Ye flaming Ethers thin,
Condensing till the abiding sweetness win
One sweet drop more;
One sweet drop more in the measureless increase
Of honied peace.
These are not seventeenth-century verse, but they are striking examples of Victorian verse worked upon by two main influences from the seventeenth century, and they bring Patmore representatively into line on the one hand with the “florid and flowing schemes” of Tennyson, and on the other with the “stiffer movement and graver tones” of Arnold. And that outside both these he was also subject to the instincts of Browning’s characteristic manner the following poem will show.
A woman is a foreign land,
Of which, though there he settle young,
A man will ne’er quite understand
The customs, politics and tongue.