render several planes of emotion and animus through the same tale. The
"singer" looks on at the burning, the very embodiment of the robust,
savagely genial spectator, with a keen eye for all the sporting-points
in the exhibition,--noting that the fagots are piled to the right height
and are of the right quality--

"Good sappy bavins that kindle forthwith, ...
Larch-heart that chars to a chalk-white glow:"

and when the torch is clapt-to and he has "leapt back safe," poking
jests and gibes at the victim. But through this distorting medium we see
the soul of John himself, like a gleam-lit landscape through the whirl
of a storm; a strange weird sinister thing, glimmering in a dubious
light between the blasphemer we half see in him with the singer's eyes
and the saint we half descry with our own. Of explicit pathos there is
not a touch. Yet how subtly the inner pathos and the outward scorn are
fused in the imagery of these last stanzas:--

"Ha, ha, John plucketh now at his rose
To rid himself of a sorrow at heart!
Lo,--petal on petal, fierce rays unclose;
Anther on anther, sharp spikes outstart;
And with blood for dew, the bosom boils;
And a gust of sulphur is all its smell;
And lo, he is horribly in the toils
Of a coal-black giant flower of hell!

So, as John called now, through the fire amain,
On the Name, he had cursed with, all his life--
To the Person, he bought and sold again--