f drama. But, despite his passion for description and his Catholic
and conventional tone, there is inexhaustible fancy, splendid colour,
and a modern element of individuality in his poems. His heroes are
conscious of their own ego, feel themselves to be 'a miniature
world,' and search out their own feelings 'in the wild waves of
emotion' (as Aurelian, for example, in _Zenobia_).

Fernando says in _The Constant Prince_:

These flowers awoke in beauty and delight
At early dawn, when stars began to set;
At eve they leave us but a fond regret,
Locked in the cold embraces of the night.
These shades that shame the rainbow's arch of light.
Where gold and snow in purple pomp are met,
All give a warning man should not forget,
When one brief day can darken things so bright.
'Tis but to wither that the roses bloom--
'Tis to grow old they bear their beauteous flowers,
One crimson bud their cradle and their tomb.
Such are man's fortunes in this world of ours;
They live, they die; one day doth end their doom,
For ages past but seem to us like hours.

The warning which Zenobia gives her captor in his hour of triumph to
beware of sudden reverses of fortune is finely conceived:

Morn comes forth with rays to crown her,
While the sun afar is spreading
Golden cloths most finely woven
All to dry her tear-drops purely.
Up to noon he climbs, then straightway
Sinks, and then dark night makes ready
For the burial of the sea
Canopies of black outstretching--
Tall ships fly on linen pinions,
On with speed the breezes send it,
Small the wide seas seem and straitened,
To its quick flight onward tending.
Yet one moment, yet one instant,
And the tempest roars, uprearing
Waves that might the stars extinguish,
Lifted for that ship's o'erwhelming.
Day, with fear, looks ever nightwards,
Calms must storm await with trembling;
Close behind the back of pleasure
Evermore stalks sadness dreary.

In _Life's a Dream_ Prince Sigismund, chained in a dark prison, says:

What sinned I more herein
Than others, who were also born?
Born the bird was, yet with gay
Gala vesture, beauty's dower,
Scarcely 'tis a winged flower
Or a richly plumaged spray,
Ere the aerial halls of day
It divideth rapidly,
And no more will debtor be
To the nest it hates to quit;
But, with more of soul than it,
I am grudged its liberty.
And the beast was born, whose skin
Sc