The following is a bonus question to "Who is the 'pale Titan-woman' in Swinburne's 'Ave atque Vale'?", which I was advised to separate into its own question.
The twelfth verse of 'Ave atque Vale' by Algernon Charles Swinburne reads:
But by no hand nor any treason stricken,
Not like the low-lying head of Him, the King,
The flame that made of Troy a ruinous thing,
Thou liest, and on this dust no tears could quicken
There fall no tears like theirs that all men hear
Fall tear by sweet imperishable tear
Down the opening leaves of holy poets' pages.
Thee not Orestes, not Electra mourns;
But bending us-ward with memorial urns
The most high Muses that fulfil all ages
Weep, and our God's heart yearns.
To whom does 'our God' refer? To the one God of monotheism and/or Christianity? The capitalisation seems to point in that direction; elsewhere, a lower case G is used; elsewhere, Swinburne refers to various gods, but here to God. But then again I know that Swinburne was not a Christian in any meaningful sense, but was in fact explicitly atheistic. But perhaps the poet was speaking as a representative of an era in which the polytheism of the classical world had been displaced by monotheism? I really do not know at this point!
