THE STORY OF A SOLACE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 15707, 8 March 1913, Page 14

THE STORY OF A SOLACE.

WITH SWINBURNE BY THE SEA.

By Cohstaot Bkamb,

Filled witJi a deliberate desire to render mora seal than union of life and literature which must exist if life is to be fully lived and literature adequately enjoyed, I have attempted and succeeded in an experiment the result of which -1 shall strive here to set down. 'In company with. Swinburne, I went to the sea, reading with several sympathetic souls such of Swinburne's poems as fitted the hour and the mood, and afterwards endeavouring to realise : those moods. As a consequence,I. can confidently affirm that to-day I comprehend Swinburne and understand the sea in a , sense impossible before, and I exult accordingly. '• A little more than two years ago" I wroie of "The Spell of . the Sea," calling upon Swinburne, Fiona Macleod, and other sweet singers to witness to the potency of that spell. I now .propose to tell of the "Solace of the Sea,' 1 citing. Swinburne as my witness. It has been well said that the poet had two master passions, the passion', of liberty and the passion of the sea- Nor is it .the world ;'of water alone that dominates his imagination, but with it the winds and the panorama, of the sky, ever rolling above,- Scarce one of his poems but contains at least a hint of the strong sympathy between the poet and this reilm of water and of air, while in much of his verse there, is to be found that intimacy with the wind and the sea that touches the highest level in that wonderful autopsychical poem ,'Thalassius." This is considered, in soroo sense, an idealised autobiography of a spiritual poet's progress.' The closing stanza., of this splendid example of Swinburne's nature verse compresses into 18 lines all the essential circumstances in the moulding of the character of this poet of the sea:—

Child of the sunlight and the sea, from birth A fosterling and fugitive on earth; Sleepless of soul as wind or wavo or fire, A manchild with an ungrown god's desire; Becauso thou hast loved nought mortal more than me, ■ Thy father, and thy mother hearted sea; Because thou hast set thine heart to 6ing, and 6old Life and life's love for song, God's living gold; Becauso thou hast given thy flower and fire

of youth To foed men's hearts with visions, truer

than truth; Because thou hast kept in those workf-

wandering eyes The Jijrht that makes the music of the skies; Because thou hast heard ■ with world un-

wearied ears Tho music that puts light into the spheres; Have.therefore in thino heart and iii thy mouth The sound of song that mingles north-and south,' y Tho song of all the winds that sing of me, And in t thy soul the sense of all the 6ea.

