Of the fierce mighty warriors, far rang out the hall-house; By crafty thought smithy'd. But there from the sill bow'd With gold well adorned, where strove they the wrothful. The excellent, bone-dight, break into pieces, Or unlock with cunning, save the light fire's embracing The triumphless song, and the wound-bewailing Of the thrall of the Hell; for there now fast held him 80 He who of men of main was the mightiest In that day which is told of, the day of this life. XIII. Beowulf hath the victory: Grendel is hurt deadly and leaveth hand and arm in the Hall. Naught would the earls' help for anything thenceforth That murder-comer yet quick let loose of, Nor his life-days forsooth to any of folk 85 Told he for useful. Out then drew full many Of Beowulf's earls the heir-loom of old days, For their lord and their master's fair life would they ward, That mighty of princes, if so might they do it. For this did they know not when they the strife dreed, 90 Those hardy-minded men of the battle, And on every half there thought to be hewing, And search out his soul, that the ceaseless scather Not any on earth of the choice of all irons, Not one of the war-bills, would greet home for ever. Was the battle-fame given; should Grendel thenceforth 105 That ended his life was, and gone over for ever, ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE (b. 1837), the eldest son of Admiral Charles Swinburne, was descended from an ancient Northumbrian family, and was born in London in 1837. His early life was divided between the family estate of Capheaton Castle, Northumberland, and his father's country-place of East Dene, near Bonchurch, in the Isle of Wight, where he first imbibed that passionate love of the sea which is so prominent a feature in his poetry. He was educated in France and at Eton, and matriculated at Balliol College, Oxford, which he left without degree. After spending some time in Italy, which he early had learned to love through his mother, he settled in London, where he lives to the present day, ever since 1879 sharing a house with his friend Theodore Watts-Dunton, likewise an able poet and critic. In his early London time he was closely associated with the Pre-Raphaelites, especially with Rossetti, William Morris, and Burne-Jones; and this connection left unmistakable traces on his earlier volumes, notably the Poems and Ballads of 1866, which raised such a storm of disapproval, that the poet felt called upon to rejoin in a brief pamphlet. As with Shelley, who in many respects may be called his master, his general view of life is that of a philosophical pantheist and an uncompromising revolutionary. Swinburne's fame as the greatest of living English poets is based on a long series of lyrical, dramatic, and epic works, in which Greek antiquity, mediæval romance, English Renaissance, and French Romanticism are wonderfully combined with modern thought and feeling. An absolutely unique place he holds as a metrical artist, both as a master of richly modulated verse and as a metrical inventor, who has enriched English poetry with an extraordinary variety of new metrical forms. Steeped in the Hellenic spirit, he has succeeded in infusing something of classical austerity and restraint into his Greek tragedies of Atalanta in Calydon (1865) and Erechtheus (1876), whilst his dramas in the Elizabethan style, Marino Faliero (1885), Locrine (1887), and Rosamund, Queen of the Lombards (1899), exhibit all the poetic richness of the English Renaissance. Elizabethan in manner and matter was also his great dramatic trilogy on Mary of Scotland, the 'histories' of Chastelard (1865), Bothwell (1874), and Mary Stuart (1881), which somewhat recall the form of the old chronicle play. His mediævalism came out in the revival of the Middle-English miracle play (The Masque of Queen Bersabe 1866), his version of the Tannhäuser legend in the dramatic monologue Laus Veneris (1866), his imitations of the border ballad (The King's Daughter 1866; The Bride's Tragedy; A Jacobite's Exile 1889), and in his halflyrical narratives, such as the two Arthurian epics Tristram of Lyonesse (1882) and The Tale of Balen (1896). However great his dramatic and epic work may be, it is as a lyrical poet that his genius found its highest and fullest expression. His lyrical poems were collected under the titles of Poems and Ballads (three series, 1866, -78, -89), Songs