Above the stem a gilded swallow shone, Wrought with straight wings and eyes of glittering stone As flying sunward oversea, to bear Green summer with it through the singing air. And on the deck between the rowers at dawn, As the bright sail with brightening wind was drawn, Sat with full face against the strengthening light Iseult, more fair than foam or dawn was white. Her gaze was glad past love's own singing of, And her face lovely past desire of love. Past thought and speech her maiden motions were, And a more golden sunrise was her hair. The very veil of her bright flesh was made As of light woven and moonbeam-colored shade More fine than moonbeams; white her eyelids shone As snow sun-stricken that endures the sun, And through their curled and colored clouds of deep Luminous lashes, thick as dreams in sleep, Shone as the sea's depth swallowing up the sky's The springs of unimaginable eyes. (SWINBURNE: _Tristram of Lyonesse; the Sailing of the Swallow_.) The huge high presence, red as earth's first race, Reared like a reed the might up of his mace, And smote: but lightly Tristram swerved, and drove Right in on him, whose void stroke only clove Air, and fell wide, thundering athwart: and he Sent forth a stormier cry than wind or sea When midnight takes the tempest for her lord; And all the glen's throat seemed as hell's that roared; But high like heaven's light over hell shone Tristram's sword, Falling, and bright as storm shows God's bare brand Flashed, as it shore sheer off the huge right hand Whose strength was as the shadow of death on all that land. (_Ibid._: _The Last Pilgrimage_.) It will be noticed that in Swinburne's use of the couplet the single line is even less the unit of measure than in Keats and Shelley; the periods correspond closely to those in the blank verse of Milton and Tennyson. Compare the specimens of blank verse on pp. 230 and 245. The second specimen shows the occasional use of the triplet and alexandrine.