by the stars.
'We are what suns and winds and waters make us,' as Landor knew: the
whole essence of Swinburne seems to be made by the rush and soft flowing
impetus of the sea. The sea has passed into his blood like a passion and
into his verse like a transfiguring element. It is actually the last
word of many of his poems, and it is the first and last word of his
poetry.

He does not make pictures, for he does not see the visible world without
an emotion which troubles his sight. He sees as through a cloud of
rapture. Sight is to him a transfiguring thrill, and his record of
things seen is clouded over with shining words and broken into little
separate shafts and splinters of light. He has still, undimmed, the
child's awakenings to wonder, love, reverence, the sense of beauty in
every sensation. He has the essentially lyric quality, joy, in almost
unparalleled abundance. There is for him no tedium in things, because,
to his sense, books catch up and continue the delights of nature, and
with books and nature he has all that he needs for a continual inner
communing.

In this new book there are poems of nature, poems of the sea, the lake,
the high oaks, the hawthorn, a rosary, Northumberland; and there are
poems of books, poems about Burns, Christina Rossetti, Rabelais, Dumas,
and about Shakespeare and his circle. In all the poems about books in
this volume there is excellent characterisation, excellent criticism,
and in the ode to Burns a very notable discrimination of the greater
Burns, not the Burns of the love-poems but the fighter, the satirist,
the poet of strenuous laughter.

But love and wine were moon and sun
For many a fame long since undone,
And sorrow and joy have lost and won
By stormy turns
As many a singer's soul, if none
More bright than Burns.

And sweeter far in grief and mirth
Have songs as glad and sad of birth
Found voice to speak of wealth or dearth
In joy of life:
But never song took fire from earth
More strong for strife.

* * * * *

Above the storms of praise and blame
That blur with mist his lustrous name,
His thunderous laughter went and came,
And lives and flies;
The war that follows on the flame
When lightning dies.

Here the homage is given with splendid energy, but with fine justice.
There are other poems of homage in this book,