Page:Essays and Studies - Swinburne (1875).pdf/254

 editor seems willing to seek in it; the "lady witch" being simply an incarnation of ideal beauty and beneficence, in her relations to man a spiritual patroness of free thought and free love, in her relations to nature a mistress or an adept of her secret rites or forces. Nor does it seem to me that Mr. Rossetti has touched on the one point where the "Epipsychidion" might be plausibly represented as open to attack. Its impalpable and ethereal philosophy of love and life does not prevent it from being "quite a justifiable sort of poem to write;" the questionable element in it is the apparent introduction of such merely personal allusions as can only perplex and irritate the patience and intelligence of a loyal student, while they may not impossibly afford an opening for preposterous and even offensive interpretations. In all poetry as in all religions, mysteries must have place, but riddles should find none. The high, sweet, mystic doctrine of this poem is apprehensible enough to all who look into it with purged eyes and listen with purged ears; but the passages in which the special experience of the writer is thrust forward under the mask and muffler of allegoric rhapsody are not in any proper sense mysterious; they are simply puzzling; and art should have nothing to do with puzzles. This, and this alone, is the fault which in my opinion may be not unreasonably found with some few passages of the "Epipsychidion;" and a fault so slight and partial as merely to affect some few passages here and there, perceptible only in the byways and outskirts of the poem, can in no degree impair the divine perfection of its charm, the savour of its heavenly quality. By the depth and exaltation of its dominant