bars of gold thrown ringing

[Commenting on a stanza from Shelley’s poem “Laon and Cyntha"]

The rhythm is varied and troubled, and the lines, which are in Spenser like bars of gold thrown ringing one upon another, are broken capriciously. Nor is the meaning the less an aspiration of the indolent muses, for it wanders hither and thither at the beckoning of fancy. It is now busy with a meteor and now with throbbing blood that is fire, and with a mist that is a swoon and a sleep that is life. It is bound together by the vaguest suggestion, while Spenser’s verse is always rushing on to some preordained thought.

—W. B. Yeats, “Edmund Spenser,” Selected Criticism and Prose (Macmillian, 1980)