It was Swinburne's fate to be born, like Robert Browning, in London; but, happily,- hi 9 boyhood 'and'early youth were " spent in an intimate, at times an impassioned, communion with Nature. In particular the sensitive and' imaginative boy was early subject to the spell of the wind and the sea, the two elemental forces which are echoes reflected and interpreted throughout his poetry. Above all other poets of our country, or' of any country, Swinburne is the poet of the sea. The sound and colour of the moving wave live in almost every poem he has given us." So wrote William Sharp in an essay which prefaced a selection' of Swinburne's work published in 1901 in the Tauchnitz Collection of British .Authors, every word of which I most enthusiastically echo as the result of my recent experiences. I have read,, jvit-h avidity every line I have been able to lay hands upon that throws any sort of light upon the influences that went to make and to mould the poet's character, and in the article , which Mr Edmund Gosse' contributes to the third supplemental volume of the Dictionary of National Biography I discovered a few new and- interesting facts bearing upon Swinburne and the Sea. The Swinburnes are an old Northumbrian family, dating back to the time of Henry 111, when one Sir William de Swinburne was a Northumbrian to'be reckoned with, the name being probably one of the oldest of the Northumbrian clan names: — The poet was eldest child of Admiral Charles Henry Swinburne, who was second son of Sir John Edward Swinburne, sixth baronet of Capheaton, in Northumberland. He was brought up, with the exception of long - visits to Northumberland, in the Isle of Wight, his grandparents residing at The Orchard; Niton, Ventnor and his parents at. East Dene, Bonchurch. He had been born all but dead, and was not expected to live an hour; but though he was always nervous and'slight his childhood, spent mainly in the open air, was active and healthy, ' He early developed a love for 'climbing, riding, and swimming, and never cared through life for any other sports. His father, the admiral, taught him to plunge in the. sea when he was still almost an infant, and he wa6 always fearless, and in relation to his physique a powerful swimmer. "He could swim and'walk for ever," says Lord Redesdale. ... In 1851 Algernon—who had gone to Eton at Easter, 1849—" passed " in swimming, and at this time in the holidays caused some anxiety bv his recklessness in Tiding and climbing; he swarmed up the Culver Cliff, hitherto held to be impregnable—a fact of which he was proud to to.the end of his life. In 1865 he received a letter from a young Welsh squire, George E. J. Powell, who soon became, and for several years remained, the most intimate of Swinburne's friends. . . . Swinburne's extremely nervous /organisation laid him open to great dangers, and he was peculiarly unfitted for. dissipation. Moreover, about this time he began to be afflicted wit.h what is considered' to have been, a form of epilepsy, which made it highly undesirable that he should be alone. In April, 1867, Swinburne wrote "Ave Atque Vale." Thus was a time of wild extravagance and of the least agreeable episodes of ihis. life; his excesses told upon .his health, which had already suffered,. and there were several recurrences of his malady.' In July, 1868, he had a fit in the reading room of the British Museum, and was ill for a month afterwards. He was taken down to Holmwood, near Henley-on-Thames, where his father and family ■ were .then settled, and when sufficiently recovered started in September for Etretat, where he and Powell hired a small villa, which they named the C'naumier de Dolmance. The sea bathing was beneficial, but on his return to London Swinburne's illnesses, fostered by his own / obstinate imprudence, visibly increased in severity; in April, 1869, he complained of "ill health hardly intermittent through weeks and months." In the summer of 1870 ho and Powell settled again at Etretat; during this 1 visit Swinburne, who was bathing alone, was carried out to sea on the tide and nearly drowned, but was picked up by a smack which, carried him into port.' Swinburne's state became so alarming that, in September, 1879, Mr Theodore Watts, with the consent of Lady Jane Swinburne, removed him to his own house. The Pines, Putnev. where the Remaining 30 years of his life were spent in great retirement, but with he.vth slowly and completely restored. Under the guardianship of his devoted companion he pursued with extreme regularity a monotonous course of life ■ which was rarely diversified by even a visit to London, although it lay so near. In August, 1882, Mr Watts took him for some weeks to Guernsey and Sark. Swinburne's summer holidays, usually spent at the seaside, were the sources of much lyrical verse. These extracts arc sufficient to establish inv case, that just as dissipation in the city was Swinburne's curse so the Solace of the Sea was Swinburne's salvation. Sharn was well within the mark when he exclaimed in the samo essay from which I have already quoted, " Swinburne's life-

long passion for the sea, a passion that might well be called adoration, Ims. permeated his poetry- so widely and deeply that almost on every page of lyrical writing we smell the salt savour or hear the surge of the wave or the long sigh of many waters. Swinburne is the one. poet of the sea; the one poet to whom throughout his life the sea has been a passion and a.-dream, a bride and a comrade, the

