A Channel Passage and Other Poems: Taken from the Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles: Swinburne—Vol VI

This sixth volume of Swinburne's collected works gathers verse that cemented his reputation as Victorian England's most musically reckless poet. Here is Swinburne at his characteristic height: voluptuous rhythms, classical allusion coiled around radical politics, and that famous torrent of sound that made critics gasp and readers swoon. The title poem "A Channel Passage" renders a crossing from Calais into a meditation on mortality and transcendence, its imagery of storm-tossed water and uncertain dawn both literal and symbolic. Throughout the collection, Swinburne's preoccupation with beauty and death, with love's ache and the sublime terror of nature, finds expression in verse that refuses quiet contemplation. His meters throb with an almost physical intensity. This is essential Swinburne: technically dazzling, sensually overwhelming, politically incendiary, and uneasily in love with the grave.