Such myths and the art that embodies them powerfully expose all important aspects of the tragic human condition and its ultimate beauty. Late in his career Swinburne's emphasis, as in The Tale of Balen , is on the essential brotherhood of mankind. Such brotherhood results from all men's tragic, because inevitably frustrated, experience of life's potential for spiritual fulfillment through love relationships and communion with nature. His initial sympathies with the special individual in conflict with society and tortured by frustrated passion, expanded to include all individuals in society who blindly suffer erotic unfulfillment and inevitably endure impassioned political, religious, and amatory conflict. Yet, throughout his career, more consistently and successfully than any other distinct group of works by Swinburne, his medievalist poems demonstrate his irrepressible desire to memorialize and beatify the tragic life of humanity, in which we all live and move and have our being.
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