Page:Essays and Studies - Swinburne (1875).pdf/30

 its purity and exaltation are to be noted; nothing of common is there, nothing of theatrical. And indeed it meeded the supreme sweetness of Dea's reappearance, a figure translucent with divine death, a form of flesh that the light of heaven shines through more and more as the bodily veil wears thinner and consumes, to close with music and the luminous vision of a last comfort a book so full of the sound and shine of storm. With the clamour and horror yet in our ears of that raging eloquence in which the sufferer flings into the faces of prosperous men the very flame and hell-fire of his suffering, it needed no less than this to leave the mind exalted and reconciled. But this dew of heaven is enough to quench or allay the flames of any hell. There are words of a sweetness unsurpassable, as these: "Tout cela s'en va, et il n'y aura plus de chansons." And upon all there dwells the measureless and nameless peace of night upon a still sea. To this quiet we have been led through all the thunder and tumult of things fatal, from the tempestuous overture of storm and whirlwind; from sea again to sea. There is a divine and terrible harmony in this chorus of the play, secretly and strangely sustained, yet so that on a full reading we feel it, though at first sight or hearing it must be missed.

Of the master's unequalled power upon natural things, upon the elements we call inanimate, knowing even less the laws of their life than of ours, there is happily no need, as surely there are no words, to speak. Part of this power we may recognise as due to the subtle and deep admixture of moral emotion and of human sentiment with the mysterious action and passion of nature. Thus in