Page:Essays and Studies - Swinburne (1875).pdf/89

 measurable and imperishable. The other three of these studies have something of the same air and flavour: their keen truthfulness and subtle sincerity touch the same springs and kindle the same pulses of thought. The passionate accuracy of sense half blunted and half whetted by obsession and possession of pain is given in "The Woodspurge" with a bitterly beautiful exactitude.

In all the glorious poem built up of all these poems there is no great quality more notable than the sweet and sovereign unity of perfect spirit and sense, of fleshly form and intellectual fire. This Muse is as the woman praised in the divine words of the poet himself,

Whose speech Truth knows not from her thought Nor Love her body from her soul."

And if not love, how then should judgment? for love and judgment must be one in those who would look into such high and lovely things. No scrutiny can distinguish nor sentence divorce the solid spiritual truth from the bodily beauty of the poem, the very and visible soul from the dazzling veil and vesture of fair limbs and features. There has been no work of the same pitch attempted since Dante sealed up his youth in the sacred leaves of the "Vita Nuova;" and this poem of his namechild and translator is a more various and mature work of kindred genius and spirit.

Other parts of his work done here have upon them the more instant sign of that sponsor and master of his mind; there is a special and delicate savour of personal interest in the sonnet on the "darkness" of Dante,