Page:Essays and Studies - Swinburne (1875).pdf/86

 ingenious abuse of imagery or misuse of figures, but with such gracious force of imagination that they seem to offer voluntary service. What interlude more radiant than that of the "Portrait," more gracious and joyous than the "Love-Letter," more tender than the remembered "Birth-Bond," more fervent than the memorial "Day of Love," more delicate than the significance of "Love's Baubles," more deep and full than the bitter-sweet "Life-in-Love," more soft in spiritual shade of changeful colour than "The Love-Moon," more subtly solemn in tragic and triumphant foresight than "The Morrow's Message," more ardent with finer fires and more tremulous with keener senses than the sonnets of parting, than "Broken Music" or "Death-in-Love," ever varied the high delight of verse, the sublime sustention of choral poetry through the length of an imperial work? In the sonnet called "Love-Sweetness" there is the very honey of pure passion, the expression and essence of its highest thought and wisdom; and in that called "He and I," the whole pain and mystery of growing change. Even Shelley never expressed the inmost sense and mighty heart of music as this poet has done in "The Monochord." There are no lyrics in our lyrical English tongue of sweeter power than the least of these which follow the sonnets. The "Song of the Bower" is sublime by sheer force of mere beauty; the sonorous fluctuation of its measure, a full tide under a full moon, of passion lit and led by memory to and fro beneath fiery and showery skies of past and future, has such depth and weight in its moving music that the echo of it is as a sea-shell in the mind's ear for ever. Observe the glorious change of note from the delicate colour of