s
not a word that Villon could have used, and that

Deux estions et n'avions qu'ung cueur,

though it is perfectly rendered by Rossetti in

Two we were and the heart was one,

is turned into a wholly different, a Swinburnian thing, by

Twain we were, and our hearts one song,
One heart.

Nor is 'Dead as the carver's figured throng' (for 'Comme les images, par
cueur') either clear in meaning, or characteristic of Villon in form. Is
it not one of the penalties of extreme technical ability that the hand
at times works, as it were, blindly, without the delicate vigilance or
direction of the brain?

Of the poems contained in this new volume, the title-poem, _A Channel
Passage_, is perhaps the finest. It is the record of a memory, fifty
years old, and it is filled with a passionate ecstasy in the
recollection of

Three glad hours, and it seemed not an hour of supreme and supernal
joy,
Filled full with delight that revives in remembrance a sea-bird's
heart in a boy.

It may be that Swinburne has praised the sea more eloquently, or sung
of it more melodiously, but not in the whole of his works is there a
poem fuller of personal rapture in the communion of body and soul with
the very soul of the sea in storm. _The Lake of Gaube_ is remarkable for
an exultant and very definite and direct rendering of the sensation of a
dive through deep water. There are other sea-poems in the two brief and
concentrated poems in honour of Nelson; the most delicate of the poems
of flowers in _A Rosary_; the most passionate and memorable of the
political poems in _Russia: an Ode_; the Elizabethan prologues. These
poems, so varied in subject and manner, are the work of many years; to
those who love Swinburne most as a lyric poet they will come with
special delight, for they represent, in almost absolute equality, almost
every side of his dazzling and unique lyric genius.

The final volume of the greatest lyrical poet since Shelley contains
three books, each published at an interval of ten years: the _Midsummer
Holiday_ of 1884, the _Astrophel_ of 1894, and the _Channel Passage_ of
1904. Choice among them is as difficult as it is unnecessary. They are
alike in their ecstatic singing of the sea, of great poets and great
men, of England and liberty, and of children. One contains the finest
poems about the sea from on shore, another the finest poem about the sea
from at sea, and the