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62 SEMATOLOGY
is addressed in the following terms (in allusion to the
Litany of Our Lady: O Turris Eburnea):
I, 154, O garment not golden but gilded,
O garden where all men may dwell,
O tower not of ivory but builded
By hands that reach heaven from hell. . .
Or when words assemble to a roundel like the
following:
V, 120, Years upon years, as a watch by night that passes,
Pass, and the light of their eyes is fire that sears
Slowly the hopes of the fruit that life amasses
Years upon years.
In spite of all its perfection of form, one must often
apply to Swinburne’s poetry his own words:
IV, 101, ... all this wild sweet waste of sweet vain breath.
In his gallery of images and expressions Swinburne
has some that return over and over again. Originally they
have had some power of suggestion, but now they have
sunk to the state of cliches. They are mostly derived
from nature.
Flowers of any kind — but more especially roses, lilies
and myrtles — play a great role in Swinburne’s poetry,
being constantly used in images and illustrating adjectives
flower-soft, rose-white, etc. — But by means of a
transfer of meaning they also get a figurative use in cases where
they have no application whatever.
The change of meaning is still rather slight in the
following instances:
1. 53, And all the fruit of night and flower of days . . .
60, And summer and flower of women and of years.
63, And life yield up her flower to violent fate.
On the other hand, the following cases are very
peculiar:
I, 53, And the sea moving saw before it move
One moon-flower making all the foam-flowers fair . . .
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