- Project Runeberg -  On the language of Swinburne's lyrics and epics /
28

(1910) [MARC] Author: Frank Heller
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28

SYNTAX

The sharp quick reek of keen fresh bloodshed blown
Through the dense deep drift up to the emperor’s throne
From the under steaming sands
With clamour of all-applausive throats and hands
Mingling in mirthful time

With shrill blithe mockeries of the lithe-limbed mime:
So from somewhence far forth of the unbeholden
Dreadfully driven from over and after and under,
Fierce blown through fifes of brazen blast and golden,
With sounds of chiming waves that drown the thunder
Or thunder that strikes down the sea’s own chimes
Began the bellowing of the bull-voiced mimes,
Terrible; firs bowed down as briars or palms
Even of the breathless blast as of a breeze
Fulfilled with clamour and clangour and storms of
psalms;

Red hands rent up the roots of old-world trees,
Thick flames of torches tossed as tumbling seas
Made mad the moonless and infuriate air
That, ravening revelled in the riotous hair
And raiment of the furred Bassarides.

Of course the classical origin of such a sentence leaps
to the eye at once; and this sentence, though on an
exceptionally large scale, may be said to give a typical
specimen of Swinburne’s sentence-structure. Its two leading
characteristics are undeniably a superfluity of subordinate
clauses and a perfectly Latin involution in their
combination. In a word, it strikes one as perfectly and thoroughly
rhetorical. The old methods and tricks of classical rhetoric
get their full right in the language of Swinburne.

Still, it is almost as difficult to follow and register
the methods of sentence-structure in Swinburne as it is to
follow the hands of a conjurer while he is performing.
The result is something undefinable, and an investigation
of the methods can only increase one’s admiration, for
there is perfect and conscious art in the building of these
sentences. Every effect is calculated. Polysyndeton is used,
and you are rocking forwards as on the long billows of

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