Page:Essays and Studies - Swinburne (1875).pdf/94

 "As when a bird flies low Between the water and the willow-leaves, And the shade quivers till he wins the light."

In what poet's work shall we find a touch of more heavenly beauty, a nobler union of truth and charm? and in what painter's a statelier and sweeter mastery of nature than here?

Her body bore her neck as the tree's stem Bears the top branch: and as the branch sustains The flower of the year's pride, her high neck bore Her face made wonderful with night and day."

The purest pathos of all is in the little episode of the broken figure of Love, given to the child by her preserver, and the wound of its dart on her hand; nothing in conception or in application could be tenderer or truer; nothing more glorious in its horror than the fancy of heaven changing at its height before the very face of a Spirit in paradise, with no reflection of him left on it:

"Like a pool that once gave back Your image, but now drowns it and is clear Again,—or like a sun bewitched, that burns Your shadow from you, and still shines in sight."

Admirable as it is throughout for natural and moral colour, the poem is completed and crowned for eternity by the song set on the front of it as a wreath on a bride's hair, of which I can hardly say whether the Italian or the English form be the more divine. The miraculous faculty of transfusion which enables the cupbearer to pour this wine of verse from the golden into the silver cup without spilling was never before given to man. All Mr. Rossetti's translations bear the same evidence of a power not merely beyond reach but beyond attempt of other