Rossetti, we come to the great sonnet-
sequence named 'The House of Life'; a brimming century of poems,
which embody in splendid imagery and harmonious measure the
1
i
## p.
sequence named 'The House of Life'; a brimming century of poems,
which embody in splendid imagery and harmonious measure the
1
i
## p.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v21 to v25 - Rab to Tur
' Macmillan & Co.
: 1894
HEN I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress-tree:
WHEN
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.
I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on, as if in pain;
And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise or set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.
## p. 12403 (#453) ##########################################
CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI
12403
REST
From Poems. ' Macmillan & Co. : 1894
EARTH, lie heavily upon her eyes;
O
Seal her sweet eyes weary of watching, Earth;
Lie close around her; leave no room for mirth
With its harsh laughter, nor for sound of sighs.
She hath no questions, she hath no replies,
Hushed in and curtained with a blessed dearth
Of all that irked her from the hour of birth;
With stillness that is almost Paradise.
Darkness more clear than noonday holdeth her;
Silence more musical than any song;
Even her very heart has ceased to stir:
Until the morning of Eternity
Her rest shall not begin nor end, but be;
And when she wakes she will not think it long.
UP-HILL
From Poems. ) Macmillan & Co. : 1894
OES the road wind up-hill all the way? —
Yes, to the very end.
Will the day's journey take the whole long day? —
From morn to night, my friend.
DOR
But is there for the night a resting-place? —
A roof for when the slow dark hours begin.
May not the darkness hide it from my face? —
You cannot miss that inn.
Shall I meet other wayfarers at night? -
Those who have gone before.
Then must I knock, or call, when just in sight? -
They will not keep you standing at that door.
Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak? -
Of labor you shall find the sum.
Will there be beds for me and all who seek?
Yea, beds for all who come.
## p. 12404 (#454) ##########################################
CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI
12404
THE THREE ENEMIES
From 'Poems. ' Macmillan & Co. : 1894
THE FLESH
WEET, thou art pale. "
"SWEET,
Christ hung upon the cruel tree
And bore his Father's wrath for me. "
"Sweet, thou art sad. "
"More pale to see,
"Beneath a rod
More heavy, Christ for my sake trod
The wine-press of the wrath of God. "
"Sweet, thou art weary. "
"Not so Christ;
Whose mighty love of me sufficed
For Strength, Salvation, Eucharist. "
"Sweet, thou art footsore. »
"If I bleed,
His feet have bled; yea, in my need
His heart once bled for mine indeed. "
THE WORLD
"SWEET, thou art young. "
"So He was young
Who for my sake in silence hung
Upon the Cross with Passion wrung. "
"Look, thou art fair. "
"He was more fair
Than men, who deigned for me to wear
A visage marred beyond compare. "
"And thou hast riches. "
"Daily bread:
All else is His who living, dead,
For me lacked where to lay his head. ”
"And life is sweet. "
"It was not so
To Him whose cup did overflow
With mine unutterable woe. "
## p. 12405 (#455) ##########################################
CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI
12405
THE DEVIL
"THOU drinkest deep. "
"When Christ would sup,
He drained the dregs from out my cup:
So how should I be lifted up? "
"Thou shalt win glory. "
"In the skies,
Lord Jesus, cover up mine eyes,
Lest they should look on vanities. "
"Thou shalt have knowledge. "
"Helpless dust,
In thee, O Lord, I put my trust:
Answer thou for me, Wise and Just. "
"And might. "
"Get thee behind me. Lord,
Who hast redeemed and not abhorred
My soul, O keep it by thy Word. "
OLD AND NEW YEAR DITTIES
From Poems. Roberts Bros. : 1866
I
NEW
EW YEAR met me somewhat sad:
Old Year leaves me tired,
Stripped of favorite things I had,
Balked of much desired;
Yet farther on my road to-day,-
God willing, farther on my way.
-
New Year, coming on apace,
What have you to give me?
Bring you scathe, or bring you grace,
Face me with an honest face;
You shall not deceive me:
Be it good or ill, be it what you will,
It needs shall help me on my road,
My rugged way to heaven, please God.
## p. 12406 (#456) ##########################################
12406
CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI
II
WATCH with me, men, women, and children dear,
You whom I love, for whom I hope and fear,
Watch with me this last vigil of the year.
Some hug their business, some their pleasure-scheme;
Some seize the vacant hour to sleep or dream;
Heart locked in heart some kneel and watch apart.
Watch with me, blessed spirits, who delight
All through the holy night to walk in white,
Or take your ease after the long-drawn fight.
I know not if they watch with me; I know
They count this eve of resurrection slow,
And cry, "How long? " with urgent utterance strong.
Watch with me, Jesus, in my loneliness:
Though others say me nay, yet say thou yes;
Though others pass me by, stop thou to bless.
Yea, thou dost stop with me this vigil-night;
To-night of pain, to-morrow of delight:
I, Love, am thine; thou, Lord my God, art mine.
III
PASSING away, saith the world, passing away:
Chances, beauty, and youth sapped day by day;
Thy life never continueth in one stay.
Is the eye waxen dim, is the dark hair changing to gray
That hath won neither laurel nor bay?
I shall clothe myself in spring and bud in May:
Thou, root-stricken, shalt not rebuild thy decay
On my bosom for aye.
Then I answered, Yea.
Passing away, saith my soul, passing away;
With its burden of fear and hope, of labor and play.
Hearken what the past doth witness and say:-
Rust in thy gold, a moth is in thine array,
A canker is in thy bud, thy leaf must decay.
At midnight, at cock-crow, at morning one certain day
Lo, the Bridegroom shall come and shall not delay:
Watch thou and pray.
Then I answered, Yea.
―
## p. 12407 (#457) ##########################################
CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI
12407
Passing away, saith my God, passing away:
Winter passeth after long delay;
New grapes on the vine, new figs on the tender spray,
Turtle calleth turtle in heaven's May.
Though I tarry, wait for me, trust me, watch and pray.
Arise, come away; night is past, and lo, it is day,
My love, my sister, my spouse, thou shalt hear me say.
Then I answered, Yea.
AMOR MUNDI
From 'Poems. Macmillan & Co. : 1894
"O"
H, WHERE are you going with your love-locks flowing
On the west wind blowing along this valley track? ”.
"The down-hill path is easy; come with me an it please ye:
We shall escape the up-hill by never turning back. "
So they two went together in glowing August weather:
The honey-breathing heather lay to their left and right;
And dear she was to doat on, her swift feet seemed to float on
The air like soft twin pigeons too sportive to alight.
"Oh, what is that in heaven where gray cloud-flakes are seven,
Where blackest clouds hang riven just at the rainy skirt ? » —
"Oh, that's a meteor sent us, a message dumb, portentous,
An undeciphered solemn signal of help or hurt. ”
"Oh, what is that glides quickly where velvet flowers grow thickly,
Their scent comes rich and sickly? "-"A scaled and hooded
>>
worm.
"Oh, what's that in the hollow, so pale I quake to follow? "
"Oh, that's a thin dead body which waits the eternal term. "
-
"Turn again, O my sweetest,- turn again, false and fleetest:
This beaten way thou beatest I fear is hell's own track. ” —
"Nay, too steep for hill mounting; nay, too late for cost counting:
This downward path is easy, but there's no turning back. "
## p. 12408 (#458) ##########################################
12408
CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI
LIFE HIDDEN
From New Poems. Copyright 1896, by Macmillan & Co.
OSES and lilies grow above the place
R
Where she sleeps the long sleep that doth not
dream.
If we could look upon her hidden face,
Nor shadow would be there, nor garish gleam
Of light; her life is lapsing like a stream
That makes no noise, but floweth on apace
Seawards, while many a shade and shady beam
Vary the ripples in their gliding chase.
She doth not see, but knows; she doth not feel,
And yet is sensible; she hears no sound,
Yet counts the flight of time and doth not err.
Peace far and near, peace to ourselves and her:
Her body is at peace in holy ground,
Her spirit is at peace where angels kneel.
WHITSUN EVE
From New Poems. Copyright 1896, by Macmillan & Co.
HE white dove cooeth in her downy nest,
TH
Keeping her young ones warm beneath her breast;
The white moon saileth through the cool clear sky,
Screened by a tender mist in passing by;
The white rose buds, with thorns upon its stem,
All the more precious and more dear for them;
The stream shines silver in the tufted grass,
The white clouds scarcely dim it as they pass;
Deep in the valleys lily-cups are white,
They send up incense all the holy night.
