Page:Essays and Studies - Swinburne (1875).pdf/76

 the very heart and mystery of darkness, the very music and the very passion of wave and wind; the other by that most wonderful and adorable poem in which all the sweet and bitter madness of love strong as death is distilled into deathless speech, the little lyric tragedy of Gastibelza: next, after many silent or at least songless years, the pealing thunders and blasting sunbeams of the "Châtiments:" then a work yet wider and higher and deeper than all these, the marvellous roll of the "Contemplations," having in it all the stored and secret treasures of youth and age, of thought and faith, of love and sorrow, of life and death; with the mystery of the stars and the sepulchres above them and beneath: then the terrible and splendid chronicle of human evil and good, the epic and lyric "Légende des Siècles," with its infinite variety of action and passion infernal and divine: then the subtle and full-throated carols of vigorous and various fancy built up in symmetrical modulation of elaborate symphonies by vision or by memory among the woods and streets: and now the sorrowful and stormy notes of the giant organ whose keys are the months of this "Année Terrible." And all these make up but one division of the work of one man's life: and we know that in the yet unsounded depth of his fathomless genius, as in the sunless treasure -houses of the sea, there are still jewels of what price we know not that must in their turn see light and give light. For these we have a prayer to put up that the gift of them may not be long delayed. There are few delights in any life so high and rare as the subtle and strong delight of sovereign art and poetry; there are none more pure and more sublime. To have