now long since thy guest of many days,

Who found thy hearth a brother's, and with thee Tracked in and out the lines of rolling bays, And banks and gulfs and reaches of the sea—

Deep dens wherein the wrestling water sobs And pants with restless pain of refluent breath, Till all the sunless hollow sounds and throbs With ebb and flow of eddies dark as death,—

......... • Tintagel and the long Trebarwith sand,

Lone Camelford, and Boscastle divine With dower of southern blossom, bright and bland, Above the roar of granite-baffled brine, Shall hear no more by joyous night or day From downs or causeways good to rove and ride Or feet of ours or horse-hoofs urge their way That sped us here and there by tower and tide.

The headlands and the hollows and the waves, For all our love forget us ; where I am Thou art not ; deeper sleeps the shadow on graves Than in the sunless gulf that once we swam.

Thou hast swum too soon the sea of death : for us Too soon, but if truth bless love's blind belief, Faith, born of hope and memory, says not thus : And joy for thee for me should mean not grief.

. . . ..... . . For if beyond the shadow and the sleep, A place there be for souls without a stain, Where peace is perfect and delight more deep Than seas or skies that change or shine again, There none of all unsullied souls that live May hold a surer station : none may lend

More light to hope's or memory's lamp, nor give More joy than thine to those that called thee friend."

The concluding verses are very fine, but it must suffice to call the reader's attention to an elegy which is not only worthy of the poet, but will be dear to all who cherish affection for a faithful-hearted man, and an exquisite but comparatively neglected artist.

There is considerable variety in Mr. Swinburne's new volume of Poems and Ballads. In the art of writing daintily about babies, he is the best English successor to his master, Victor Hugo ; as a writer of Border ballads in the old style, he is perhaps as successful as a modern poet can be ; there is a long poem, noticeable for its patriotic spirit, on The Armada," which, we venture to think, would gain greatly by compression ; and there are also several short lyrics of notice- able value. Many of these poems have been already printed in periodicals, and are probably familiar, but there is no admirer of Mr. Swinburne who will not be glad to possess them in a permanent form.

The idea that gave birth to Wordsworth's Intimations of Immortality, perhaps the finest ode in the language, supplies Mr. Swinburne more than once with inspiration. In a lyric called Olive," he writes :— " Babes at birth Wear as raiment round them cast, Keep as witness toward their past,

Tokens left of heaven ; and each,

Ere its lips learn mortal speech, Ere sweet heaven pass on pass reach, Bears in undiverted eyes Proof of unforgotten skies Here on earth."

And the same thought is suggested in some lines written "In a Garden," from which the first two stanzas shall be quoted:—

" Baby, see the flowers !

—Baby sees Fairer things than these, Fairer though they be than dreams of ours.

Baby, hear the birds !

—Baby knows Better songs than those,

Sweeter though they sound than sweetest words."

The sea, which Englishmen may fairly claim for their special heritage, possesses infinite charms for Mr. Swinburne, and it calls forth also the patriotism which is wanting in no true

poet. The poem written in the Jubilee year entitled "The

"Though time discrown and change dismantle The pride of thrones and towers that frown, How should they bring her glories down— The sea cast round her like a mantle, The sea-cloud like a crown ?

The sea, divine as heaven and deathless, Is here, and none but only she Hath learnt the sea's word, none but we Her children hear in heart the breathless Bright watchword of the sea."

In the opening of "The Armada," England is invoked as the "Mother born of seamen, daughter fostered of the sea." The poet calls her people the sea's folk ; and his country," Sweet as the sea that shields her, and pure as the sea from stain." The poem, indeed, though in a measure weak from wordiness, has the scent of the sea throughout, its stormy power, and its joyous strength. In an ode "To a Seamew," there is a similar freshness of wind and wave ; but the lyric wants spontaneity, . and the thought appears sometimes to be dependent on the rhyme, as in the two lines of the following stanza which we have marked in italics :— " The lark knows no such rapture, Such joy no nightingale, As sways the songless measure Wherein thy wings take pleasure ; Thy love may no man capture, Thy pride may no man quail ; The lark knows no such rapture, Such joy no nightingale.'

In 1865, at the age of twenty-eight, Mr. Swinburne published Atalanta in Calydon, a poem which told in unmistakable language that a new poet was born into the world. It was spoken of at the time, and with perfect justice, as a work of the greatest promise, which gave a hope that the writer would rise to a higher eminence hereafter. Since that day, Mr. Swinburne has written many volumes of verse in the two noblest depait- ments of poetry, the lyrical and the dramatic. Yet if it be true, as we believe, that Atalanta in Calydou ranks above the rest of his works for consummate art and wealth of melody, it follows that the poem of his early manhood is the one upon which his ultimate fame as a poet is likely to depend.