Better a cross and nails through either hand,
Than Pilate’s palace and a frozen soul!
Here are originality, strength, and white heat of feeling, though the sestett is less artistic than the octave, which holds the creative beauty of the sonnet.
Of the lyrical poems in the second volume there are many clear of tone, having not only a pure, enunciative quality musically, but also color and picturesqueness, as that beginning:
With all his purple spoils upon him
Creeps back the plunderer Sea,
with its succession of pictures such as these:
O bandit, with the white-plumed horsemen,
Raiding a thousand shores,
Thy coffers crammed with spars and anchors