A maiden's and a prophet's and thy son's.

It is lamentable that in his latest blank verse Swinburne should have
made a trick and a manner of that most energetic device of his by which
he leads the line at a rush from the first syllable to the tenth, and on
to the first of the line succeeding, with a great recoil to follow, as
though a rider brought a horse to his haunches. It is in the same boar
hunt:

And fiery with invasive eyes,
And bristling with intolerable hair,
Plunged;--

Sometimes we may be troubled with a misgiving that Swinburne's fine
narrative, as well as his descriptive writing of other kinds, has a
counterpart in the programme-music of some now bygone composers. It is
even too descriptive, too imitative of things, and seems to out-run the
province of words, somewhat as that did the province of notes. But,
though this hunting, and checking, and floating, and flying in metre may
be to strain the arts of prosody and diction, with how masterly a hand is
the straining accomplished! The spear, the arrow, the attack, the
charge, the footfall, the pinion, nay, the very stepping of the moon, the
walk of the wind, are mimicked in this enchanting verse. Like to
programme-music we must call it, but I wish the concert-platform had ever
justified this slight perversion of aim, this excess--almost
corruption--of one kind of skill, thus miraculously well.

Now, if Swinburne's exceptional faculty of diction led him to immoderate
expressiveness, to immodest sweetness, to a jugglery, and