It is, in fact, the word that gives him the thrill, not the object. When you take to pieces any verse of Swinburne, you find always that the object was not there—only the word. Compare Snowdrops that plead for pardon And pine for fright with the daffodils that come before the swallow dares. The snowdrop of Swinburne disappears, the daffodil of Shakespeare remains. The swallow of Shakespeare remains in the verse in _Macbeth_; the bird of Wordsworth Breaking the silence of the seas remains; the swallow of “Itylus” disappears. Compare, again, a chorus of _Atalanta_ with a chorus from Athenian tragedy. The chorus of Swinburne is almost a parody of the Athenian: it is sententious, but it has not even the significance of commonplace. At least we witness of thee ere we die That these things are not otherwise, but thus.... Before the beginning of years There came to the making of man Time with a gift of tears; Grief with a glass that ran.... This is not merely “music”; it is effective because it appears to be a tremendous statement, like statements made in our dreams; when we wake up we find that the “glass that ran” would do better for time than for grief, and that the gift of tears would be as appropriately bestowed by grief as by time. It might seem to be intimated, by what has been said, that the work of Swinburne can be shown to be a sham, just as bad verse is a sham. It would only be so if you could produce or suggest something that it pretends to be and is not. The world of Swinburne does not depend upon some other world which it simulates; it has the necessary completeness and self-sufficiency for justification and permanence. It is impersonal, and no one else could have made it. The deductions are true to the postulates. It is indestructible. None of the obvious complaints that were or might have been brought to bear upon the first _Poems and Ballads_ holds good. The poetry is not morbid, it is not erotic, it is not destructive. These are adjectives which can be applied to the material, the human feelings, which in Swinburne’s case do not exist. The morbidity is not of human feeling but of language. Language in a healthy state presents the object, is so close to the object that the two are identified.