34
THE STAR IN THE WEST
music
there
can
be
no
poetry , at
best
but a kind of
poetic prose as found in the Prophetic Books of Blake ,
and in the works of Walt Whitman
.
Yet in Blake , I
think , we do find many consistent irregularities
, which
have
been
entirely
misunderstood
by
many of his
editors and critics .
However , it was not till Swinburne
loomed athwart the conscious regularity of the Tenny
sonian
era ,
a
poetic
pre - Raphaelite ,
that ,
strictly
speaking , a conscious and musical irregularity
became
admissible , wedging
its
way
in
,
and splitting
up
the
metrical structure
of
perfect scansion
.
In
“
Atalanta
in
Calydon
we find
a
further break
ing away from
the dramatic formalities
inaugurated
during
the post
-
restoration
era
:
Swinburne
seeking
a
more perfect model
in
the old Tragedies
of
Greece
.
This had already been partially carried out
by
Keats
,
who definitely broke away from the Miltonic
style
of
Wordsworth
and Coleridge
,
and was more than half
completed
by
his contemporary
,
Shelley
.
But
it
was
not till
Swinburne
himself
seized
the
finely
-
strung
lyre
of
the unconsciously irregular author
of
“
Prome
theus
,”
and attuned
it
to
the rustle
of
Blake's
angel
winged voice
,
that
it
can
be
said that
a
certain system
of
irregularities
in
metre
became
admissible
in
the
formal court
of
poetry
.
As
the Rossetti brotherhood
of
painters returned
to
the
stiff
and
simple
elegance
as
displayed
in
the
“
Primavera
”
of
Botticelli
,
so
did Swinburne
go
back
to
the simple beauty
of
Greek tragedy
as
depicted
in
second
is
good
,
as
it
is
musical
:
the extra half
-
step
in
the word
“
difficult
”
carrying with
it
a
difficulty
,
and thus
emphasizing
the meaning
;
whilst
in
the third
,
there
is
neither scansion nor
music
.