before Sunrise (1871), Songs of Two Nations (1875), Songs of the Springtides (1880), Studies in Song (1880), A Century of Roundels (1883), ▲ Midsummer Holiday (1884) and Astrophel (1894). Special attention may be called to his pantheistic poem Hertha (1871), his wonderful elegy Ave atque Vale (1878) in memory of the French poet Charles Baudelaire, his fine series of sonnets on the Elizabethan dramatists (1882), and above all to his magnificent sea-ballads, A Forsaken Garden (1878), Off Shore (1880), By the North Sea (1880), On the Verge, and In the Water (1884). Swinburne claims also a high place as a prose-writer, using that richly decorated poetical style which has been called 'impassioned prose'. His studies on Chapman, Shakspere (1880), Ben Jonson, Charlotte Brontë, Victor Hugo, and others, are, apart from their style, remarkable for their subtlety of literary criticism. HYMN TO ARTEMIS. [From Atalanta in Calydon (1865)] Chief Huntsman. Maiden, and mistress of the months and stars Now folded in the flowerless fields of heaven, Goddess whom all gods love with threefold heart, Being treble in thy divided deity, A light for dead men and dark hours, a foot Swift on the hills as morning, and a hand To all things fierce and fleet that roar and range Mortal, with gentler shafts than snow or sleep; Hear now and help and lift no violent hand, 10 But favourable and fair as thine eye's beam Hidden and shown in heaven; for I all night Amid the king's hounds and the hunting men Have wrought and worshipped toward thee; nor shall man See goodlier hounds or deadlier edge of spears; 16 But for the end, that lies unreached at yet Between the hands and on the knees of gods. Oh fair-faced sun killing the stars and dews And dreams and desolation of the night! Rise up, shine, stretch thine hand out, with thy bow 20 Touch the most dimmest height of trembling heaven, And burn and break the dark about thy ways, Shot through and through with arrows; let thine hair Lighten as flame above that flameless shell Which was the moon, and thine eyes fill the world 35 Each horn of Acheloüs, and the green And give our spears their spoil, the wild boar's hide, 40 Sent in thine anger against us for sin done And bloodless altars without wine or fire. Him now consume thou; for thy sacrifice With sanguine-shining steam divides the dawn, And one, the maiden rose of all thy maids, 45 Arcadian Atalanta, snowy-souled, Fair as the snow and footed as the wind, Over the firm hills and the fleeting sea Hast thou drawn hither, and many an armèd king, 60 Heroes, the crown of men, like gods in fight. Moreover out of all the Etolian land, From the full-flowered Lelantian pasturage To what of fruitful field the son of Zeus Won from the roaring river and labouring sea 55 When the wild god shrank in his horn and fled And foamed and lessened through his wrathful fords, Leaving clear lands that steamed with sudden sun, These virgins with the lightening of the day Bring thee fresh wreaths and their own sweeter hair, 60 Luxurious locks and flower-like mixed with flowers, Clean offering, and chaste hymns; but me the time Divides from these things; whom do thou not less Help and give honour, and to mine hounds good speed, And edge to spears, and luck to each man's hand. Chorus. 65 When the hounds of spring are on winter's traces, With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain; 70 Is half assuaged for Itylus, For the Thracian ships and the foreign faces, Come with bows bent and with emptying of quivers, 76 With a noise of winds and many rivers, 80 With a clamour of waters, and with might; For the faint east quickens, the wan west shivers, Round the feet of the day and the feet of the night. Where shall we find her, how shall we sing to her, 85 For the stars and the winds are unto her As raiment, as songs of the harp-player; And the southwest-wind and the west-wind sing. 120 Her bright breast shortening into sighs; The wild vine slips with the weight of its leaves, But the berried ivy catches and cleaves To the limbs that glitter, the feet that scare The wolf that follows, the fawn that flies. ITYLUS. [From Poems and Ballads, First Series (1866)] Swallow, my sister, O sister swallow, How can thine heart be full of the spring? What wilt thou do when the summer is shed? O swallow, sister, O fair swift swallow, The soft south whither thine heart is set? |