Page:Essays and Studies - Swinburne (1875).pdf/158

 air; you can breathe and move in their landscape, nor are you tripped up and caught at in passing by intrusive and singular and exceptional beauties which break up and distract the simple charm of general and single beauty, the large and musical unity of things. Their best verse is not brought straight or worked right; it falls straight because it cannot fail awry; it comes right because it cannot go wrong. And this wide and delicate sense of right makes the impression of their work so durable. The effect is never rubbed off or worn out; the hot suffering eastern life of "The Sick King in Bokhara;" the basking pastures and blowing pines about the "Church of Brou;" the morning field and midday moorland so fondly and fully and briefly painted in "Resignation;" above all, to me at least, the simple and perfect sea-side in the "Merman"—"the sandy down where the sea-stocks bloom," the white-walled town with narrow paved streets, the little grey church with rain-worn stones and small leaded panes, and blown about all the breath of wind and sound of waves—these come in and remain with us; these give to each poem the form and colour and attire it wants, and make it a distinct and complete achievement. The description does not adorn or decorate the thought; it is part of it; they have so grown into each other that they seem not welded together, but indivisible and twin-born.

Of the five songs of Callicles—whom we have left somewhat too long midway on Etna—that of Marsyas seems to me the highest and sweetest in tone, unless the first place be rather claimed for that of Cadmus and Harmonia. Others may prefer the first for its exquisite