--lines that immediately became famous. It was also at such a time that he uttered the prayer to a pagan ideal: Come down and redeem us from virtue. But on the other hand, if all poets were to wait for the age of wisdom before they began to sing, we should miss a thousand beautiful things of which only youth is capable, wherefore it were best to forgive the eccentricities for the sake of the incomparable merits. For example, in the very poem from which these quotations have been made, we have such splendid verses as these, referring to the worship of Venus in the time of Nero: Dost thou dream, in a respite of slumber, In a lull of the fires of thy life, Of the days without name, without number, When thy will stung the world into strife; When, a goddess, the pulse of thy passion Smote kings as they revelled in Rome, And they hailed thee re-risen, O Thalassian, Foam-white, from the foam? Thalassian means the sea-born, derived from the Greek word Thalatta, the sea. Here--Swinburne might be referring to the times of the Triumvirate, when Cleopatra succeeded in bewitching the great captain Cæsar and the great captain Antony, and set the world fighting for her sake. Then we have a reference to the great games in Rome, the splendour and the horror of the amphitheatre: On sands by the storm never shaken, Nor wet from the washing of tides; Nor by foam of the waves overtaken, Nor winds that the thunder bestrides; But red from the print of thy paces, Made smooth for the world and its lords, Ringed round with a flame of fair faces, And splendid with swords. The floor of the amphitheatre was covered with sand, which absorbed the blood of the combatants. But you will ask what had the games to da with the goddess? All the Roman festivities of this kind were, to a certain extent, considered as religious celebrations; they formed parts of holiday ceremony. There the gladiator, pale for thy pleasure, Drew bitter and perilous breath; There torments laid hold on the treasure Of limbs too delicious for death; When thy gardens were lit with live torches; When the world was a steed for thy rein; When the nations lay prone in thy porches, Our Lady of Pain. When with flame all around him aspirant, Stood flushed, as a harp-player stands, The implacable beautiful tyrant, Rose-crowned, having death in his hands; And a sound as the sound of loud water Smote far through the flight of the fires, And mixed with the lightning of slaughter A thunder of lyres.