Here again is struck the keynote of romance, “the note of resistance and defiance” of external trammels and material bonds; the note of spiritual courage which can pierce through the finite to the infinite life, and “possess” what this world cannot remove or bestow. And in this high strain the personal accent, the autobiographic undertone, loses itself in a loftier music, and “Dante at Verona” is brought within measurable distance of Rossetti’s finest work—his great romantic ballads, “Rose Mary,” “The White Ship,” “The King’s Tragedy,” “Sister Helen,” “The Bride’s Prelude,” “The Staff and Scrip,” and “The Blessed Damozel.” “The Staff and Scrip,” perhaps, ranks next above “Dante at Verona,” to which it links itself as a kind of companion poem; celebrating the life- long faithfulness of a lady to her knight-errant, perished in defence of her cause. Coming as a pilgrim through her wasted lands, the hero seeks the queen in her dim palace, where,— “The sweetness sickened her Of musk and myrrh,” and dedicates himself to the redemption of the country from her foe. “She sent him a sharp sword, whose belt About his body there As sweet as her own arms he felt. He kissed its blade, all bare, Instead of her.” The knight wins in the battle, but dies in the victory, and his body is brought to the queen. “‘Uncover ye his face,’ she said. ‘O changed in little space!’ She cried; ‘O pale that was so red! O God, O God of grace! Cover his face.’ “His sword was broken in his hand Where he had kissed the blade. ‘O soft steel that could not withstand! O my hard heart unstayed, That prayed and prayed!’” The exaltation of spirit is more sustained, the diction more finely distilled, the air clearer, the whole balance and setting of the narrative more perfect than in “Dante at Verona.” The passion of chivalric love, worship, heroism, loyalty, burns at a white-heat from the first line to the last. Every phrase is purged, chastened, and full- charged; and flies swiftly with its portentous burden of meaning straight to the mark. It breathes the very soul of that romantic chivalry to which the modern world is turning with a shaken conscience and a regenerate will; impelled to a larger application of its principles than the golden ages knew. The glory of true knighthood in its championship of the weak, its resistance of tyranny, its heroic self-sacrifice, its contempt of ease, its defiance of pain, its devotion to principle, is as yet a tardy sunrise brokenly discerned through the long reaches of historic years; an unsteady dawn of world-light clouded by men’s lust of private power; a scant and partial gleam of what it must involve for the social life to be.