great army under the snow; its rout and dissolution in the supreme hour of panic; the slower agony, the more gradual dissolution, of the prisoner with a gaoler's eye intent on him to the last; who can say which of these three is done into verse with most faultless and sovereign power of hand, most pathetic or terrific force and skill? And the hideous judicial dishonour of the crowning retribution after death, the parody of his empire and the prostitution of his name, is so much more than tragic by reason of the very farce in it that out of ignominy itself and uttermost degradation the poet has made something more august in moral impression than all pageants of battle or of death.
In the sixth book I can but rapidly remark the peculiar beauty and greatness of the lyric lines in which the sound of steady seas regularly breaking on the rocks at Rozel Tower is rendered with so solemn and severe an echo of majestic strength in sadness; the verses addressed to the people on its likeness and unlikeness to the sea; the scornful and fiery appeal to the spirit of Juvenal; the perfect idyllic picture of spring, with all the fruitless exultation of its blossoms and its birds, made suddenly dark and dissonant by recollection of human crime and shame; the heavenly hopefulness of comfort in the message of the morning star, conveyed into colours of speech and translated into cadences of sound which no painter or musician could achieve.
Je m'étais endormi la nuit près de la grève.
Un vent frais m'éveilla, je sortis de mon rêve,
J'ouvris les yeux, je vis l'étoile du matin.
Elle resplendissait au fond du ciel lointain
Dans une blancheur molle, infinie et charmante.
Aquilon s'enfuyait emportant la tourmente.