'wild brother' of humanity and the mirror of Fate, the beginning and the end, .tno image of life and the. countenance." And because this dominion is a sea girt land, which abound in lovely bays and long stretches of delightful beaches, New Zealanders especially should have " grace to see " :— The deep divine dark dayshine of the sea Dense water-walls and clear dusk waterways Broad-based or branching as a sea flower ? sprays That side or this dividing. I am confident that if the weary men and troubled women who onoe a year retired to'some secluded spot by the side of the sea to seek rest and recuperation, would but make a volume of Swinbnrne their constant companion, they could comprehend as never before the sweet solace that oomes from the complete consciousness of "In my soul a sense of all the sea." At least it was in the,spirit of those' wonderful stanzas from "The Triumph of Time " that I went down to my favourite little secluded sea beach I will go back to the great sweet mother, Mother and lover of men, the sea, I will so down to her, I and none other. Close with her, kiss her, and mix her with me; Cling to her, strive with her, hold her fast. 0 fair white mother, in days long past, Born without sister, born without brother, Set free my soul as thy soul is free. 0, fair great girdled mother of mine, Sea that -art clothed with the sun and the rain, Thy hard, sweet kisses arc strong like wino, Thy large embraces aro : koen like pain. Save me and hide me with all thy waves, Find mo one grave of thy thousand graves, These cold, pure cold, populous graves of thine, Wrought without hand, in a world without stain.

This woven raiment of nights and days, Were it once ca6t off and unwound from me, Naked and glad would I walk in thy ways, . Alive and aware of thy ways and thee; Clear of the whole world, hidden at home, Clothed with the green and crowned 'with the foam, A pulse of the life of thy straits and bays, A vein in the heart of the streams of the 60a.

It has been' said that when Swinburne penned these entrancing lines he was sick at heart over a disappointment in love, and that he meditated suicide. This is not the meaning, however, that I take out of the stanzas. Rather to mo do they express the free unfettered spirit of the surf-bather, as leaving behind him the habitations of men he rushes on into the arms of the sea, his mother. Swinburne makes a fine distinction when he sings of the Esther Land and the Mother Sea; it expresses a delicate and artistic grrdation of thought. The thought of the sea .as mother is one of the first perceptions that comes from a study of Swinburne's sea poetry. It takes away the feaT with which most men regard the ocean, even when they venture on her bosom in a bcia.t or mix themselves with her in bathing or swimming. This complete abandonment to the sea which is one of the essentiaJs to understanding her and enjoying her, is eloquently illustrated in Ex Voto," written by Swinburne following his being carried out by the tide at Etretat, when he nearly lost his life:—

Not earth's for 6primr and fall, Not earth's at heart, not all Ea.rth ! 6 making, though men call Earth only mother, Not hcr's at heart sne baro Me, but thy child, 0 fair Sea,..and thy brother' 6 care, The wind, thy brother. Your's was I born, and ye The 6ea wind and the sea, Made all my soul in me A song for ever. ' A .harp to string and smite For love's sake of the bright Wind and the sea's delight, them never.. When thy 6alt lips well nigh Sucked in my mouth's last sigh, Grudged I so much to die This death as others? Was it no easo to think Hie chalice from, whose brink Fate gave mo death to drink Was thine—my mother's? Peace with all graves on earth, For death or sleep or birth Be, alway one in worth One, with another; But when my time shall be, 0 mother, 0 my sea, Alive or dead take me, Me too, my mother. - If Swinburne was not actually buried, like John Davidson, right, out at sai, at least his grave with those of his family is in- sight of the sea in the Bonchurch graveyard. Says William Sharp: "East Dene (near Bonchurch) and its lovely neighbourhood are sacred to Swinburne. Between Bonchurch and the western side of Ventnor is one of the loveliest coast trocts in England, and here the young .poet.spent many of.his happiest Jays. A relative by marriage, Sir Henjy Gordon (who had married the poet's aunt, Lady Mary Ashburnham) had a beautiful house and grounds on the Undercliff between St. Catherine's Point and BJackgang Chine; and here and at East Dene by the pineshadowed rocky slopes and grassy 'hollows of.that sunny sea-washed region many of the poems long so familiar to us were written. One of these in flawless music, ' Tho Forsaken Garden,' wiis inspired by and written near Old Bonchurch." And for a poet who was born with the salt of the sea in his veins, who loved the sea his life through, and who was laid by the sea when dead, what better atmosphere or epitaph could be imagined than tnat conveyed in these flawless lines?—