Our souls are white, made clean in Blood once shed;
White blessed angels watch around our bed:
O spotless Lamb of God, still keep us so,
Thou who wert born for us in time of snow.
## p. 12409 (#459) ##########################################
CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI
12409
HEAVEN OVERARCHES
From New Poems. Copyright 1896, by Macmillan & Co.
Η HA
EAVEN overarches earth and sea,
Earth-sadness and sea-bitterness.
Heaven overarches you and me:
A little while and we shall be-
Please God-where there is no more sea
Nor barren wilderness.
Heaven overarches you and me,
And all earth's gardens and her graves.
Look up with me, until we see
The day break and the shadows flee.
What though to-night wrecks you and me
If so to-morrow saves?
THE HEART KNOWETH ITS OWN BITTERNESS
From New Poems. Copyright 1896, by Macmillan & Co.
HEN all the over-work of life
WHEN
Is finished once, and fast asleep
We swerve no more beneath the knife,
But taste the silence cool and deep:
Forgetful of the highways rough,
Forgetful of the thorny scourge,
Forgetful of the tossing surge,
Then shall we find it is enough?
How can we say "enough" on earth —
«< Enough" with such a craving heart?
I have not found it since my birth,
But still have bartered part for part.
I have not held and hugged the whole,
But paid the old to gain the new:
Much have I paid, yet much is due,
Till I am beggared sense and soul.
I used to labor, used to strive
For pleasure with a restless will:
Now if I save my soul alive,
All else what matters, good or ill?
## p. 12410 (#460) ##########################################
12410
CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI
I used to dream alone, to plan
Unspoken hopes and days to come:
Of all my past this is the sum,-
I will not lean on child of man.
-
To give, to give, not to receive!
I long to pour myself, my soul,
Not to keep back or count or leave,
But king with king to give the whole.
I long for one to stir my deep,-
I have had enough of help and gift;
I long for one to search and sift
Myself, to take myself, and keep.
-
You scratch my surface with your pin,
You stroke me smooth with hushing breath:
Nay, pierce, nay, probe, nay, dig within,-
Probe my quick core and sound my depth.
You call me with a puny call,
-
You talk, you smile, you nothing do:
How should I spend my heart on you,
My heart that so outweighs you all?
Your vessels are by much too strait:
Were I to pour you, you could not hold.
Bear with me: I must bear to wait,
A fountain sealed through heat and cold.
Bear with me days or months or years:
Deep must call deep until the end,
When friend shall no more envy friend
Nor vex his friend at unawares.
Not in this world of hope deferred,
This world of perishable stuff;
Eye hath not seen nor ear hath heard
Nor heart conceived that full "enough":
Here moans the separating sea;
Here harvests fail; here breaks the heart:
There God shall join and no man part,
I full of Christ and Christ of me.
## p. 12410 (#461) ##########################################
## p. 12410 (#462) ##########################################
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## p. 12411 (#465) ##########################################
12411
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
(1828-1882)
BY WILLIAM MORTON PAYNE
N THE tender 'One Word More' with which Browning dedi-
cated to his wife the "fifty poems finished" of "Men and
Women,' the poet speaks of the lost "century of sonnets »
said to have been written by Raphael, and of the painting affirmed
by tradition to have been begun by Dante. Since the days of
Dante and Raphael, other poets have been painters, and other
painters poets; but probably no one has attained to the high and
equal mastery of both arts that we find exemplified in the work of
Rossetti. In such a case, it was only natural that each art should
react upon the other: that the paintings should be peculiarly poeti-
cal in conception and execution; that the poems should have much
of the pictorial quality, however abstract their themes and however
idealized their motives. Although the present article can say nothing
of Rossetti the painter, the fact that the poet was also a painter
of the highest achievement must constantly be kept in view; for it
helps to account for many things in the poems,-from the statement
that the hair of the Blessèd Damozel "was yellow like ripe corn,"
to "the flame turned cloud, the cloud returned to flame," that sym-
bolizes the changing moods of the soul stirred to its depths by the
magic of the musician. Yet it must not be inferred from all this
that the artist (two-souled, as Michelangelo was four-souled) either
unconsciously or deliberately confused the distinct aims of poetry
and painting, or that his work in either art transcends, to any consid-
erable degree, the limitations laid down by Lessing's searching criti-
cism in the 'Laocoön. ' If we examine the cases in which Rossetti
brought the two arts into the closest juxtaposition, as in the sonnets
which he wrote for certain of his own pictures, we shall find that
while the poems comment upon the paintings, the descriptive ele-
ment is far less important than the elements of retrospection, antici-
pation, and gnomic philosophical utterance.
Rossetti takes his place in English literature as one of the six
major poets of the later Victorian era, and as the oldest of the sub-
group of three associated with the artistic revival vaguely known as
Pre-Raphaelitism. Although several years the senior of Morris and
Swinburne, the public knew little of him as a poet for some years
## p. 12412 (#466) ##########################################
12412
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
after their reputations had been fairly well established. Yet much
of his most characteristic work had been done long before Morris
published his first volume, or Swinburne made the earliest displays
of his astonishing virtuosity; and both of these men in some sense
regarded Rossetti as their master. But his contributions to the Germ
(1850) and the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine (1856) did not reach
the larger public; and it was not until the 'Poems' appeared in
1870 that the world discovered how bright a planet had swum into
its ken. Meanwhile the small group of Rossetti's friends had long
cherished his work, and manuscript copies of many of his pieces had
circulated from hand to hand. In fact, when the time of publication
approached, it may be said that rumor had so heralded the advent
of the new poet that when the volume of 1870 appeared, it was, as
Mr. Gosse remarks, "after such expectation and tiptoe curiosity as
have preceded no other book in our generation. " The story of that
volume is one of the most familiar bits of literary history: buried in
the grave of a beloved wife, who died after but two years of wed-
ded happiness, it was only upon the earnest solicitation of his friends
that Rossetti permitted the manuscript to be unearthed, seven years
later, and made arrangements for its publication.
When this volume appeared, the poet was just completing his
forty-second year. Born in London, May 12th, 1828, he was named
Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti, which appellation was in early man-
hood modified into the form that became generally familiar. The
means of his family were scanty; and at the age of fifteen he left
school and began the study of painting. In 1848 he united with two
of his fellow-students in art - Millais and Holman Hunt - and with
the sculptor-poet Woolner, to form the famous Pre-Raphaelite Brother-
hood. In 1860, after a long engagement, he married Elizabeth Sid-
dal, who died less than two years thereafter. His reputation as a
painter was by this time firmly established; but his literary work,
mostly contributed to the periodicals above mentioned, was known
to but few readers. In 1861 he published the marvelous volume of
translations at first entitled 'The Early Italian Poets,' and after-
wards republished as 'Dante and his Circle. ' This is one of the few
works of translation into English that are almost beyond praise. It
includes, besides the 'New Life' of Dante, a selection of poems by
about a dozen of Dante's contemporaries,-chief among them being
Guido Cavalcanti,- and by a still greater number of the twelfth and
thirteenth century poets who came before Dante. The path of the
translator, we read in Rossetti's preface, "is like that of Aladdin
through the enchanted vaults: many are the precious fruits and
flowers which he must pass by unheeded in search for the lamp
alone; happy if at last, when brought to light, it does not prove that
his old lamp has been exchanged for a new one-glittering indeed to
## p. 12413 (#467) ##########################################
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
12413
the eye, but scarcely of the same virtue nor with the same genius
at its summons. " Precious indeed are these translations of old Ital-
ian poetry, for they interpret with perfect insight and sympathy an
important literary epoch; and precious also are Rossetti's infrequent
later experiments in translation, which include the Francesca epi-
sode of the 'Inferno' and some of the ballads of Villon. His version
of the 'Ballade des Dames de Temps Jadis' (Ballad of the Ladies of
Bygone Times) has received such praise from men like Pater and
Swinburne, that ordinary words seem inadequate to convey the sense
of its matchless charm.
