Pre-Raphaelite and other Poets

by Lafcadio Hearn

Here the substitution of these much simpler words gives nearly as fine an effect of sound and a grander effect of sense because of the grim power of the words themselves.

Besides studies in Biblical English, the poet has made a number of studies in the Old Anglo-Saxon poets, most of whom were religious men who liked sad and terrible subjects. In the poem entitled "After Death" we have an example of this Anglo-Saxon feeling combined with the plain strength of a later form of language, chiefly Middle English, with here and there a very quaint use of grammar. It was common in Anglo-Saxon poetry to depict the horrors of the grave. Here we have a dead man talking to his own coffin, and the coffin answers him horribly:

The four boards of the coffin lid
Heard all the dead man did.
. . . . . . .
"I had fair coins red and white,
And my name was as great light;
"I had fair clothes green and red,
And strong gold bound round my head.
"But no meat comes in my mouth,
Now I fare as the worm doth;
"And no gold binds in my hair,
Now I fare as the blind fare.
"My live thews were of great strength,
Now am I waxen a span's length;
"My live sides were full of lust,
Now are they dried with dust."
The first board spake and said:
"Is it best eating flesh or bread?"
The second answered it:
"Is wine or honey the more sweet?"
The third board spake and said:
"Is red gold worth a girl's gold head?"
The fourth made answer thus:
"All these things are as one with us."
The dead man asked of them:
"Is the green land stained brown with flame?
"Have they hewn my son for beasts to eat,
And my wife's body for beasts' meat?
"Have they boiled my maid in a brass pan,
And built a gallows to hang my man?"
The boards said to him:
"This is a lewd thing that ye deem.
"Your wife has gotten a golden bed;
All the sheets are sewn with red.
"Your son has gotten a coat of silk,
The sleeves are soft as curded milk.
"Your maid has gotten a kirtle new,
All the skirt has braids of blue.
"Your man has gotten both ring and glove,
Wrought well for eyes to love."
The dead man answered thus:
"What good gift shall God give us?"
The boards answered anon:
"Flesh to feed hell's worm upon."

I doubt very much whether a more terrible effect could be produced by any change of language. The poem is an excellent illustration of the force of the Old English, without admixture of any sort. Do not think that this is simple and easy work; perhaps no other living man could have done it equally well. It is not only in these simple forms, however, that Swinburne shows us the results of his Old English studies. Two of the most celebrated among his early poems, "The Triumph of Time" and the poem on the swallow, "Itylus," are imitations of very old forms of English verse, though the language is luxurious and new. I have already given you a quotation from the former poem, describing the poet's love of the sea. I now cite a single stanza of "Itylus."

Swallow, my sister, O sister swallow,
How can thine heart be full of the spring?
A thousand summers are over and dead.
What hast thou found in the spring to follow?
What hast thou found in thine heart to sing?
What wilt thou do when the summer is shed?

Probably Swinburne found this measure in early Middle English poetry; it was used by the old poet Hampole in his "Prick of Conscience." After it had been forgotten for five hundred years, Swinburne brought it to life again. Something very close to it forms the splendid and beautiful chorus of "Atalanta in Calydon":

When the hounds of spring are on winter's traces,
The mother of months in meadow or plain
Fills the shadows and windy places
With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain;
And the brown bright nightingale amorous
Is half assuaged for Itylus,
For the Thracian ships and the foreign faces,
The tongueless vigil, and all the pain.

Here as in all other cases, however, the poet has far surpassed his model. The measures which he revived take new life only because of the extraordinary charm which he has put into them.

Passing suddenly from these lighter structures, let us observe the great power which Swinburne manifests in another kind of revival, the sixteen syllable line. This is not a modern measure at all. It was used long ago, but was practically-abandoned and almost forgotten except by scholars when Swinburne revived it. Nor has he revived it only in one shape, but in a great many shapes, sometimes using single lines, sometimes double, or again varying the accent so as to make four or five different kinds of verse with the same number of syllables. The poem "The Armada" is a rich example of this re-animation and variation of the long dead form. In this poem Swinburne describes the god of Spain as opposed to the god of England, and the most forceful lines are those devoted to these conceptions. Observe the double rhymes.