Recent ctitical re-assessment of Swinburne's later worksi has rraced the mythopoeic structure of poems like "On the Clifu" and "By the North Sea," .but Swinburne's views about the poet's self and the world that informed his po-etry3 and the relation of Swinburne's thought to Roman- The English Society of Japan NII-Electronic Library Service TheEnglishSociety of Japan 2 (250) KeiNijibayashi force which exerts an influence beyond the poe['s death, ]"erhile emphasizing the fact th2t Sappho was

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... n, Swinburne srresses rhar she was possessed by a divine spirit and, in her passion and pride, transcended moral judgment, Swinburne's idolization ofSappho explains his representatien of extreme passion, as he challenged Victorian respectability with poems like "Laus Veneris" and "Dolores," 4 which celcbrated the sensual, while his familiarity with Roman[ic and French literature teinforced his conviction that the genuine poet was immortal. BIake was an especially important figure, inspiring in Swinburne the idea ofpoet as seer; in "Wiliiam Blake: A Critical Essay" Swinburne clescribes Blake's perception of the world as synthesizing the material and the spiritual: "[lb him the veil of outer things seemed always to tremble with seme breath behind it [,..] . Flowers and weeds, stars and stones, spoke with articulate ]ips and gazed with living eyes" (376). Blake's idea of"Divine Human-