In the coign, of.tlic cliff between lowland and mainland, At the sea down's edge between windward and lee. Walled round with locks as an inland island, The ghost of a garden fronts the sea. ■ A girdle of brushwood and thorn encloses The steep square slops of the blosjomless bed, Where the weeds that prrew green from the graves of its roses j Now lie dead. i 1 Tho fields fall southward, abrupt' and ; broken, To the low last edge of the long lone land. If a 6tci) should sound, or a word be spoken, , Would a ghost not rise at the 6trange guest's hand ? So long have the grey, bare walks lain guesticss, Through branches and briars if a man make way, He shall find no life but the sea-wind' 6, restless Night and day. Hero death may deal not again for ever; Here change may come not till all change end. From the graves they have made they glial! rise up never, Who have left nought living to ravage \ and rend. Earth, stones,, and thorns of the wild 1 ground growing, While the sun and .the rain live, theso shall bo; ' Till a last wind's breath upon all these blowing Roll the sea. Till tho slow sea rise and the sheer cliff crumble, Till terrace and meadow the deep eulfs drink, \ Till the strength of the waves of the high tides humble The fields that lessen, the locks that shrink, Here now is his triumph where all things falter, Stretched out on the spoils that his own hand spread, As a god self-slain on his own strong altar, Death lies dead.

I cherish the thought that had Swin-' burne lived in New Zealand he would have immortalised many epois of the

coastline., of the dominion. as .he .has. done for a few of hiss favourite Te6orts on the Isle of Wight, in Northumberland, or in the Channel Islands. In the dedicatory epistle to the collected edition of his poems he writes: "It is hardly probable that especial and familiar love of places should give any special value to verses written under the influence of their charm; no intimacy of years. and no association with the past gave any colour of emotion to many other studies of English land and sea which certainly are not kfs faithful and possibly have no less spiritual or poetic life in them than the four to which I have just referred, whose localities He all ivithin the boundary of. a mile or so. No contrast could be stronger than that between the majestic and exquisite glory of cliff and crag, lawn and woodland, garden; and lea, to which I have done homage, though assuredly I have not done justice, in these four poems—' In the Bay,' 'On the Cliffs,'. 'A Forsaken Garden,' the dedication of 'The Sisters,'—and the dreary beauty, inhuman if not unearthly in its desolation of the innumerable creeks and inlets lined and paved with sea flowers, which make of. the salt marches a fit and funereal settings a fatal and appropriate foreground, to the supreme desolation of the relics of Dunwicli; the beautiful and awful' solitude of a wilderness on which the sea has. forbidden man to build or live, over-' topped and bounded by the tragic and ghastly solitude of a. headland on which tha sea has forbidden the works of human charity and piety to survive; between the' dense and sand-encumbered tides which axe eating the desecrated wrecks and ruins of them all away, and the matchless magic, the. ineffable fascination of the seas, whose beauties and delights, whose translucent depths of water and divers coloured banks of submarine foliage and flowerage, but faintly reflected in . the stanzas of the little ode ' Off Shore,' complete the charm of the scenes as faintly sketched or shadowed forth in the poems just named, or the sterner and stranger magic of the seaboard to which tribute was paid in 'An Autumn Vision,' 'A Swimmer's Dream,' 'On the South 'Neap Tide'; or again between the sterile stretches and sad limitless outlook of the shore which faces a hitherto undetermined and interminable sea,' and the joyful and fateful beauty of the seas off Bamfoorough and the seas about Sark and. Guernsey." It is significant that the poems' mentioned by the poet himself as those in which he' took the greatest pride are poems o! the eea. As a wonderful word-picture of the sea as she is in and a# she appeared to me during the. past few weeks, "Off Shore" especially gives me delight. I append the _first four stanzas as sample of the beauty of the whole:

