Page:Essays and Studies - Swinburne (1875).pdf/216

 the "Suppliants," and lacking a critic to "cure the halt and maimed," as Mr. Browning says of that glorious and hapless poem whose godlike grace and heroic beauty so many readers have more or less passed over with half a recognition, for no fault but its misfortune. I shall touch but on one or two points of dispute in the text as we find it; and first on this (II. 4):—

"Till marble grew divine, And mothers, gazing, drank the love men see Reflected in their race, behold, and perish."

The simplest explanation here possible is, I believe, the right. Women with child gazing on statues (say on the Venus of Melos) bring forth children like them—children whose features reflect the passion of the gaze and perfection of the sculptured beauty; men, seeing, are consumed with love; "perish" meaning simply "deperire;" compare Virgil's well-worn version, "Ut vidi, ut perii." I do not think there is any hint of contrast between transient flesh and immortal marble.

In another passage Mr. Rossetti, with the touch of true and keen criticism, has given us at least a reasonable reading in place of one barely explicable. As the text has hitherto stood, Prometheus says to the Earth-Spirit (I. 1),

I only know that thou art moving near And love. How cursed I him?"

This I always assumed to mean merely—"That thou art moving near, and dost love (me)," finding elsewhere such laxities of remiss writing or printing as that of "love" for "lovest;" nor am I now sure that this was