The 'Poems' of 1870 found, as has already been stated, an audi-
ence half prepared to receive them; and a chorus of critical enthu-
siasm greeted their appearance. With the exception of Swinburne's
'Poems and Ballads,' it may be said that no other volume of Eng-
lish poetry published during the last half-century has created so great
a sensation, or been received with so much acclaim. But while all
serious critics were agreed in recognizing the advent of a new great
poet, the emergence of a new and distinctly individual note in the
chorus of English song,—the dovecotes of literature were not a little
fluttered by the swoop of one bird of prey. A little more than a
year after the publication of the Poems,' an unimportant scribbler,
whose name does not deserve to be dignified by mention, obtained
access to the pages of a leading review, and published over a pseu-
donymous signature an article entitled 'The Fleshly School of Poetry. '
This article was a direct attack upon Rossetti's poems, and fairly
reeked with what Swinburne calls a "rancid morality. " Utterly un-
fair in its methods and unjust in its conclusions, this article seized
upon certain of the more sensuous passages in the 'Poems,' and
strove to create the impression that they were merely sensual,-
very different thing. The injustice of this attack was afterwards
acknowledged by its author, and the incident would hardly call for
notice were it not for the effect produced upon Rossetti's morbidly
sensitive nature. He was already suffering from the insomnia that
was to wreck his life a few years later, besides being threatened
with the loss of his eyesight; and it is not surprising that under
these circumstances he magnified the significance of the contemptible
attack. He fell "into the belief that he was fast becoming the object
of wide-spread calumny and obloquy, not less malignant and insidi-
ous than unprovoked and undeserved," — so his brother tells us. An
alarming illness followed; and when he recovered from it, so far as
he did recover, he was a changed man. The exuberant vitality of
his earlier years, and the unaffected geniality which had made him
so companionable, gave place to moodiness, depression, and a gloomy
irritability, that estranged many of his friends, and almost made him
a recluse for the last ten years of his life.
-a
-
## p. 12414 (#468) ##########################################
12414
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
A few words about these last years may properly precede the dis-
cussion of Rossetti's poetical achievement. He worked diligently at
his painting, and made some additions to his poems during this
period; and his life was not without intervals of its old-time serenity.
But the excessive use of chloral as a remedy for sleeplessness was
steadily sapping his energies; and he was becoming more and more
of a physical wreck. For a time he lived almost wholly with William
Morris at Kelmscot; but from 1874 on, his home was the house in
Chelsea which he had occupied at intervals ever since the death of
his wife. In 1881 he issued a new edition of his 'Poems'; and also
the volume of 'Ballads and Sonnets,' which included the now com-
pleted 'House of Life' and a number of long poems hitherto unpub-
lished. In December of this year he suffered a paralytic shock, and
was removed to Birchington, where he died on the 9th of April,
1882, and where his remains were interred.
The entire works of Rossetti, in prose and verse, original and
translated, fill two stout volumes in the standard edition. A single
volume of no inordinate bulk suffices to contain all the poems. Thus
we see that of the six great poets of his age, Rossetti was one of
the least voluminous. The bulk of his work is about equal to that
of Matthew Arnold, but is much less than that of Tennyson; and
falls far short of the opulence of Browning, Morris, and Swinburne.
Although its composition covered a period of more than thirty years,
little is to be gained from a study of its chronological sequence; for
the wings of the poet were full-fledged almost from the start, and
it would be difficult to show anything like the steady development
of power that may be traced in the activity of many of his contem-
poraries. If The Blessed Damozel' (written at eighteen) bears
the marks of immaturity upon its magical beauty, 'The Burden of
Nineveh' (written only three or four years later) is the work of a
strong man of fully ripened powers. What we have to say of the
poems, then, need take no account of their dates; and we are left
free to group them according to subject-matter and form.
First of all, we may mention the long narrative poems and bal-
lads: the chronicle history of Dante at Verona,' which is the noblest
of the several tributes of Rossetti's genius to what was probably the
deepest artistic influence of his life; the intensely dramatic 'A Last
Confession, which rivals the strongest of Browning's dramatic idyls;
the story of Jenny,' with its frank but delicate treatment of one of
the most difficult of subjects; the unfinished poem called 'The Bride's
Prelude'; and the four great ballads Sister Helen,' 'Rose Mary,'
( The White Ship,' and 'The King's Tragedy. ' Then, following the
classification of Mr. W. M.
Rossetti, we come to the great sonnet-
sequence named 'The House of Life'; a brimming century of poems,
which embody in splendid imagery and harmonious measure the
1
i
## p. 12415 (#469) ##########################################
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
12415
experiences that youth and change and fate bring to the life of man.
These sonnets alone would suffice to insure the immortality of the
poet; for they must be ranked no lower than with the greatest in
the language,-with those of Shakespeare and of Milton, of Words-
worth and of Keats. Finally, in the miscellaneous section of the
poems we find many more sonnets of equal beauty and power, in-
cluding the important group of 'Sonnets for Pictures'; such ballads
as Troy Town' and 'Eden Bower'; such matchless lyrics as 'The
Sea Limits, The Cloud Confines,' and 'The Song of the Bower';
and so impressive and solemn an utterance as 'The Burden of Nin-
eveh. ' Here are many different forms and styles, in some cases
represented by but a single example: it seems as if Rossetti, whose
distinctive forms of expression were the ballad, the lyric, and the
sonnet, had made such single ventures in other manners as 'Jenny,'
'A Last Confession,' and 'The Burden of Nineveh,' merely to show
that he could do these things if he chose, and do them supremely
well.
To sum up the characteristics of the poet in a few concluding
words, it may be said that he possessed in an extraordinary degree
both richness of imagination, and the power to pack a world of
meaning into one pregnant and melodious phrase. But both his pic-
torial faculty and his intellectual force were tempered by a strain of
mysticism, for which he has been charged with obscurity by hard-
headed and dull-witted readers. He was at once the most spiritual
and the most material of poets; and the accusation of sensuality from
which he was made to suffer could only result from inability to see
more than one side of the Druid shield of his poetical personality.
Mr. Pater, who saw both sides of the shield, compared him with the
Florentine whose name he bore; and his words may be borrowed to
crown with a touch of grace this brief study of Rossetti's work.
"Practically, the Church of the Middle Age, by its æsthetic worship, its
sacramentalism, its real faith in the resurrection of the flesh, had set itself
against the Manichean opposition of spirit and matter, and its results in
men's ways of taking life; and in this, Dante is the central representative of its
spirit. To him, in the vehement and impassioned heat of his conceptions,
the material and the spiritual are fused and blent: if the spiritual attains
the definite visibility of a crystal, what is material loses its earthiness and
impurity. And here again, by force of instinct, Rossetti is one with him.
His chosen type of beauty is one-
"Whose speech Truth knows not from her thought,
Nor Love her body from her soul. '»
Attelage
## p. 12416 (#470) ##########################################
12416
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
THE BLESSED DAMOZEL
THE
HE blessèd damozel leaned out
From the gold bar of Heaven:
Her eyes were deeper than the depth
Of waters stilled at even;
She had three lilies in her hand,
And the stars in her hair were seven.
Her robe, ungirt from clasp to hem,
No wrought flowers did adorn,
But a white rose of Mary's gift,
For service meetly worn;
Her hair that lay along her back
Was yellow like ripe corn.
Herseemed she scarce had been a day
One of God's choristers;
The wonder was not yet quite gone
From that still look of hers:
Albeit, to them she left, her day
Had counted as ten years.
(To one, it is ten years of years.
Yet now, and in this place,
Surely she leaned o'er me her hair
Fell all about my face. —
Nothing: the autumn fall of leaves.
The whole year sets apace. )
-
It was the rampart of God's house
That she was standing on:
By God built over the sheer depth
The which is Space begun;
So high, that looking downward thence
She scarce could see the sun.
It lies in Heaven, across the flood
Of ether, as a bridge.
Beneath, the tides of day and night
With flame and darkness ridge
The void, as low as where this earth
Spins like a fretful midge.
Around her, lovers, newly met
'Mid deathless love's acclaims,
## p. 12417 (#471) ##########################################
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
12417
XXI-777
Spoke evermore among themselves
Their heart-remembered names;
And the souls mounting up to God
Went by her like thin flames.
And still she bowed herself and stooped
Out of the circling charm;
Until her bosom must have made
The bar she leaned on warm,
And the lilies lay as if asleep
Along her bended arm.
From the fixed place of Heaven she saw
Time like a pulse shake fierce
Through all the worlds. Her gaze still strove
Within the gulf to pierce
Its path; and now she spoke as when
The stars sang in their spheres.
The sun was gone now; the curled moon
Was like a little feather
Fluttering far down the gulf; and now
She spoke through the still weather.
Her voice was like the voice the stars
Had when they sang together.