When the might of the summer Is most on the sea; When the days ovcrcomo her With joy but to be, With rapture of loyal enchantment, and 6orcery that sets her not free, But for hours upon hours As a thrall she remains Spellbound as with flowers, And content in her chains; And her loud steeds fret not, and lift not a lock of their deep white manes. Then only, far under In the depths of her hold Some gleam of its wonder Man's eyes may behold, Its' wild weed forests of crimson and russet and olive and gold. Still dimmer and dimmer, And goodlier they grow, For the eyes of the swimmer .Who scans them below, As he crosses the zone of their flowerage tliat knows not of sunshine and snow

The sea has many moods, as he who watches it from these shores can abundantly testify ; and during the past few weeks these moods have had swift and wonderful changes. Scarce any two following hours by, night or by day have witnessed ( exactly the same scene. Yet divers as the moods- and differing the scenes, I was always able to find some line.tif Swinburne's that put into eloquent words what I had been feeling and seeing. "Mere descriptive poetry of the'prepense and formal kind is exceptionally, if not proverbially, liable to incur and to deserve the charge of dullness; it is unnecessary to emphasise or obtrude the personal note, the presence t)r motion of a spectator, but it is necessary to 'make it felt and keep it perceptible if the poem is to have lffe in it or even a right to live." And I am in hearty agreement with Swinburne when liocontinues" The half-brained creature to whom books are other than living tilings may see with the eyes of a bat and draw with the fingers of a mole his dullard's distinction between books and life; those who live the fuller life of a higher animal than he know that books are to poets as much part of that life as pictures are to painters or music is to musicians, dead matter though they may be to the spiritually still-born children of dirt and dullness who find it : possible and natural to live while still dead in heart and brain." Read by the side of, and under the influence of the sea Swinburne's poetry becomes a living power set to div.inest music,, and capable of imparting the ■ most' exquisite pleasure and of exciting the strong-, est emotions. Perhaps of the many poems which together—one of the party reading albud whilst the others yielded themselves to the influence of the poetry (for it is only thus that Swinburne's true value may be obtained) —tile, favourite was "Loch Torridon"—that poem in. which the personal note " is more plain and positive than usual," and which, according to the poet himself, is " at once a simple and ambitious attempt to render the contrast and the concord of night and day pn Loch Torridon." Properly to appreciate , this splendid poem, I found it essential to wander by the side of the sea at midnight as prelude to these entrancing lines: And ever while the night grew great and deep We felt, but saw not, what the hills would keep Sacred awhile from sense of moon or star; And full and far Beneath us, sweet and strange as heaven may be, The sea. , The very sea; no mountain-moulded lako Whose fluctuani shapeliness is fain to take Shape from the steadfast shore that rules it round,. And only from the storms a casual sound; Tho sea, that, harbours jn her heart sublime The supreme heart of music deep as time, And in her spirit strong The spiric of all imaginable song. Not a whisper or lisp' from the waters; the skies were not silcnter. Peace Was between them; a passionless rapturo pf as soft as release. . Not a sound, but a sense that possessed and pervaded with patient delight The soul and the body, clothed round with the comfort of limitless night. Night infinite, living, adorable, loved of the land and the sea; Night, mother of mercies, who saith to the spirits in prison, Bo free. _ And softer than dewfall, and kindlier than starlight, and keener than wine, Caino round us the fragrance of waters, the life of the breath of the brine. We saw not, we heard not, the face or the voice of tho waters; wo kne\V , By the darkling delight of tho wind as tho sense of the sea'in it grow, By tho pulse of the darkness about us enkindled. and quickened, that, here, Unseen and unheard of us, surely the goal we had faith in was near. . A silence diviner than music, a darkness diviner than light, Fulfilled as from heaven with a measureless comfort the measure of night. Here Swinburne's magnificent command over the musical resources of the English language is heightened by the skilful fashion in which he varies his metre to suit Nature's mood. The magic of the night, a magic enhanced by the detachment which silence and the absence of sight invariably brings, may bs felt to the J, full in the presence of the sea. A. superficial acquaintance with Swinburne generally leads to the conclusion that his lines arc little, more than a musical exercise, pleasant to listen to, but ctmveying no moaning and exciting no emotion. A reading of " Loch Torridon" by the side of the sea alters all that, and gives both reader and listener a new view of tho poet's power, a vision that will not easily be forgotten. To anyone wishful of making an experiment, I would say, select one of those calm, quiet nights which are so frequent

