A New Critical Approach to Swinburne’s “A Cameo”:

Prosody and the Release from Cares

By Edward Olan Lockhart

At first glance A.C. Swinburne’s sonnet “A Cameo” appeared to be exactly what

its title implied, a description of both a small carved piece of jewelry in the form of a

brief, literary sketch. Upon a deeper reading one could discover a world meaning within

this unusual sonnet. The central theme of “A Cameo” was the perpetual cycle of

opposition and friction between the personified figures of “Desire” and the impossible

“Satiety” which can only be resolved by the inevitability of “Death”. This tension was

further enriched and exacerbated by the pleasure and pain dichotomy. The prosody of the

poem also lends itself to the building and resolution of this tense cycle.

The first layer of the poem was its through-metaphor or conceit, that of an actual

cameo. A cameo was a small piece of jewelry carved in relief noted for the contrast in

color between the foreground and background (referred to as the ground) (OED). This

was exactly what Swinburne described with “a graven image of Desire/ Painted red with

blood on a ground of gold” (lines 1-2). The entirety of the octet displayed an

overcrowded cameo. The sestet, however, moved past the first definition of a cameo.

Within the sestet there were both non-concretes that cannot be sculpted such as “senses,”

“sorrows,” and “sins” as well as moving actions “with the flap of wing and fin” (lines

9,12). These forced one on to the second, figurative definition of a cameo, a short literary

sketch. The mild tension between a cameo as an actual object and a figurative part of the

English language served to further separate the octet from the sestet and thus the tensions

from their resolution.

 Upon a deeper level of the poem existed the tension between want and

fulfillment. The reader was first presented “Desire… Painted with red blood” with a

golden “ground” (lines 1-2). “Satiety,” Desire’s opposite, was shown at the end of the

octet. That should have resulted in balance, but balance was made impossible by the

paradox of a personified “Satiety” whom was “insatiable” (line 7). The split between

pleasure and pain furthered the tension between want and fulfillment. “Pain” was carved

next to “[Desire]” and Pleasure locked his “grip” upon “the left wrist” of Satiety. Pain

“shone like fire” whereas Pleasure was emaciated and “cold” (lines 4, 6). The two are

separated yet inextricably linked within the same sentence. One could not be without the

other. Pain was shown to be far more passive if more vibrant. Pleasure held his “hire,”

Satiety, in an unfailing grip. “Hire” could at the time Swinburne wrote this poem have

been used in its modern sense, an employee, yet this made little sense. Pleasure paid

nothing to Satiety. However, in the light of Anthony Harrison’s scholarship which

showed Swinburne’s great familiarity and love of medieval literature (1-9), a more

archaic definition of “hire” seemed far more appropriate. Hire in this instance meant

reward, especially a captured one (OED). Pleasure, in part, kept Satiety from his

satisfaction.

Furthermore, the sculptor/narrator revoked any hope of escape by having Desire

“[pass] between the young men and the old” (line 3). All men it seemed must follow

desire through pleasure and pain to seek satiety. If only Satiety were possible instead of

self-contradicting, then one could have had resolution within the octet itself. Satiety was

capable of “[pashting]” or crushing “the mire” (line 8) which bogged down the poem in

continuing tension, and forced mankind into a perpetual cycle of unsatisfying joy and
endless pain. Even if satiety could break the titan-grip of pleasure and crush the mire, his

“feet unshod” would certainly be stained.

Next the sestet drove the conflict further, with unusual and contradictive images.

Few visions could be more life-affirming and pleasant than a suckling infant, but when

that infant was “strange love” suckling “the breasts of Hate,” one was left “indentured”

(lines 10-11) in a state of ironic confliction. To break free one had to “bite” and become

“like beasts” with “[flapping]” “wing and fin” (lines 11-12). At that point in the sestet, an

Italian sonnet should have offered at the least the beginnings of resolution, but the cycle

of joy and despair continued, even in the poem’s prosody.

The poem had a frantic, almost running rhythm caused by a heavy use of

anapestic feet combined with iambs and dactyls though the running was brought short by

trochees. For example, the following feet “that grasped,” “kept hold,” and “teeth bite” are

all trochees. These harsh feet punched home the inescapability of the cycle. Also,

Swinburne combined sibilant consonance with the horrifying imagery of the first five

lines of the sestet. “The senses and the sorrows and the sins,/ and the strange loves that

suck the breasts of Hate” (lines 9-10). All of this created a far more audibly visceral

morass of inescapable contradictions. Nonetheless, some structural elements remained

unchanged in lines one through thirteen; every one of those lines had a masculine ending

and kept the standard rhyme scheme of an Italian sonnet (a b b a a b b a c d e c d e). Even

the prosody of this poem pointed to the end.

Only the final, unrhymed couplet offered complete resolution. It contained the

first image of anything associated with civilization. “Death stood aloof behind a gaping

grate,/ Upon which was written Peradventure” (lines 13-14). Death and his builded grate
waited far removed from all the rest of the sonnet. The last word “Peradventure”

remained capitalized yet not personified. Its import was as key to the grate. The most

succinct and appropriate definition of peradventure was risk. Any movement, adventure,

or risk taken could lead to the calm, inevitability of death. The detached tone surrounding

Death resolves the contradictive and vibrant images presented throughout the rest of the

poem. Again, the prosody mirrors this aspect of the poem. The perfect iambic pentameter

of the couplet was changed only in the final foot, a dactyl. The poem ends with an

ordered march to the soft sigh of a feminine ended line, the soft sigh of death. The rhythm

ended as peacefully as the imagery.