(Ah sweet! Even now, in that bird's song,
Strove not her accents there,
Fain to be hearkened? When those bells
Possessed the midday air,
Strove not her steps to reach my side
Down all the echoing stair? )
"I wish that he were come to me,
For he will come," she said.
"Have I not prayed in Heaven? -on earth,
Lord, Lord, has he not prayed?
Are not two prayers a perfect strength?
And shall I feel afraid?
"When round his head the aureole clings,
And he is clothed in white,
I'll take his hand and go with him
To the deep wells of light;
As unto a stream we will step down,
And bathe there in God's sight.
## p. 12418 (#472) ##########################################
12418
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
"We two will stand beside that shrine,
Occult, withheld, untrod,
Whose lamps are stirred continually
With prayer sent up to God;
And see our old prayers, granted, melt
Each like a little cloud.
"We two will lie i' the shadow of
That living mystic tree
Within whose secret growth the Dove
Is sometimes felt to be,
While every leaf that his plumes touch
Saith his name audibly.
"And I myself will teach to him,
I myself, lying so,
The songs I sing here; which his voice
Shall pause in, hushed and slow,
And find some knowledge at each pause,
Or some new thing to know. "
(Alas! We two, we two, thou say'st!
Yea, one wast thou with me
That once of old. But shall God lift
To endless unity
The soul whose likeness with thy soul
Was but its love for thee? )
"We two," she said, "will seek the groves
Where the lady Mary is,
With her five handmaidens, whose names
Are five sweet symphonies,-
Cecily, Gertrude, Magdalen,
Margaret, and Rosalys.
"Circlewise sit they, with bound locks
And foreheads garlanded;
Into the fine cloth white like flame
Weaving the golden thread,
To fashion the birth-robes for them
Who are just born, being dead.
"He shall fear, haply, and be dumb;
Then will I lay my cheek
To his, and tell about our love,
Not once abashed or weak:
## p. 12419 (#473) ##########################################
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
12419
And the dear Mother will approve
My pride, and let me speak.
"Herself shall bring us, hand in hand,
To Him round whom all souls
Kneel, the clear-ranged unnumbered heads
Bowed with their aureoles:
And angels meeting us shall sing
To their citherns and citoles.
"There will I ask of Christ the Lord
Thus much for him and me:
Only to live as once on earth
With Love,-only to be,
As then awhile, for ever now
Together, I and he. »
She gazed and listened, and then said,
Less sad of speech than mild,
"All this is when he comes. " She ceased.
The light thrilled towards her, filled
With angels in strong level flight.
Her eyes prayed, and she smiled.
(I saw her smile. ) But soon their path
Was vague in distant spheres;
And then she cast her arms along
The golden barriers,
And laid her face between her hands,
And wept. (I heard her tears. )
THE DOUBLE BETRAYAL
From Rose Mary'
SHE
HE signed all folk from the threshold stone,
And gazed in the dead man's face alone.
The fight for life found record yet
In the clenched lips and the teeth hard-set;
The wrath from the bent brow was not gone,
And stark in the eyes the hate still shone
Of that they last had looked upon.
The blazoned coat was rent on his breast
Where the golden field was goodliest;
## p. 12420 (#474) ##########################################
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
12420
But the shivered sword, close-gripped, could tell
That the blood shed round him where he fell
Was not all his in the distant dell.
The lady recked of the corpse no whit,
But saw the soul and spoke to it:
A light there was in her steadfast eyes,—
The fire of mortal tears and sighs
That pity and love immortalize.
"By thy death have I learnt to-day
Thy deed, O James of Heronhaye!
Great wrong thou hast done to me and mine;
And haply God hath wrought for a sign
By our blind deed this doom of thine.
"Thy shrift, alas! thou wast not to win;
But may death shrive thy soul herein!
Full well do I know thy love should be
Even yet had life but stayed with thee —
Our honor's strong security. "
She stooped, and said with a sob's low stir,
"Peace be thine - but what peace for her? »
But ere to the brow her lips were pressed,
She marked, half hid in the riven vest,
A packet close to the dead man's breast.
'Neath surcoat pierced and broken mail
It lay on the blood-stained bosom pale.
The clot clung round it, dull and dense,
And a faintness seized her mortal sense
As she reached her hand and drew it thence.
'Twas steeped in the heart's flood welling high
From the heart it there had rested by;
'Twas glued to a broidered fragment gay,—
A shred by spear thrust rent away
From the heron wings of Heronhaye.
She gazed on the thing with piteous eyne:
"Alas, poor child, some pledge of thine!
Ah me! in this troth the hearts were twain,
And one hath ebbed to this crimson stain,
And when shall the other throb again ? »
She opened the packet heedfully;
The blood was stiff, and it scarce might be.
## p. 12421 (#475) ##########################################
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
She found but a folded paper there,
And round it, twined with tenderest care,
A long bright tress of golden hair.
Even as she looked, she saw again
That dark-haired face in its swoon of pain:
It seemed a snake with a golden sheath
Crept near, as a slow flame flickereth,
And stung her daughter's heart to death.
She loosed the tress, but her hand did shake
As though indeed she had touched a snake;
And next she undid the paper's fold,
But that too trembled in her hold,
And the sense scarce grasped the tale it told.
"My heart's sweet lord" ('twas thus she read),
"At length our love is garlanded.
At Holy Cross, within eight days' space,
I seek my shrift; and the time and place
Shall fit thee too for thy soul's good grace.
"From Holycleugh on the seventh day
My brother rides, and bides away;
And long or e'er he is back, mine own,
Afar where the face of fear's unknown
We shall be safe with our love alone.
"Ere yet at the shrine my knees I bow,
I shear one tress for our holy vow.
As round these words these threads I wind,
So, eight days hence, shall our loves be twined,
Says my lord's poor lady, JOCELIND. "
She read it twice, with a brain in thrall,
And then its echo told her all.
O'er brows low-fallen her hands she drew:-
"O God! " she said, as her hands fell too,-
"The Warden's sister of Holycleugh! "
She rose upright with a long low moan,
And stared in the dead man's face new-known.
Had it lived indeed? She scarce could tell:
'Twas a cloud where fiends had come to dwell,-
A mask that hung on the gate of hell.
She lifted the lock of gleaming hair,
And smote the lips and left it there.
12421
## p. 12422 (#476) ##########################################
12422
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
"Here's gold that Hell shall take for thy toll!
Full well hath thy treason found its goal,
O thou dead body and damnèd soul! »
She turned, sore dazed, for a voice was near,
And she knew that some one called to her.
On many a column fair and tall
A high court ran round the castle hall;
And thence it was that the priest did call.
"I sought your child where you bade me go,
And in rooms around and in rooms below;
But where, alas! may the maiden be?
Fear naught, we shall find her speedily,-
But come, come hither, and seek with me. "
Α
-
She reached the stair like a lifelorn thing,
But hastened upward murmuring:-
"Yea, Death's is a face that's fell to see;
But bitterer pang Life hoards for thee,
Thou broken heart of Rose Mary! "
THE SECOND-SIGHT
From The King's Tragedy'
GAINST the coming of Christmastide
That year the King bade call
I' the Black Friars' Charterhouse of Perth
A solemn festival.
And we of his household rode with him
In a close-ranked company;
But not till the sun had sunk from his throne
Did we reach the Scotish Sea.
That eve was clenched for a boding storm,
'Neath a toilsome moon half seen:
The cloud stooped low and the surf rose high;
And where there was a line of the sky,
Wild wings loomed dark between.
And on a rock of the black beach-side,
By the veiled moon dimly lit,
There was something seemed to heave with life
As the King drew nigh to it.
## p. 12423 (#477) ##########################################
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
12423
And was it only the tossing furze
Or brake of the waste sea-wold?
Or was it an eagle bent to the blast?
When near we came, we knew it at last
For a woman tattered and old.
But it seemed as though by a fire within
Her writhen limbs were wrung;
And as soon as the King was close to her
She stood up gaunt and strong.
'Twas then the moon sailed clear of the rack,
On high in her hollow dome;
And still as aloft with hoary crest
Each clamorous wave rang home,
Like fire in snow the moonlight blazed
Amid the champing foam.
And the woman held his eyes with her eyes:-
"O King, thou art come at last;
But thy wraith has haunted the Scotish Sea
To my sight for four years past.
"Four years it is since first I met,
'Twixt the Duchray and the Dhu,
A shape whose feet clung close in a shroud,
And that shape for thine I knew.