.at.this time.of year.;- .take-the--last-car from town southwards, and then going out into the, night'walk till you reach the sea, seek a sheltered spot, as near as may be to the-water's edge, and endeavour to understand the atmosphere of the lines following:— ' , But never a roof for shelter, And never a sign for guide Rose doubtful or visible; .only , ...And hardly and gladly wo heard " Tho soft waves whisper and welter, Subdued, aild.allured to subside,. B'v the mild night's magic; the lonelv Sweet silence was soothed, noostirred, By the noi.-olefis noise of I'ne gleaming Glad, ripples, -that played and sighed, Kissed, laughed, recoiled and relented, ..Whispered, flickered' and fled,' ■■ No season was. this'for dreaming, How oft, with a stormier tide, Had the wrath.of the winds been vented On the sons of the tribes long dead; Tho tribes whom time and the changes Of things, and the stress of doom, Have erased and effaced; forgotten As wrccks or weeds of the shore In sight of ,thc stern hill ranges That hardly mav change [heir gloom When tho fruits of the years .wax rotten, ■ And the seed of them springs no more. For the dim straight footway dividing The waters that breathed below Led safe to (he kindliest of shelters That ever awoke into light; And still in remembrance abiding Broods over the stars that glow, And the water that eddies and welters The passionate peace'of the night. All nighc long, in the world of sleep, Skies and waters were soft and deep; Shadow clothed them, and silence mado Soundless music of dream and shade; All above us, the livelong night, Shadow, kindled with sense of light; All around us, the brief night long, Silence, laden with sense of song. Stars and mountains without, we knew, Watched and waited the soft night through; All unseen, but divined and-dear, Thrilled the touch of the sea's breath near; All unheard but alive like sound, Throbbed the sense of the sea's .life round; Round us, near us in depth and height, Soft as darkness and keen as light. It is sccnes 6uch as this, and the exquisite emotions_wliich "the passionate peace of the night" excites, that causes one to regret the long hours spent in sleep. Wandering by the sea after midnight, there comes an almost irresistible impulse to wait for the dawn. Great as is the joy of plunging into the sea in the sunlight, there is a greater joy, an indescribable exultation, attending upon a gambol in the surf in the night, when one can hardly sec the water, buUmay only feel it.approach, and yield to its intimate caress. Then, as delicious contrast, comes an experience like unto Swinburne's. I again quote from'"Lake Torridon —

Scarce had I sprung to the sea When the dawn and tho water were wedded, the hills and the sky set free. Tile chain of the night was broken; the waves that embraced mo and smiled And flickered and fawned in tho sunlight, alive, unafraid, undeOlod, Were sweeter to swim in than air, though fulfilled with the mounting morn, Could bo for tho birds whoso triumph rejoiced that a day was born. And the poet has a fine reproach for. the man, who, weary with watching for the dawn, at length seeks refuge in slumber, thus losing the sight of the glorious sunrise. From "A Wasted Vigil" I'take the following few verses : — Couldst thou not watch with me one hour? Behold, Dawn skims the sea with flying feet of gold, With sudden feet that graze the gradual sea; Couldst thou not watch with me? What,'not olio hour? For star by star the night Falls, and her thousands world by world take flight ; They die, and day survives, and what of thee? Couldst thou not watch with me?

