And life yield up her flower to violent fate?
Him would I reach, him smite, him desecrate,
Pierce the cold lips of God with human breath,
And mix his immortality with death. . . .' etc.

And in 'A Reminiscence' sounds the more templative note of Baudelairian doubt :—

'Day to night

Calls wailing, and life to death, and depth to height,
And soul upon soul of man that hears and grieves.

con

Who knows, though he sees the snow-cold blossom shed,
If haply the heart that burned within the rose,

The spirit in sense, the life of life be dead?

If haply the wind that slays the storming snows

Be one with the wind that quickens? Bow thine head,

O Sorrow, and commune with thine heart-who knows?'

Relief from this restlessness could be found as Baudelaire knew by losing oneself in dreams, or in art, but above all the great calmer is Death :

'O Mort, vieux capitaine, il est temps ! levons l'ancre !

Ce pays nous ennuie, O Mort! appareillons !'

And so Swinburne :

'Good day, good night and good morrow,
Men living and mourning say,

For thee we could only pray

That night of the day might borrow

Such comfort as dreams lend sorrow,

Death gives thee at last good day.'

And in closing we will only quote those most perfect lines of all Swinburne's poetic output:

'From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever Gods there be-

That no life lives for ever,
That dead men rise up never,
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.'

III

ARTHUR O'SHAUGHNESSY, 1844-81

ARTHUR O'SHAUGHNESSY, as his name implies, was of Irish descent, though born in London in 1844. His life was very short, for he died at the age of thirty-six. In 1861 he entered the British Museum Library, and two years later was transferred to the Natural History department, where fishes and reptiles became his speciality. In his leisure hours he found time to write some very beautiful poems, though the fact that his work is unequal is little more than what we expect with a man carried off in the height of his promise, robbed of the opportunity of winnowing his work in his mature judgment.

There are four small volumes of O'Shaughnessy's poems-The Epic of Women (1870), Lays of France (1872), Music and Moonlight (1874), and the posthumous Song of a Worker (1881).

From the beginning these poems showed strong signs of French influence-traces of Gautier, and, above all, a debt to Baudelaire.

Swinburne of course played his part, but the point is that he played through his Baudelairian side.

The Epic of Women shows a Baudelairian influence in its choice of theme. Here are all the heroines of history who were great to men's cost :

'From Eve-whom God made

And left her as He made her-without soul.

And lo! when He had held her for a season

In His own pleasure palaces above,

He gave her unto men; this is the reason

She is so fair to see, so false to love'—

the wife of Hephaestus, Cleopatra, Salome, Helen.

When O'Shaughnessy wrote his 'To a Young Murderess' he must have had in mind those lines of Baudelaire:

6

Tu marches sur des morts, Beauté, dont tu te moques.
De ces bijoux l'Horreur n'est pas le moins charmant,
Et le Meurtre parmi tes plus chères breloques
Sur ton ventre orgueilleux danse amoureusement.'

Here is the English poem :

'Fair yellow murderess, whose gilded head
Gleaming with deaths; whose deadly body white
Writ o'er with secret records of the dead;

Whose tranquil eyes, that hide the dead from sight
Down in their tenderest depth and bluest bloom;
Whose strange unnatural grace, whose prolonged youth
Are for my death now and the shameful doom

Of all the man I might have been in truth.

Your fell smile sweetened still lest I might show
Its lingering murder with a kiss for lure

Is like the fascinating steel that one
Most vengeful in his last revenge, and sure
The victim lies beneath him, passes slow
Again and oft again before his eyes,

And over all his frame that he may know
And suffer the whole death before he dies.

Will you not slay me? Stab me, yea somehow
Deep in the heart: say some foul word at last
And let me hate you as I love you now.
Oh, would I might but see you turn and cast
That false fair beauty that you e'en shall lose,
And fall down there and writhe about my feet,
The crooked loathly viper I shall bruise

Through all eternity?—

Nay, kiss me, Sweet!'

Here too we find a strong note of exotism. Take, for instance, Palm-Flowers.'

'In a land of the sun's blessing
Where the passion flower grows,
My heart keeps all worth possessing,
And the way there no man knows.
All the perfumes and perfections
Of that clime have met with grace
In her body, and complexions

Of its flowers are on her face.'

And the same note recurs in the 'Song of Betrothal' in Music and Moonlight :—

'I think I see you under

Strange palms with leaves of gold,
Your foreign dress, and in your hand
The quaint bright fan you hold.

I sit sometimes and wonder,

O sister mine and lover,

What ship shall bring you from your land
To me here in the cold.'

And again in the 'Song of the Palm':

'Mighty luminous and calm

:

Is the country of the palm,
Crowned with sunset and sunrise
Under the unbroken skies,
Waving from green zone to zone
Over wonders of its own,
Trackless, untraversed, unknown,
Changeless through the centuries.
Who shall tell enchanted stories
Of the forests that are dead?
Lo! the soul shall grow immense
Looking on strange hues intense,
Gazing at the flaunted glories

Of the hundred-coloured lories.'

There is the same effort to ascribe a reasoning to natural happenings, as in this passage from the 'Fountain of Tears' (Epic of Women) :—

'You may feel when a falling leaf brushes

Your face, as though some one had kissed you,
Or think at least some one who missed you
Hath sent you a thought-if that cheers.

Or a bird's little song, faint and broken,
May pass for a tender word spoken ;
-Enough while around you there rushes
The life drowning torrent of tears.' 1

And in this from Music and Moonlight :

And

temper :

... the antique Past

A minuet was dancing with the last
Still faintly blushing spectre of that eve,
Whose perfumed rose lay dying on the floor,
Some shadows seem to laugh and some to grieve
As the blue moonlight fell on them from door
And distant window.'

here
here

again is the Rodenbach-Baudelairian

There the dim time was very sweet,
And hours between the noon and night
Were slow to pass with lagging feet,
And wings full loaded; tarried late,
Till long fair fingers from the deep
Dark wood came forth to separate
Leaves-lights from shades and love from sleep.

And the moon like a dreamed-of face

Seen gradually in the dark

Grew up and filled the silent place

Between those houses wan and stark.'

Lays of France: 'The Lay of the Nightingale.

1 Cp. Moréas, Stance vii. :

'Par ce soir pluvieux, es-tu quelque présage,

Un secret avertissement,

O feuille, qui me viens effleurer le visage
Avec ce doux frémissement?

L'automne t'a flétrie et voici que tu tombes,

Trop lourde d'une goutte d'eau ;

Tu tombes sur mon front que courbent vers les tombes

Les jours amassés en fardeau.'