Page:Essays and Studies - Swinburne (1875).pdf/208

 lips of Prometheus, that "it had become a curse:" the name of Christ. I for one could hardly bring myself to doubt that the reviewer of the moment had read aright. No other word indeed will give so adequate a sense, fit in so fairly with the context. It should surely be a creed, a form of faith, upon which the writer here sets his foot. What otherwise shall we take to be "the snaky knot of this foul gordian word"—a word which, "weak itself as stubble," serves yet the turn of tyrants to bind together the rods and axes of their rule? If this does not mean a faith of some kind, and a living faith to this day, then it would seem at first sight that words have no meaning—that the whole divine fabric of that intense and majestic stanza crumbles into sparkling dust, dissolves into sonorous jargon. Any such vaguer substitute as "priest" or "king"