"A year again, and on Inchkeith Isle
I saw thee pass in the breeze,
With the cere cloth risen above thy feet
And wound about thy knees.
"And yet a year, in the Links of Forth,
As a wanderer without rest,
Thou cam'st with both thine arms i' the shroud
That clung high up thy breast.
"And in this hour I find thee here,
And well mine eyes may note
That the winding-sheet hath passed thy breast
And risen around thy throat.
"And when I meet thee again, O King,
That of death hast such sore drouth,—
Except thou turn again on this shore,
The winding-sheet will have moved once more
And covered thine eyes and mouth.
## p. 12424 (#478) ##########################################
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
12424
"O King whom poor men bless for their king,
Of thy fate be not so fain;
But these my words for God's message take,
And turn thy steed, O King, for her sake
Who rides beside thy rein! "
While the woman spoke, the King's horse reared
As if it would breast the sea,
And the Queen turned pale as she heard on the gale
The voice die dolorously.
When the woman ceased, the steed was still,
But the King gazed on her yet;
And in silence save for the wail of the sea
His eyes and her eyes met.
At last he said:-"God's ways are his own;
Man is but shadow and dust.
Last night I prayed by his altar-stone;
To-night I wend to the Feast of his Son:
And in him I set my trust.
"I have held my people in sacred charge,
And have not feared the sting
Of proud men's hate,-to His will resigned
Who has but one same death for a hind
And one same death for a king.
"And if God in his wisdom have brought close
The day when I must die,
That day by water or fire or air
My feet shall fall in the destined snare
Wherever my road may lie.
"What man can say but the Fiend hath set
Thy sorcery on my path,
My heart with the fear of death to fill,
And turn me against God's very will
To sink in his burning wrath ? »
The woman stood as the train rode past,
And moved nor limb nor eye;
And when we were shipped, we saw her there
Still standing against the sky.
As the ship made way, the moon once more
Sank low in her rising pall;
And I thought of the shrouded wraith of the King,
And I said, "The Heavens know all. "
## p. 12425 (#479) ##########################################
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
12425
THE CARD-DEALER
OULD you not drink her gaze like wine?
Yet though its splendor swoon
Into the silence languidly
As a tune into a tune,
Those eyes unravel the coiled nigh
And know the stars at noon.
C
The gold that's heaped beside her hand,
In truth rich prize it were;
And rich the dreams that wreathe her brows
With magic stillness there;
And he were rich who should unwind
That woven golden hair.
Around her, where she sits, the dance
Now breathes its eager heat;
And not more lightly or more true
Fall there the dancers' feet
Than fall her cards on the bright board
As 'twere an heart that beat.
Her fingers let them softly through,
Smooth polished silent things;
And each one as it falls reflects
In swift light-shadowings,
Blood-red and purple, green and blue,
The great eyes of her rings.
Whom plays she with? With thee, who lov'st
Those gems upon her hand;
With me, who search her secret brows;
With all men, blessed or banned.
We play together, she and we,
Within a vain strange land:
A land without any order,—
Day even as night (one saith),—
Where who lieth down ariseth not
Nor the sleeper awakeneth;
A land of darkness as darkness itself
And of the shadow of death.
What be her cards, you ask? Even these:-
The heart, that doth but crave
More, having fed; the diamond,
Skilled to make base seem brave;
## p. 12426 (#480) ##########################################
12426
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
The club, for smiting in the dark;
The spade, to dig a grave.
And do you ask what game she plays?
With me 'tis lost or won;
With thee it is playing still; with him
It is not well begun;
But 'tis a game she plays with all
Beneath the sway o' the sun.
Thou seest the card that falls,-she knows
The card that followeth :
Her game in thy tongue is called Life,
As ebbs thy daily breath:
When she shall speak, thou'lt learn her tongue
And know she calls it Death.
SUDDEN LIGHT
HAVE been here before,
I
But when or how I cannot tell:
I know the grass beyond the door,
The sweet keen smell,
The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.
You have been mine before,—
How long ago I may not know:
But just when at that swallow's soar
Your neck turned so,
Some veil did fall,-I knew it all of yore.
Has this been thus before?
And shall not thus time's eddying flight
Still with our lives our loves restore
In death's despite,
And day and night yield one delight once more?
THE WOODSPURGE
THE
HE wind flapped loose, the wind was still,
Shaken out dead from tree and hill:
I had walked on at the wind's will,-
I sat now, for the wind was still.
-
Between my knees my forehead was, -
My lips, drawn in, said not Alas!
## p. 12427 (#481) ##########################################
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
My hair was over in the grass,
My naked ears heard the day pass.
My eyes, wide open, had the run
Of some ten weeds to fix upon;
Among those few, out of the sun,
The woodspurge flowered, three cups in one.
From perfect grief there need not be
Wisdom, or even memory:
One thing then learnt remains to me,-
The woodspurge has a cup of three.
THE SEA-LIMITS
ONSIDER the sea's listless chime:
C
Time's self it is, made audible,-
The murmur of the earth's own shell.
Secret continuance sublime
Is the sea's end: our sight may pass
No furlong further. Since time was,
This sound hath told the lapse of time.
No quiet, which is death's,—it hath
The mournfulness of ancient life,
Enduring always at dull strife.
As the world's heart of rest and wrath,
Its painful pulse is in the sands.
Last utterly, the whole sky stands,
Gray and not known, along its path.
Listen alone beside the sea,
Listen alone among the woods;
Those voices of twin solitudes
Shall have one sound alike to thee:
Hark where the murmurs of thronged men
Surge and sink back and surge again,—
Still the one voice of wave and tree.
Gather a shell from the strown beach
And listen at its lips: they sigh
The same desire and mystery,
The echo of the whole sea's speech.
And all mankind is thus at heart
Not anything but what thou art:
And Earth, Sea, Man, are all in each.
12427
## p. 12428 (#482) ##########################################
12428
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
THE CLOUD CONFINES
HE day is dark and the night
To him that would search their heart;
No lips of cloud that will part,
Nor morning song in the light:
Only, gazing alone,
To him wild shadows are shown,
Deep under deep unknown
And height above unknown height.
Still we say as we go,-
THE
"Strange to think by the way,
Whatever there is to know,
That shall we know one day. "
The Past is over and fled;
Named new, we name it the old:
Thereof some tale hath been told,
But no word comes from the dead;
Whether at all they be,
Or whether as bond or free,
Or whether they too were we,
Or by what spell they have sped.
Still we say as we go,-
"Strange to think by the way,
Whatever there is to know,
That shall we know one day. "
What of the heart of hate
That beats in thy breast, O Time? —
Red strife from the furthest prime,
And anguish of fierce debate;
War that shatters her slain,
And peace that grinds them as grain,
And eyes fixed ever in vain
On the pitiless eyes of Fate.
Still we say as we go,-
"Strange to think by the way,
Whatever there is to know,
That shall we know one day. "
What of the heart of love
That bleeds in thy breast, O Man? .
Thy kisses snatched 'neath the ban
Of fangs that mock them above;
## p. 12429 (#483) ##########################################
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
Thy bells prolonged unto knells,
Thy hope that a breath dispels,
Thy bitter forlorn farewells
And the empty echoes thereof?
Still we say as we go,—
"Strange to think by the way,
Whatever there is to know,
That shall we know one day. ”
-
The sky leans dumb on the sea,
Aweary with all its wings;
And oh! the song the sea sings
Is dark everlastingly.
Our past is clean forgot,
Our present is and is not,
Our future's a sealed seed-plot,
And what betwixt them are we?
We who say as we go,-
"Strange to think by the way,
Whatever there is to know,
That shall we know one day. "
SONG OF THE BOWER
AY, is it day, is it dusk in thy bower,
SAY, Thou whom I long for, who longest for me?
Oh! be it light, be it night, 'tis Love's hour,
Love's that is fettered as Love's that is free.
Free Love has leaped to that innermost chamber,
Oh! the last time, and the hundred before:
Fettered Love, motionless, can but remember,
Yet something that sighs from him passes the door.
Nay, but my heart when it flies to thy bower,
What does it find there that knows it again?
There it must droop like a shower-beaten flower,
Red at the rent core and dark with the rain.
Ah! yet what shelter is still shed above it,-
What waters still image its leaves torn apart?
Thy soul is the shade that clings round it to love it,
And tears are its mirror deep down in thy heart.
