The woods, the wilds,
the waters of Nature are to him -
"the intense
Reply of HERS to our intelligence."
His success is equally marked when he portrays men or women whose
character attracts him. Take, for example, the girl in "The Island":-
"The sunborn blood suffused her neck, and threw
O'er her clear nutbrown skin a lucid hue,
Like coral reddening through the darken'd wave,
Which draws the diver to the crimson cave.
Such was this daughter of the southern seas,
HERSELF A BILLOW IN HER ENERGIES.
* * * * *
Her smiles and tears had pass'd, as light winds pass
O'er lakes to ruffle, not destroy, their glass,
WHOSE DEPTHS UNSEARCH'D, AND FOUNTAINS FROM THE HILL,
RESTORE THEIR SURFACE, IN ITSELF SO STILL."
Passages like these might be quoted without end from Byron, and they
explain why he is and must be amongst the immortals. He may have been
careless in expression; he may have been a barbarian and not a e?f???,
as Mr. Matthew Arnold affirms, but he was GREAT. This is the word which
describes him. He was a mass of living energy, and therefore he is
sanative.
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