The form of _Locrine_ has something in common with the form of _Atalanta in Calydon_, with a kind of sombre savagery in the subject which recurs only once, and less lyrically, in _Rosamund, Queen of the Lombards_. It is written throughout in rhyme, and the dialogue twists and twines, without effort, through rhyme arrangements which change in every scene, beginning and ending with couplets, and passing through the sonnet, Petrarchan and Shakespearean, ottava rima, terza rima, the six-line stanza of crossed rhymes and couplet, the seven-line stanza used by Shakespeare in the _Rape of Lucrece_, a nine-line stanza of two rhymes, and a scene composed of seven stanzas of chained octaves in which a third rhyme comes forward in the last line but one (after the manner of terza rima) and starts a new octave, which closes at the end in a stanza of two rhymes only, the last line but one turning back instead of forward, to lock the chain's circle. No other English poet who ever lived could have written dialogue under such conditions, and it is not less true than strange that these fetters act as no more than a beating of time to the feet that dance in them. The emotion is throughout at white heat; there is lyrical splendour even in the arguments: and a child's prattle, in nine-line stanzas of two rhymes apiece, goes as merrily as this: That song is hardly even as wise as I-- Nay, very foolishness it is. To die In March before its life were well on wing, Before its time and kindly season--why Should spring be sad--before the swallows fly-- Enough to dream of such a wintry thing? Such foolish words were more unmeet for spring Than snow for summer when his heart is high: And why should words be foolish when they sing? Swinburne is a great master of blank verse; there is nothing that can be done with blank verse that he cannot do with it. Listen to these lines from _Mary Stuart_: She shall be a world's wonder to all time, A deadly glory watched of marvelling men Not without praise, not without noble tears, And if without what she would never have Who had it never, pity--yet from none Quite without reverence and some kind of love For that which was so royal.