f all the sea.'

The 'Autumn Vision' is an ode to the south-west wind, which has so
often filled the sails of the English warships:

'Wind beloved of earth and sky and sea beyond all winds that blow,
Wind whose might in fight was England's on her mightiest warrior
day,
South-west wind, whose breath for her was life, and fire to scourge
her foe,
Steel to smite and death to drive him down an unreturning way,
Well-beloved and welcome, sounding all the clarions of the sky,
Rolling all the marshalled waters toward the charge that storms
the shore.'

Charles Kingsley, like a hardy Norseman, preferred the north-east
gale. To him the south-west wind is

'The ladies' breeze,
Bringing back their lovers
Out of all the seas,'

while Mr. Swinburne hears in the rushing south-western gale

'the sound of wings gigantic,
Wings whose measure is the measure of the measureless Atlantic,'

and, after the storm,

'The grim sea swell, grey, sleepless and sad as a soul estranged.'

'A Swimmer's Dream' gives us the poetry of floating on the slow roll
of the waves, some cloudy November morning.

'Dawn is dim on the dark soft water,
Soft and passionate, dark and sweet.'

'Loch Torridon' preserves the charm of what might be a landlocked
lake, if it were not that the rippling tide flows in by an almost
invisible inlet from the sea. From his earliest to his latest poems
the magic of nature's changing aspects fascinates him; they inspire
him with a kind of ecstasy that finds utterance in the variety of his
verse, which reflects all the lights and shades of earth, sea, and
atmosphere. One may remark, by the way, that in proportion as his
poetic strength matures, the pagan gods and goddesses, who disported
themselves so freely in his juvenile verse, visit him much more
rarely; his imagery draws much less profusely upon the classic
mythology for symbols and figures of divinities whose diaphanous robes
are ill suited to our northern climate and Puritanic traditions, in
the wolds and forests once sacred to Thor and Woden.

* * * * *

It will be admitted by Mr. Swinburne's least indulgent critics that
his poetry displays throughout a marvellous power of execution. He
runs over all the lyrical and elegiac chords with unabated facility;
his metrical variations and musical phrasing bring out and extend the
capacity and