Page:Essays and Studies - Swinburne (1875).pdf/207

 where either the meaning or the reading is dubious and debateable. In the thirteenth stanza, having described, under the splendid symbol of a summons sent from Vesuvius to Etna across the volcanic islets of Stromboli (the "Æolian isles" of old), how Spain calls England, by example of revolution, to rivalry of resurrection (in 1820, be it observed), the poet bids the two nations, "twins of a single destiny," appeal to the years to come. So far all is plain sailing. Then we run upon what seems a sudden shoal or hidden reef. What does this mean?

"Impress us from a seal, All ye have thought and done! Time cannot dare conceal."

The construction is at once loose and intricate; the sentence indeed limps on both feet; but I am not sure that here is not rather oversight than corruption. The sense at starting is clearly—"Impress us with all ye have thought or done, which time cannot dare conceal;" or, "Let all ye have thought and done impress us," and so forth. The construction runs wild and falls to pieces; we found and we must leave it patchwork; for no violence of alteration, were such permissible, could force it into coherence. When Shelley's grammar slips or trips, as it seems to do at times, the fault is a fault of hasty laxity, not of ignorance, of error, of defective sense or taste such as Byron's; venial at worst, not mortal.

We start our next question in the fifteenth stanza. Whose or what is "the impious name" so long and so closely veiled under the discreet and suggestive decency of asterisks? It was at once assumed and alleged to be the name of which Shelley had already said, through the