12429
What were my prize could I enter thy bower,
This day, to-morrow, at eve or at morn?
T
## p. 12430 (#484) ##########################################
12430
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
Large lovely arms and a neck like a tower,
Bosom then heaving that now lies forlorn.
Kindled with love-breath, (the sun's kiss is colder! )
Thy sweetness all near me, so distant to-day;
My hand round thy neck and thy hand on my shoulder,
My mouth to thy mouth as the world melts away.
What is it keeps me afar from thy bower,-
My spirit, my body, so fain to be there?
Waters engulfing or fires that devour?
HEN I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress-tree:
WHEN
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.
I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on, as if in pain;
And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise or set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.
## p. 12403 (#453) ##########################################
CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI
12403
REST
From Poems. ' Macmillan & Co. : 1894
EARTH, lie heavily upon her eyes;
O
Seal her sweet eyes weary of watching, Earth;
Lie close around her; leave no room for mirth
With its harsh laughter, nor for sound of sighs.
She hath no questions, she hath no replies,
Hushed in and curtained with a blessed dearth
Of all that irked her from the hour of birth;
With stillness that is almost Paradise.
Darkness more clear than noonday holdeth her;
Silence more musical than any song;
Even her very heart has ceased to stir:
Until the morning of Eternity
Her rest shall not begin nor end, but be;
And when she wakes she will not think it long.
UP-HILL
From Poems. ) Macmillan & Co. : 1894
OES the road wind up-hill all the way? —
Yes, to the very end.
Will the day's journey take the whole long day? —
From morn to night, my friend.
DOR
But is there for the night a resting-place? —
A roof for when the slow dark hours begin.
May not the darkness hide it from my face? —
You cannot miss that inn.
Shall I meet other wayfarers at night? -
Those who have gone before.
Then must I knock, or call, when just in sight? -
They will not keep you standing at that door.
Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak? -
Of labor you shall find the sum.
Will there be beds for me and all who seek?
Yea, beds for all who come.
## p. 12404 (#454) ##########################################
CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI
12404
THE THREE ENEMIES
From 'Poems. ' Macmillan & Co. : 1894
THE FLESH
WEET, thou art pale. "
"SWEET,
Christ hung upon the cruel tree
And bore his Father's wrath for me. "
"Sweet, thou art sad. "
"More pale to see,
"Beneath a rod
More heavy, Christ for my sake trod
The wine-press of the wrath of God. "
"Sweet, thou art weary. "
"Not so Christ;
Whose mighty love of me sufficed
For Strength, Salvation, Eucharist. "
"Sweet, thou art footsore. »
"If I bleed,
His feet have bled; yea, in my need
His heart once bled for mine indeed. "
THE WORLD
"SWEET, thou art young. "
"So He was young
Who for my sake in silence hung
Upon the Cross with Passion wrung. "
"Look, thou art fair. "
"He was more fair
Than men, who deigned for me to wear
A visage marred beyond compare. "
"And thou hast riches. "
"Daily bread:
All else is His who living, dead,
For me lacked where to lay his head. ”
"And life is sweet. "
"It was not so
To Him whose cup did overflow
With mine unutterable woe. "
## p. 12405 (#455) ##########################################
CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI
12405
THE DEVIL
"THOU drinkest deep. "
"When Christ would sup,
He drained the dregs from out my cup:
So how should I be lifted up? "
"Thou shalt win glory. "
"In the skies,
Lord Jesus, cover up mine eyes,
Lest they should look on vanities. "
"Thou shalt have knowledge. "
"Helpless dust,
In thee, O Lord, I put my trust:
Answer thou for me, Wise and Just. "
"And might. "
"Get thee behind me. Lord,
Who hast redeemed and not abhorred
My soul, O keep it by thy Word. "
OLD AND NEW YEAR DITTIES
From Poems. Roberts Bros. : 1866
I
NEW
EW YEAR met me somewhat sad:
Old Year leaves me tired,
Stripped of favorite things I had,
Balked of much desired;
Yet farther on my road to-day,-
God willing, farther on my way.
-
New Year, coming on apace,
What have you to give me?
Bring you scathe, or bring you grace,
Face me with an honest face;
You shall not deceive me:
Be it good or ill, be it what you will,
It needs shall help me on my road,
My rugged way to heaven, please God.
## p. 12406 (#456) ##########################################
12406
CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI
II
WATCH with me, men, women, and children dear,
You whom I love, for whom I hope and fear,
Watch with me this last vigil of the year.
Some hug their business, some their pleasure-scheme;
Some seize the vacant hour to sleep or dream;
Heart locked in heart some kneel and watch apart.
Watch with me, blessed spirits, who delight
All through the holy night to walk in white,
Or take your ease after the long-drawn fight.
I know not if they watch with me; I know
They count this eve of resurrection slow,
And cry, "How long? " with urgent utterance strong.
Watch with me, Jesus, in my loneliness:
Though others say me nay, yet say thou yes;
Though others pass me by, stop thou to bless.
Yea, thou dost stop with me this vigil-night;
To-night of pain, to-morrow of delight:
I, Love, am thine; thou, Lord my God, art mine.
III
PASSING away, saith the world, passing away:
Chances, beauty, and youth sapped day by day;
Thy life never continueth in one stay.
Is the eye waxen dim, is the dark hair changing to gray
That hath won neither laurel nor bay?
I shall clothe myself in spring and bud in May:
Thou, root-stricken, shalt not rebuild thy decay
On my bosom for aye.
Then I answered, Yea.
Passing away, saith my soul, passing away;
With its burden of fear and hope, of labor and play.
Hearken what the past doth witness and say:-
Rust in thy gold, a moth is in thine array,
A canker is in thy bud, thy leaf must decay.
At midnight, at cock-crow, at morning one certain day
Lo, the Bridegroom shall come and shall not delay:
Watch thou and pray.
Then I answered, Yea.
―
## p. 12407 (#457) ##########################################
CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI
12407
Passing away, saith my God, passing away:
Winter passeth after long delay;
New grapes on the vine, new figs on the tender spray,
Turtle calleth turtle in heaven's May.
Though I tarry, wait for me, trust me, watch and pray.
Arise, come away; night is past, and lo, it is day,
My love, my sister, my spouse, thou shalt hear me say.
Then I answered, Yea.
AMOR MUNDI
From 'Poems. Macmillan & Co. : 1894
"O"
H, WHERE are you going with your love-locks flowing
On the west wind blowing along this valley track? ”.
"The down-hill path is easy; come with me an it please ye:
We shall escape the up-hill by never turning back. "
So they two went together in glowing August weather:
The honey-breathing heather lay to their left and right;
And dear she was to doat on, her swift feet seemed to float on
The air like soft twin pigeons too sportive to alight.
"Oh, what is that in heaven where gray cloud-flakes are seven,
Where blackest clouds hang riven just at the rainy skirt ? » —
"Oh, that's a meteor sent us, a message dumb, portentous,
An undeciphered solemn signal of help or hurt. ”
"Oh, what is that glides quickly where velvet flowers grow thickly,
Their scent comes rich and sickly? "-"A scaled and hooded
>>
worm.
"Oh, what's that in the hollow, so pale I quake to follow? "
"Oh, that's a thin dead body which waits the eternal term. "
-
"Turn again, O my sweetest,- turn again, false and fleetest:
This beaten way thou beatest I fear is hell's own track. ” —
"Nay, too steep for hill mounting; nay, too late for cost counting:
This downward path is easy, but there's no turning back. "
## p. 12408 (#458) ##########################################
12408
CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI
LIFE HIDDEN
From New Poems. Copyright 1896, by Macmillan & Co.
OSES and lilies grow above the place
R
Where she sleeps the long sleep that doth not
dream.
If we could look upon her hidden face,
Nor shadow would be there, nor garish gleam
Of light; her life is lapsing like a stream
That makes no noise, but floweth on apace
Seawards, while many a shade and shady beam
Vary the ripples in their gliding chase.
She doth not see, but knows; she doth not feel,
And yet is sensible; she hears no sound,
Yet counts the flight of time and doth not err.
Peace far and near, peace to ourselves and her:
Her body is at peace in holy ground,
Her spirit is at peace where angels kneel.
WHITSUN EVE
From New Poems. Copyright 1896, by Macmillan & Co.
