Page:Adams - Essays in Modernity.djvu/149

Rh Tennyson has it too in the shape of 'sense and soul,' and Mr. Browning as 'spirit-sense,' as probably every poet in some shape or other. To Mr. Swinburne it gives an explanation of all individual psychology.

What a relief it is to turn from clever, 'vamped-up,' and improperly digested work like this to such pure and lovely poems as 'The Pilgrims' or the 'Dedication to Mazzini'! Perhaps no more gorgeous and ringing burst of passionate song is to be found in our literature than the last sixteen verses of the 'Mater Triumphalis.' Take verse like this as an example of the genuine political sincerity ('The Halt before Rome'):

or the song-burst of the three verses further on, beginning 'The blind and the people in prison.' The poem, however, has rather poor stuff in it (the seven verses beginning 'Whose hand is stretched forth upon her?'), and is too long, which is really irritating where parts are so fine. The opening of the 'Quia multum amavit,' a poem of the same order but a better example, has a varied music too rare in this master of regular and rhymed rhythms and only regular and rhymed rhythms. Everywhere there are