And her heart sprang in Iseult, and she drew
   With all her spirit and life the sunrise through,
   And through her lips the keen triumphant air
   Sea-scented, sweeter than land-roses were,
   And through her eyes the whole rejoicing east
   Sun-satisfied, and all the heaven at feast
   Spread for the morning; and the imperious mirth
   Of wind and light that moved upon the earth,
   Making the spring, and all the fruitful might
   And strong regeneration of delight
   That swells the seedling leaf and sapling man.

He, nevertheless, who was able, in high company, to hail the sea with such fine verse, was not ashamed, in low company, to sing the famous absurdities about “the lilies and languors of virtue and the roses and raptures of vice,” with many and many a passage of like character.  I think it more generous, seeing I have differed so much from the Nineteenth Century’s chorus of excessive praise, to quote little from the vacant, the paltry, the silly—­no word is so fit as that last little word—­among his pages.  Therefore, I have justified my praise, but not my blame.  It is for the reader to turn to the justifying pages:  to “A Song of Italy,” “Les Noyades,” “Hermaphroditus,” “Satia te Sanguine,” “Kissing her Hair,” “An Interlude,” “In a Garden,” or such a stanza as the one beginning

   O thought illimitable and infinite heart
   Whose blood is life in limbs indissolute
   That all keep heartless thine invisible part
   And inextirpable thy viewless root
   Whence all sweet shafts of green and each thy dart
   Of sharpening leaf and bud resundering shoot.

It is for the reader who has preserved rectitude of intellect, sincerity of heart, dignity of nerves, unhurried thoughts, an unexcited heart, and an ardour for poetry, to judge between such poems and an authentic passion, between such poems and truth, I will add between such poems and beauty.

Imagery is a great part of poetry; but out, alas! vocabulary has here too the upper hand.  For in what is still sometimes called the magnificent chorus in “Atalanta” the words have swallowed not the thought only but the imagery.  The poet’s grievance is that the pleasant streams flow into the sea.  What would he have?  The streams turned loose all over the unfortunate country?  There is, it is true, the river Mole in Surrey.  But I am not sure that some foolish imagery against the peace of the burrowing river might not be due from a poet of facility.  I am not censuring any insincerity of thought; I am complaining of the insincerity of a paltry, shaky, and unvisionary image.

Having had recourse to the passion of stronger minds for his provision of emotions, Swinburne had direct recourse to his own vocabulary as a kind of “safe” wherein he stored what he needed for a song.  Claudius stole the precious diadem of the kingdom from a shelf and put it in his pocket; Swinburne took from the shelf of literature—­took with what art, what touch, what cunning, what complete skill!—­the treasure of the language, and put it in his pocket.