HE white dove cooeth in her downy nest,
TH
Keeping her young ones warm beneath her breast;
The white moon saileth through the cool clear sky,
Screened by a tender mist in passing by;
The white rose buds, with thorns upon its stem,
All the more precious and more dear for them;
The stream shines silver in the tufted grass,
The white clouds scarcely dim it as they pass;
Deep in the valleys lily-cups are white,
They send up incense all the holy night.
Our souls are white, made clean in Blood once shed;
White blessed angels watch around our bed:
O spotless Lamb of God, still keep us so,
Thou who wert born for us in time of snow.
## p. 12409 (#459) ##########################################
CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI
12409
HEAVEN OVERARCHES
From New Poems. Copyright 1896, by Macmillan & Co.
Η HA
EAVEN overarches earth and sea,
Earth-sadness and sea-bitterness.
Heaven overarches you and me:
A little while and we shall be-
Please God-where there is no more sea
Nor barren wilderness.
Heaven overarches you and me,
And all earth's gardens and her graves.
Look up with me, until we see
The day break and the shadows flee.
What though to-night wrecks you and me
If so to-morrow saves?
THE HEART KNOWETH ITS OWN BITTERNESS
From New Poems. Copyright 1896, by Macmillan & Co.
HEN all the over-work of life
WHEN
Is finished once, and fast asleep
We swerve no more beneath the knife,
But taste the silence cool and deep:
Forgetful of the highways rough,
Forgetful of the thorny scourge,
Forgetful of the tossing surge,
Then shall we find it is enough?
How can we say "enough" on earth —
«< Enough" with such a craving heart?
I have not found it since my birth,
But still have bartered part for part.
I have not held and hugged the whole,
But paid the old to gain the new:
Much have I paid, yet much is due,
Till I am beggared sense and soul.
I used to labor, used to strive
For pleasure with a restless will:
Now if I save my soul alive,
All else what matters, good or ill?
## p. 12410 (#460) ##########################################
12410
CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI
I used to dream alone, to plan
Unspoken hopes and days to come:
Of all my past this is the sum,-
I will not lean on child of man.
-
To give, to give, not to receive!
I long to pour myself, my soul,
Not to keep back or count or leave,
But king with king to give the whole.
I long for one to stir my deep,-
I have had enough of help and gift;
I long for one to search and sift
Myself, to take myself, and keep.
-
You scratch my surface with your pin,
You stroke me smooth with hushing breath:
Nay, pierce, nay, probe, nay, dig within,-
Probe my quick core and sound my depth.
You call me with a puny call,
-
You talk, you smile, you nothing do:
How should I spend my heart on you,
My heart that so outweighs you all?
Your vessels are by much too strait:
Were I to pour you, you could not hold.
Bear with me: I must bear to wait,
A fountain sealed through heat and cold.
Bear with me days or months or years:
Deep must call deep until the end,
When friend shall no more envy friend
Nor vex his friend at unawares.
Not in this world of hope deferred,
This world of perishable stuff;
Eye hath not seen nor ear hath heard
Nor heart conceived that full "enough":
Here moans the separating sea;
Here harvests fail; here breaks the heart:
There God shall join and no man part,
I full of Christ and Christ of me.
## p. 12410 (#461) ##########################################
## p. 12410 (#462) ##########################################
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## p. 12410 (#464) ##########################################
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## p. 12411 (#465) ##########################################
12411
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
(1828-1882)
BY WILLIAM MORTON PAYNE
N THE tender 'One Word More' with which Browning dedi-
cated to his wife the "fifty poems finished" of "Men and
Women,' the poet speaks of the lost "century of sonnets »
said to have been written by Raphael, and of the painting affirmed
by tradition to have been begun by Dante. Since the days of
Dante and Raphael, other poets have been painters, and other
painters poets; but probably no one has attained to the high and
equal mastery of both arts that we find exemplified in the work of
Rossetti. In such a case, it was only natural that each art should
react upon the other: that the paintings should be peculiarly poeti-
cal in conception and execution; that the poems should have much
of the pictorial quality, however abstract their themes and however
idealized their motives. Although the present article can say nothing
of Rossetti the painter, the fact that the poet was also a painter
of the highest achievement must constantly be kept in view; for it
helps to account for many things in the poems,-from the statement
that the hair of the Blessèd Damozel "was yellow like ripe corn,"
to "the flame turned cloud, the cloud returned to flame," that sym-
bolizes the changing moods of the soul stirred to its depths by the
magic of the musician. Yet it must not be inferred from all this
that the artist (two-souled, as Michelangelo was four-souled) either
unconsciously or deliberately confused the distinct aims of poetry
and painting, or that his work in either art transcends, to any consid-
erable degree, the limitations laid down by Lessing's searching criti-
cism in the 'Laocoön. ' If we examine the cases in which Rossetti
brought the two arts into the closest juxtaposition, as in the sonnets
which he wrote for certain of his own pictures, we shall find that
while the poems comment upon the paintings, the descriptive ele-
ment is far less important than the elements of retrospection, antici-
pation, and gnomic philosophical utterance.
Rossetti takes his place in English literature as one of the six
major poets of the later Victorian era, and as the oldest of the sub-
group of three associated with the artistic revival vaguely known as
Pre-Raphaelitism. Although several years the senior of Morris and
Swinburne, the public knew little of him as a poet for some years
## p. 12412 (#466) ##########################################
12412
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
after their reputations had been fairly well established. Yet much
of his most characteristic work had been done long before Morris
published his first volume, or Swinburne made the earliest displays
of his astonishing virtuosity; and both of these men in some sense
regarded Rossetti as their master. But his contributions to the Germ
(1850) and the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine (1856) did not reach
the larger public; and it was not until the 'Poems' appeared in
1870 that the world discovered how bright a planet had swum into
its ken. Meanwhile the small group of Rossetti's friends had long
cherished his work, and manuscript copies of many of his pieces had
circulated from hand to hand. In fact, when the time of publication
approached, it may be said that rumor had so heralded the advent
of the new poet that when the volume of 1870 appeared, it was, as
Mr. Gosse remarks, "after such expectation and tiptoe curiosity as
have preceded no other book in our generation. " The story of that
volume is one of the most familiar bits of literary history: buried in
the grave of a beloved wife, who died after but two years of wed-
ded happiness, it was only upon the earnest solicitation of his friends
that Rossetti permitted the manuscript to be unearthed, seven years
later, and made arrangements for its publication.
When this volume appeared, the poet was just completing his
forty-second year. Born in London, May 12th, 1828, he was named
Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti, which appellation was in early man-
hood modified into the form that became generally familiar. The
means of his family were scanty; and at the age of fifteen he left
school and began the study of painting. In 1848 he united with two
of his fellow-students in art - Millais and Holman Hunt - and with
the sculptor-poet Woolner, to form the famous Pre-Raphaelite Brother-
hood. In 1860, after a long engagement, he married Elizabeth Sid-
dal, who died less than two years thereafter. His reputation as a
painter was by this time firmly established; but his literary work,
mostly contributed to the periodicals above mentioned, was known
to but few readers. In 1861 he published the marvelous volume of
translations at first entitled 'The Early Italian Poets,' and after-
wards republished as 'Dante and his Circle. ' This is one of the few
works of translation into English that are almost beyond praise. It
includes, besides the 'New Life' of Dante, a selection of poems by
about a dozen of Dante's contemporaries,-chief among them being
Guido Cavalcanti,- and by a still greater number of the twelfth and
thirteenth century poets who came before Dante. The path of the
translator, we read in Rossetti's preface, "is like that of Aladdin
through the enchanted vaults: many are the precious fruits and
flowers which he must pass by unheeded in search for the lamp
alone; happy if at last, when brought to light, it does not prove that
his old lamp has been exchanged for a new one-glittering indeed to
## p. 12413 (#467) ##########################################
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
12413
the eye, but scarcely of the same virtue nor with the same genius
at its summons. " Precious indeed are these translations of old Ital-
ian poetry, for they interpret with perfect insight and sympathy an
important literary epoch; and precious also are Rossetti's infrequent
later experiments in translation, which include the Francesca epi-
sode of the 'Inferno' and some of the ballads of Villon. His version
of the 'Ballade des Dames de Temps Jadis' (Ballad of the Ladies of
Bygone Times) has received such praise from men like Pater and
Swinburne, that ordinary words seem inadequate to convey the sense
of its matchless charm.
