n half seen;
The cloud stooped low and the surf rose high;
And where there was a line of the sky,
Wild wings loomed dark between."

The historical sense was weak in Rossetti. It is not easy to imagine him
composing a Waverley novel. The life of the community, as distinct from
the life of the individual, had little interest for him. The mellifluous
names of his heroines, Aloyse, Rose Mary, Blanchelys, are pure romance.
In his intense concentration upon the aesthetic aspects of every subject,
Rossetti seemed, to those who came in contact with him, singularly
_borne_. He was indifferent to politics, society, speculative thought,
and the discoveries of modern science--to contemporary matters in
general.[23] It is to this narrow aestheticism that Mr. Courthope refers
when, in comparing Coleridge and Keats with Rossetti and Swinburne, he
finds in the latter an "extraordinary skill in the imitation of antique
forms," but "less liberty of imagination." [24] The contrast is most
striking in the case of Coleridge, whose intellectual interests had so
wide a range. Rossetti cared only for Coleridge's verse; William Morris
spoke with contempt of everything that he had written except two or three
of his poems;[25] and Swinburne regretted that he had lost himself in the
mazes of theology and philosophy, instead of devoting himself wholly to
creative work. Keats, it is true, was exclusively preoccupied with the
beautiful; but he was more eclectic than Rossetti--perhaps also than
Morris, though hardly than Swinburne. The world of classic fable, the
world of outward nature were as dear to his imagination as the country of
romance. Rossetti was not university bred, and, as we have seen, forgot
his Greek early. Morris, like Swinburne, was an Oxford man; yet we hear
him saying that he "loathes all classical art and literature." [26] In
"The Life and Death of Jason" and "The Earthly Paradise" he treats
classical and mediaeval subjects impartially, but treats them both alike
in mediaeval fashion; as Chaucer does, in "The Knightes Tale." [27] As
for Rossetti, he is never classical. He makes Pre-Raphaelite ballads out
of the tale of Troy divine and the Rabbinical legends of Adam's first
wife, Lilith; ballads with quaint burdens--

"(O Troy's down,
Tall Troy's on fire)";

"(Sing Eden Bower!
Alas the hour!)"

and whose very titles have an Old English familiarity--"Eden Bower,"
"Troy Town," as who says "London B