■ Lo, far in heaven the web of night

undone, And on the sudden sea the gradual sun; Wave to wave answers] tree responds to tree; Couldst thou not watch with me? Sunbeam by sunbeam creeps from line to

line, Foam by foam quickens on tho brighten-

ing brine; Sail by sail passes, flower by flower gets free; , Couldst thou not watch with me? What of the night? 'The night is full, the tide Storms inland,. the most ancient rocks divide; 1 Yet some .endure, and bow nor head . nor knee; : Couldst thou not watch with me? Since thou art not as these are, go thy ways;' ; . Thou hast no part in all my nights and days.' Lio still, sleep on, be glad—as snch things be; Thou couldst not watch with me. I should like to dwell on '"Hesperia," with its wonderful picture of a sunset, commencing ■ Out of the golden remote wild west where tho sea without shore is, Full of the sunset, and sad if at all with the fulness of joy going into that fascinating fancy , From the bountiful infinite west, from the happy memorial places ' Full of the stately repose and tho lordly delight of .the dead, Where the fortunate isles are lit with tho light of ineffable faces, _ -' And the sound of a sea without wind is about them, and sunset is red. Also I should like to refer to "The Tale of Balen," of which Swinburne himself writes "There is no episode in the cycle of Arthurian romance more genuinely Homeric in its sublime simplicity and Its pathetic sublimity of submission to the masterdom of fate than that which I have reproduced in ' The Tale of Balen'; and impcesible as it is to render the text or express the spirit of the Iliad in English prose or Thyme—above all. in English verse—it is possible, in such a metre as was chosen and refashioned for this poem, to give some sense of the rage and rapture of battle for which Homer himself could only find fit, and full expression by'similitudes drawn, like mine, from the revels and the terrors and the glories of the sea," As illustration of Swinburne's use of the similitude'of the sea to express the rage and the rapture: of battle, nothing better could be cited than the encounter between Launceor and Balen :—

As the arched wave's weight against the reef ■ ' ' ' , . Hurls, and is -huTled back.like a leaf Storm-shrivelled, and its rage of grief. Speaks all-the loud brqad sea in brief, And quells the hearkening- hearts 'of

Or as: bho crash of overfalls Down under blue smooth water brawls Like jarring steel on ruining walls, So rang their meeting then. As wave'on wave shocks and confounds The bounding bulk whereon.it bounds And breaks and shattering seaward sounds As crying of the old sea's wolves and . hounds That moan and rave and rage and wail, So steed on steed encountering sheer Shocked, and tho strength of Launceor's spear Shivered on Balei'.'s shield and fear Bade hope within him quail.

There is another stanza in "The Tale of Balen" which exactly expresses the aspect of the sea on our coast this autumntide < In autumn, when, tho wind and sea Rejoice to live, and laugh to be, And scarce the blast that curbs tho tree And bids before it quail and flee The fiery foliage, where its brand Is radiant as the seal of spring, Sounds less delight, and waves a wing Less lustrous, life's loud thanksgiving Puts iife iri sea and land. The solacc of the sea is to be found everywhere in Swinburne's poetry by those who have the heart to seek after it. Besides the poems from which I have quoted, there are many memorable sea passages

in "Songs of Four Seasons," "By tho North Sea," "On the South Coast,' 1 "Neap Tide," and "An Autumn Vision." All these, and many more of Jike quality, I must reluctantly pass by, but I cannot forbear to quote one favourite little gem, "A Night Piece by Millet" :— Wind and- 6ea and cloud forsaking Mirth of moonlight whero the storm leaves fleo Heaven awhile, for all the wrath of waking Wind and sea. Bright with glad mad rapture, fierce with glee, Laughs tho moon, borne on past clouds o'ertaking '• Par it eeems as wind or rail can flee. One blown sail beneath her hardly making Forth wild-winged for harbourago yet to be, Strives and leaps and pants beneath the breaking Wind and sea. 1 ■ conclude with 'two companion examples-of Swinbnrne's singing, both of whjah. extol his prowess as swimmer. The first records his feat in persisting to swim the Lake .of Gaube, despite the protests of the peasants of the district, who regarded it as a piece of fool-hardi-ness and full of peril: —

Fear held tho bright thing hateful, even as fear, Whose name is one with hate and horror saith ■ . ' That 'heaven, the dark, deep heaven of water near, • Is deadly deep: as?hell and dark as dca-t'n.

