Where summer song rings hollow
And flowers are put to scorn."

Many volumes came in rapid succession from his pen. In 1904 his poems
were collected in six octavo volumes containing 2357 pages. This
collection includes the long narrative poems, _Tristram of Lyonesse_
and _The Tale of Balen_, a faithful retelling of famous medieval
stories. He, however, had more ability as a writer of lyrics than of
narrative verse.

His poetic dramas fill five additional volumes. _Chastelard_ (1865),
one of the three dramas relating to Mary Queen of Scots, is the best
of his plays. He had, however, neither the power to draw character nor
the repression of speech necessary for a great dramatist. The best
parts of his plays are really lyrical verse.

Many critics think that Swinburne's reputation would be as great as it
now is, if he had ceased to write verse in 1866, at the age of
twenty-nine, after producing _Atalanta in Calydon_ and the first
series of his _Poems and Ballads_. Although his interests widened and
his poetic range increased, much of his work during his last forty
years is a repetition of earlier successes. His _Songs before
Sunrise_, however (1871), and the next two volumes of _Poems and
Ballads_ (1878 and 1889) contain some poems that rank among his best.

Later in life he wrote a large amount of prose criticism, much of
which deals with the Elizabethan dramatists. His _A Study of
Shakespeare_ (1880) and his shorter _Shakespeare_ (1905) are
especially suggestive. In spite of the fact that the reader must make
constant allowance for his habit of using superlatives, he was an able
critic.

General Characteristics.--Swinburne's poetry suffers from his
tendency to drown his ideas in a sea of words.

Sometimes we gain no more definite ideas from reading many lines of
his verse than from hearing music without words. Much of his poetry
was suggested by wide reading, not by close personal contact with
life. His verse sometimes offends from disregarding moral proprieties
and from so expressing his atheism as to wound the feelings of
religious people. His idea of a Supreme Power was colored by the old
Grecian belief in Fate. In exact opposition to Wordsworth, Swinburne's
youthful poems show that he regarded Nature as the incarnation of a
Power malevolent to man. He lacked the optimism of Browning and the
faith of Tennyson. The mantle of Byron and Shelley fell on Swinburne
as the poet of revolt against what seemed to be