A GREAT ENGLISH POET.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIC, Issue 13920, 3 June 1909, Page 7

A GREAT ENGLISH POET.

(London "Daily Chronicle")

The death of Mr Swinburne, full of Tears, of achievement and of honour, removes from our midst the last but one of the great Victorians. Mr Meredith, who for a while lived with the poet, happily remains, and his life already spans a yet longer period. But }tr>w mai.y literarj- and artistic links arc brofren by Mr Swinburne's death! He. had sat at the feet of Walter Savage Landor. He was introduced to Samuel Ropers. His early masterpiece was reviewed by Moncktcn Milnes, praised by Tennyson, extolled enthusiastically by Ruskin. He himself, as forward in praise as on occasion in contempt, did much to win its proper place for the poetry of Rossetti ami of Matthew Arnold. He was one of the first- to appreciate aright the art of AVhisticr, and long before Burne-Jones Lad established a popular vogue, the author of " J'oems and Hallads " had sent " revel of rhymes " to that artist's "palace of painting." The poet's death will sever many friendships, too, among living men of letters nnd artists; but most one thinks, with deep and grateful sympathy, of that Friend of friends, Mr Watts-Dunton. whose faithful companionship—"a pearl more perfect found in all the sea " —is commemorated in the sonnet prefatory to '"Tristram of Lyoiiessc." When a great poet, one of a brilliant band, is taken away, the temptation is inevitable to divuss his 'place," and to institute comparison*. The latter temptation sha-lt' hereto avoided by the remembrance of some lines by Matthew Arnold, which Mr Swinburne loved:— ' Tis Apollo comes leading his choir, the Nine— The leader is fairest, but all are divine. The special gift of Mr Swinburne, tho distinctive note which he added to English poetry, was perhaps best defined by Tennyson. He had received a copy of "• Atalaiita in Calydou." and in rviurning thanks for it he wrote: — " It has both strength and splendour, and shows a tine metrical invention which 1 envy you." And similarly his son reports him as saying of Swinburne: "a reed thro' which all things blow into music." It is the glory of Mr Swinburne that he brought new music into the lyrical poetry of England, and found a new flexibility, by metrical jnveiition, in the English tongue. "He was before all else a musician in words. He had his mannerisms, it is true, and the defects of his quality. Few poets have ever had so many imitators, and been -o often, or so cleverly, parodied—ncvor better, we think, than in a once famous Cambridge magazine called "The J.ight Green." There are places in Mr Swinburne's poetry where the word symbols seem to overpower the thought; poets, as well as orators, may sometimes be " intoxicated by the exuberance of their own verbosity." Even a resolute wrestler may here and there be forced to resign the search for tangible meaning, but never in the poet's work does the music cease to charm the ear. And how incomparable is tiic magic of his best pieces—«>f the choruses in "Atalaiita." for instance, and of many of the i- l'oems and Ballads"! There are few pieces in the language more haunting in their magic than " Itylns," the song of the nightingale to the swallow, or the " Leave-Taking " (" Let us go hence, my songs: she will not hear"): or than that most characteristic poem. "The Garden of Proserpine," which many a reader of Swinburne has by heart, and will say to himself today:—-

I'ale beyond porch and portal. Crowned with calm leaves she stands. ."Who gathers all things mortal With cold immortal hands. Mr Swinburne was sometimes supposed, by persons who did not read him, and judged him only by the report of certain juvenilia, to he the poet of voluptuous languors-. Jt is well to remember that, on the contrary, he was a poet, as we may say, of action, of political ideals, of burning patriotism. His "Songs lwfore Sunrise " were in praise of liberty and democracy, and on occasion—as in connection with the county franchise agitation —he was a |x>litical pamphleteer in verse. Many readers have recalled in recent times, we doubt not, his piece beginning "Clear the way, my lords and lackeys." Abo Mr Swinburne was intensely English. It is not, one likes to think, mere accident that so many of iiis verses turn into alliterative music—such as "the rain and ruin of roses over the; red-rose laud " —the beauty of the characteristically English flower. Jt was most certainly no accident—rather was it bred in the wet's bone —that lie was the chief singer of the sea. "My mother sea," he calls it; and ho was equally in his element, whether physically breasting the waves with the strength of a strong swimmer, or catching in his verse the scent of the sea-spray and the sounds of the sea winds. In the spirit oi the sea ho found " the spirit of all imaginable songs." and his patriotic poetry is instinct with the sense of the sea as the secret of his country's Tcatncss. Mr Swinburne has passed away in n. glorious spring-time which, like all true poets, he loved above all other seasons. Let us recall in memory of this great English poet his message to England : Where tb" footfall sounds of England. where the smile of England sliiuei.

Kings the tread and laughs the. face of freedom, fair as hope divines Days to be. more brave than ours and lit by lordlier stars for signs. All our past acclaims our future: Shakespeare's voice and Nelson's band, Milton's faith ami "Wordsworth's trust in this our chosen and chainless land, Bear us witness: conic the world against her, England yet shall .stand. A light that is more than the sunlight, an air that is brighter than morning's breath, Clothes England about as tbc strong sea clasps her. and answers the word that it snith : The word that assures her of life if she change not, and choose not the •w-.ivs of death.