In this new book there are poems of nature, poems of the sea, the lake, the high oaks, the hawthorn, a rosary, Northumberland; and there are poems of books, poems about Burns, Christina Rossetti, Rabelais, Dumas, and about Shakespeare and his circle. In all the poems about books in this volume there is excellent characterisation, excellent criticism, and in the ode to Burns a very notable discrimination of the greater Burns, not the Burns of the love-poems but the fighter, the satirist, the poet of strenuous laughter. But love and wine were moon and sun For many a fame long since undone, And sorrow and joy have lost and won By stormy turns As many a singer's soul, if none More bright than Burns. And sweeter far in grief and mirth Have songs as glad and sad of birth Found voice to speak of wealth or dearth In joy of life: But never song took fire from earth More strong for strife. * * * * * Above the storms of praise and blame That blur with mist his lustrous name, His thunderous laughter went and came, And lives and flies; The war that follows on the flame When lightning dies. Here the homage is given with splendid energy, but with fine justice. There are other poems of homage in this book, along with denunciations, as there are on so many pages of the _Songs before Sunrise_ and the _Songs of Two Nations_, in which the effect is far less convincing, as it is far less clear. Whether Mazzini or Nelson be praised, Napoleon III. or Gladstone be buffeted, little distinction, save of degree, can be discerned between the one and the other. The hate poems, it must be admitted, are more interesting, partly because they are more distinguishable, than the poems of adoration; for hate seizes upon the lineaments which love glorifies willingly out of recognition. There was a finely ferocious energy in the _Dirae_ ending with _The Descent into Hell_ of 9th January 1873, and there is a good swinging and slashing vigour in _The Commonweal_ of 1886. Why is it that this deeply felt political verse, like so much of the political verse of the _Songs before Sunrise_, does not satisfy the ear or the mind like the early love poetry or the later nature poetry? Is it not that one distinguishes only a voice, not a personality behind the voice? Speech needs weight, though song only needs wings. I set the trumpet to my lips and blow, said Swinburne in the _Songs before Sunrise,_ when he was the trumpeter of Mazzini.