Swinburne's Songs before Sunrise

When Swinburne published Songs before Sunrise in 1871, it was badly received in general, chiefly because of the notorious reputation which had been given to him as the depraved and immoral poet of the sensational Poems and Ballads in 1868. And the concept of "immortal free soul" propounded in the new book was not taken for his sincerely honest idea of his profound meditation. Even now there are still some scholars who doubt the value of the book, in spite of the fact that Swinburne himself said, "My other books are books ; 'Songs before Sunrise' is myself." In this paper I have tried to verify the sincerity of his remark. 〃Prelude," "Super Flumina Babylonis," 〃Hertha," "Hymn of Man," "The Pilgrims," "Genesis," "Mater Triumphalis," "Tiresias," "On the Downs," and "Epilogue" are the most representative works of the book, though they are rather abstract and philosophical and told in a mythical atmosphere of Swinburne's own. According to him, 'men perish, but man shall endure ; lives die, but the life is not dead,' which is to say, the soul of free man lives eternally, receiving and giving back the immortal spirit of liberty generation after generation. As the great works by Aeschylus and Sappho have been handed down from man to man deathlessly for more than two thousand years, so is the free soul immortal. In this book Swinburne expresses his idea of immortality of the soul and significance of the artist who has the immortal soul, and all through the book he sings about it in different situations and circumstances. Thus, Songs before Sunrise is also a "meta-poem," that is to say, a book of poems about poetry, like his other great poems