Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/162

132 another plane, not necessarily a lower but certainly a different one.

With respect to style, Swinburne is the most subjective of contemporary poets, yet he has made notable successes in dramatic verse,—chief of all, and earliest, the "Atalanta in Calydon," with whose Swinburne. auroral light a new star arose above our horizon. Nothing had been comparable to its imaginative music since the "Prometheus Unbound," and it surpassed even that—for its author had Shelley for a predecessor—in miracles of rhythmic melody. The "Prometheus" surges with its author's appeal from tyranny; "Atalanta" is a pure study in the beautiful, as statuesque as if done in Pentelican marble. Its serene verse, impressive even in the monometric dialogue, its monologues and transcendent choruses,—conceived in the spirit of Grecian art, but introducing cadences unknown before,—all these are of the first order. The human feeling that we miss in "Atalanta" is, on the other hand, a dramatic factor in Swinburne's Trilogy of Mary Stuart. But in his most impersonal The worth and disadvantage of a strongly individual style. work his fiery lyrical gift and individuality will not be suppressed. The noble dramas of Henry Taylor and Hengist Horne are more objective, but cannot vie with Swinburne's in poetic splendor. Now, as you know, this unrivalled voice is instantly recognized in his narrative romances, or in any strophe or stanza of his plenteous odes and songs. The result is that his vogue has