The repetitive cycle of human drama could have had but one and only one end. At

some point within the cycle, “Death” unlocked the “grate” (lines 13-14) and all tensions

were resolved, permanently.

All aspects of “A Cameo” worked in perfect harmony (or discord perhaps)

towards its steady end. The rhythm, the rhyme, and all aspects of form danced in perfect,

shuddering, vibrant, violent step with the images, metaphors, and themes. Swinburne so

succinctly and brilliantly illuminated the colorful horror-show of human existence that it

took but a minute’s space to feel the sonnet’s dark catharsis. It took this author a number

of pages to explicate but a portion of “A Cameo’s” meaning; whereas, it took Algernon

fourteen lines. Such is the beauty and power of poesy.

Works Cited
Harrison, Anthony H. ”Swinburne and Courtly Love,” Swinburne's Medievalism: A Study

in Victorian Love Poetry. 1-9. Victorian Web. Web. 5 Dec., 2009.

Swinburne, Algernon Charles. “A Cameo,” Poems and Ballads and Atalanta in Calydon.
 London: Penguin, 2000. 91.

Annotated Bibliography:
Swinburne’s “A Cameo”; Prosody and the Release from Cares

Brooks, Cleanth, and Robert Penn Warren. Understanding Poetry. New York : Harcourt,
1988. 1-23.

Amongst the most sacred objects in the cannon of New Criticism, Brooks’ and Warren’s
Understanding was actually a text book on the basics of poetry. The two wrote through
the exclusionary lens of new criticism’s ideas. However, in the first chapter “Dramatic
Situation” Warren and Brooks presented some historical and biographical information on
a few poems to help illuminate their meanings. The authors then directly relegated all
such outside information to a secondary role in literary criticism as an aide in the search
for meaning. With that concept in mind, Swinburne’s somewhat well known love of
medieval poetry may well have informed his vocabulary to the extent that archaic word
usages appear in “A Cameo.”

Campbell, Joseph. “Departure of the Hero,” The Hero with a Thousand Faces. New
York: MJF Books, 1949. 356-364.

Campbell’s seminal masterpiece, Hero with a Thousand Faces, showcased the array of
similarities between ancient myths of various cultures as well as the psycho-spiritual
import of these stories. Campbell synthesized all the elements of myth into one story, the
Hero’s Journey. Chapter 3.8 described and analyzed the deaths of many heroes. Only true
heroes were ready to accept death’s synergistic beauty, horror, and peace. The narrator of
“A Cameo” seemed to understand the role of death similarly. Swinburne’s poem likely
represents a unique yet universal piece of the Hero’s Journey.

Eliot, T.S. “Tradition and the Individual Talent.” The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry
and Criticism. 1922. Bartleby.com. Web. 5 Dec., 2009.

In one of Eliot’s most famous essays, he called for a slow but steady progression of
poetical innovation. He more importantly foreshadowed the new critical tenet that “the
focus of the Critic must be on the poem not the poet.” Though, he did also caution that
nothing could be born out of a void and the importance of remembering other works
when engaged in criticism. The body of “A Cameo” was the primary concern and field
through which this author will search for that poem’s meaning.

Harrison, Anthony H. ”Swinburne and Courtly Love,” Swinburne's Medievalism: A

Study in Victorian Love Poetry. 1-9. Victorian Web. Web. 5 Dec., 2009.
Harrison sifted through a plethora of biographical and historical information to present
the correlations between Swinburne’s early poems and the courtly love poetry of the
troubadours. Painstakingly with letters, allusions, and the similarity of themes Harrison
made the case for Swinburne’s “Medievalism.” Since “A Cameo” contained no
unattainable femme fatale (save perhaps death), an understanding of Swinburne’s archaic
use of the word “hire” is illuminated in light of Harrison’s scholarship.

Ransom, John Crowe. The New Criticism. Norfolk: New Directions, 1941.

The seminal new critical text laid out the framework for ontological criticism. Explaining
argumentatively new criticism through both his own theory and others, Crowe laid the
groundwork for objective correlative and the affective fallacy. This author used the
framework of Crowe’s vision of new criticism tempered with the suggestions of Brooks,
Warren, and Eliot to show the intrinsic meaning of “A Cameo.”

Swinburne, Algernon Charles. “Notes on Poems and Reviews,” Poems and Ballads and
Atalanta in Calydon. London: Penguin, 2000. 404.

“Notes on Poems and Reviews” was written as a forced rebuke of the critical outrage
against Poems and Ballads. Within it Swinburne acerbically answers the moralist
indignation against his poems and his person. Swinburne unequivocally removed himself
from the various narratorial voices within Poems and Ballads. This was merely further
evidence to ignore the majority of biographical evidence when considering “A Cameo.”