The rapturous plunge that quickens blood and breath : With tfluso more sweet than passion, ere they strive To raisp again the limbs that yet would divC , Deeper, should there have elain the soul alive.

As tho bright salamander in fire of tho moonshine exults and is glad of his day, The spirit that quickens my body rejoiccs to pass from the sunlight away,, To pass from the glow of the mountainous fiowerage, the high multitudinous bloom From, down through the fathomless night of the water, the gladness of sileuco ■ and gloom.

Death—dark and delicious as death in the dream of a lover and dreamer may be, It claps and encompasses body and soul with delight to bo living and free; Frfee utterly now, though tho freedom endure but the spaeo of a perilous breath. And living, fiiough girdled about with the darkness and coldness and strangeness of 'death; Each limb and each putee of tho body rejoicing, each nerve of the spirit at rest. All sense of the soul's life rapture, a passionate peace in it's blindness blest. So plunges the downward swimmer, embraced of tho water unfathomed of man, Tho darkness unplummetod, icier than seas in midwinter, for blessing or ban; And swiftly and sweetly, when strength and breath fall short and tho dive is done, Shoots up as n shaft from the dark depth shot, 6ped straight into sight of the sun. And sheer through the snow-soft water, more dark than the roof of tho pines above, Strikes forth and is glad as a bird -whoso flight is impelled and sustained o.f love. As a sea mew's love of tho seaweed breasted and ridden for raputure's sake Is the love of his body and soul for the darkling delight ■ of the soundless lake, As the silent speed of a dream too living to live for a thought's 6?ace more Is the flight of his limbs through the still, strong chill of the darkness from shore to shore. Might life bo as this is and death be as life that casts off time a 6 robe, Tho likeness of infinite heaven were a symbol revealed of the lake of Gaubc.

For my final quotation I am divided between Tristram's srr-eat swirii—the poem of which Paul Elmer More declares, "The sensation left from a reading of ' Tristram of Lyonesse' is of a vast phantasmagoria, in which the beating of waves and the noise of winds, the flight of dawns breaking on the water, and the floating web of stars are jumbled up together in splendid but inextricable confusion "—and "A Swimmer's Dream"; but I decided upon , the latter. I should like to quote it whole, but must fain content myself with some selected stanzas, which seem to mp _to express in perfect measure and with perfect music the Solace of the Sea: Dawn is dim on the dark soft water, . Soft and passionate, dark and sweet. Love's on self was the deep sea's daughter, ' Fair and flawless from face to feet. Hailed of allwhcnthc world was golden, Love of lovers whoso names beholden Thrills men's eyes as with light of olden Dai's more glad than their flight was fleet. All the strength of the waves that perish Swells beneath me and laughs and sighs, S'ghs for love of the life they cherish, Laughs to know that ,it lives and dies, Dies for joy of its live and lives Thrilled with joy that its < brief death gives— Death whose laugh or whose breath forgives Change that bids it subside and i;ise. The grey sky gleams and the grey seas ' glimmer, Palo and sweet as a dreamer's delight, As a dream's where darkness and light seem dimmer,. - Touohed by dawn or'subdued by night. Tho dark wind stern and sublime and sad, Wings tho rollers to westward clad ; With lu6trou3 shadow that lures the swimmer ' ■ Lures and lulls him with dreams, of ■ light. ; A dream, a dream Js it all—tho season, The sky, the water, the wind, .the shore? A day born dream of divine unreason, . A marvel moulded of sleep—llo more? For the cloudlike wave that my limbs while cleaving Fell as in slumber beneath t-liem heaving Soothes tho sense as to slumber leaving Sense of nouglit that was known of yore. A purer passion, a lordlier leisure, A peace more happy than lives on land Fulfils with .pulse of diviner, pleasure The dreaming head and tho steering hand. ' I.lean my cheek to the cold grey pillow Tho deep soft swell of the full ■ broad billow, ' ■ And close mine eyes for delight past measure; And wish the wheel of the world would stand.