The 'Poems' of 1870 found, as has already been stated, an audi-
ence half prepared to receive them; and a chorus of critical enthu-
siasm greeted their appearance. With the exception of Swinburne's
'Poems and Ballads,' it may be said that no other volume of Eng-
lish poetry published during the last half-century has created so great
a sensation, or been received with so much acclaim. But while all
serious critics were agreed in recognizing the advent of a new great
poet, the emergence of a new and distinctly individual note in the
chorus of English song,—the dovecotes of literature were not a little
fluttered by the swoop of one bird of prey. A little more than a
year after the publication of the Poems,' an unimportant scribbler,
whose name does not deserve to be dignified by mention, obtained
access to the pages of a leading review, and published over a pseu-
donymous signature an article entitled 'The Fleshly School of Poetry. '
This article was a direct attack upon Rossetti's poems, and fairly
reeked with what Swinburne calls a "rancid morality. " Utterly un-
fair in its methods and unjust in its conclusions, this article seized
upon certain of the more sensuous passages in the 'Poems,' and
strove to create the impression that they were merely sensual,-
very different thing. The injustice of this attack was afterwards
acknowledged by its author, and the incident would hardly call for
notice were it not for the effect produced upon Rossetti's morbidly
sensitive nature. He was already suffering from the insomnia that
was to wreck his life a few years later, besides being threatened
with the loss of his eyesight; and it is not surprising that under
these circumstances he magnified the significance of the contemptible
attack. He fell "into the belief that he was fast becoming the object
of wide-spread calumny and obloquy, not less malignant and insidi-
ous than unprovoked and undeserved," — so his brother tells us. An
alarming illness followed; and when he recovered from it, so far as
he did recover, he was a changed man. The exuberant vitality of
his earlier years, and the unaffected geniality which had made him
so companionable, gave place to moodiness, depression, and a gloomy
irritability, that estranged many of his friends, and almost made him
a recluse for the last ten years of his life.
-a
-
## p. 12414 (#468) ##########################################
12414
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
A few words about these last years may properly precede the dis-
cussion of Rossetti's poetical achievement. He worked diligently at
his painting, and made some additions to his poems during this
period; and his life was not without intervals of its old-time serenity.
But the excessive use of chloral as a remedy for sleeplessness was
steadily sapping his energies; and he was becoming more and more
of a physical wreck. For a time he lived almost wholly with William
Morris at Kelmscot; but from 1874 on, his home was the house in
Chelsea which he had occupied at intervals ever since the death of
his wife. In 1881 he issued a new edition of his 'Poems'; and also
the volume of 'Ballads and Sonnets,' which included the now com-
pleted 'House of Life' and a number of long poems hitherto unpub-
lished. In December of this year he suffered a paralytic shock, and
was removed to Birchington, where he died on the 9th of April,
1882, and where his remains were interred.
The entire works of Rossetti, in prose and verse, original and
translated, fill two stout volumes in the standard edition. A single
volume of no inordinate bulk suffices to contain all the poems. Thus
we see that of the six great poets of his age, Rossetti was one of
the least voluminous. The bulk of his work is about equal to that
of Matthew Arnold, but is much less than that of Tennyson; and
falls far short of the opulence of Browning, Morris, and Swinburne.
Although its composition covered a period of more than thirty years,
little is to be gained from a study of its chronological sequence; for
the wings of the poet were full-fledged almost from the start, and
it would be difficult to show anything like the steady development
of power that may be traced in the activity of many of his contem-
poraries. If The Blessed Damozel' (written at eighteen) bears
the marks of immaturity upon its magical beauty, 'The Burden of
Nineveh' (written only three or four years later) is the work of a
strong man of fully ripened powers. What we have to say of the
poems, then, need take no account of their dates; and we are left
free to group them according to subject-matter and form.
First of all, we may mention the long narrative poems and bal-
lads: the chronicle history of Dante at Verona,' which is the noblest
of the several tributes of Rossetti's genius to what was probably the
deepest artistic influence of his life; the intensely dramatic 'A Last
Confession, which rivals the strongest of Browning's dramatic idyls;
the story of Jenny,' with its frank but delicate treatment of one of
the most difficult of subjects; the unfinished poem called 'The Bride's
Prelude'; and the four great ballads Sister Helen,' 'Rose Mary,'
( The White Ship,' and 'The King's Tragedy. ' Then, following the
classification of Mr. W. M.
Rossetti, we come to the great sonnet-
sequence named 'The House of Life'; a brimming century of poems,
which embody in splendid imagery and harmonious measure the
1
i
## p. 12415 (#469) ##########################################
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
12415
experiences that youth and change and fate bring to the life of man.
These sonnets alone would suffice to insure the immortality of the
poet; for they must be ranked no lower than with the greatest in
the language,-with those of Shakespeare and of Milton, of Words-
worth and of Keats. Finally, in the miscellaneous section of the
poems we find many more sonnets of equal beauty and power, in-
cluding the important group of 'Sonnets for Pictures'; such ballads
as Troy Town' and 'Eden Bower'; such matchless lyrics as 'The
Sea Limits, The Cloud Confines,' and 'The Song of the Bower';
and so impressive and solemn an utterance as 'The Burden of Nin-
eveh. ' Here are many different forms and styles, in some cases
represented by but a single example: it seems as if Rossetti, whose
distinctive forms of expression were the ballad, the lyric, and the
sonnet, had made such single ventures in other manners as 'Jenny,'
'A Last Confession,' and 'The Burden of Nineveh,' merely to show
that he could do these things if he chose, and do them supremely
well.
To sum up the characteristics of the poet in a few concluding
words, it may be said that he possessed in an extraordinary degree
both richness of imagination, and the power to pack a world of
meaning into one pregnant and melodious phrase. But both his pic-
torial faculty and his intellectual force were tempered by a strain of
mysticism, for which he has been charged with obscurity by hard-
headed and dull-witted readers. He was at once the most spiritual
and the most material of poets; and the accusation of sensuality from
which he was made to suffer could only result from inability to see
more than one side of the Druid shield of his poetical personality.
Mr. Pater, who saw both sides of the shield, compared him with the
Florentine whose name he bore; and his words may be borrowed to
crown with a touch of grace this brief study of Rossetti's work.
"Practically, the Church of the Middle Age, by its æsthetic worship, its
sacramentalism, its real faith in the resurrection of the flesh, had set itself
against the Manichean opposition of spirit and matter, and its results in
men's ways of taking life; and in this, Dante is the central representative of its
spirit. To him, in the vehement and impassioned heat of his conceptions,
the material and the spiritual are fused and blent: if the spiritual attains
the definite visibility of a crystal, what is material loses its earthiness and
impurity. And here again, by force of instinct, Rossetti is one with him.
His chosen type of beauty is one-
"Whose speech Truth knows not from her thought,
Nor Love her body from her soul. '»
Attelage
## p. 12416 (#470) ##########################################
12416
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
THE BLESSED DAMOZEL
THE
HE blessèd damozel leaned out
From the gold bar of Heaven:
Her eyes were deeper than the depth
Of waters stilled at even;
She had three lilies in her hand,
And the stars in her hair were seven.
Her robe, ungirt from clasp to hem,
No wrought flowers did adorn,
But a white rose of Mary's gift,
For service meetly worn;
Her hair that lay along her back
Was yellow like ripe corn.
Herseemed she scarce had been a day
One of God's choristers;
The wonder was not yet quite gone
From that still look of hers:
Albeit, to them she left, her day
Had counted as ten years.
(To one, it is ten years of years.
Yet now, and in this place,
Surely she leaned o'er me her hair
Fell all about my face. —
Nothing: the autumn fall of leaves.
The whole year sets apace. )
-
It was the rampart of God's house
That she was standing on:
By God built over the sheer depth
The which is Space begun;
So high, that looking downward thence
She scarce could see the sun.
It lies in Heaven, across the flood
Of ether, as a bridge.
Beneath, the tides of day and night
With flame and darkness ridge
The void, as low as where this earth
Spins like a fretful midge.
Around her, lovers, newly met
'Mid deathless love's acclaims,
## p. 12417 (#471) ##########################################
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
12417
XXI-777
Spoke evermore among themselves
Their heart-remembered names;
And the souls mounting up to God
Went by her like thin flames.
And still she bowed herself and stooped
Out of the circling charm;
Until her bosom must have made
The bar she leaned on warm,
And the lilies lay as if asleep
Along her bended arm.
From the fixed place of Heaven she saw
Time like a pulse shake fierce
Through all the worlds. Her gaze still strove
Within the gulf to pierce
Its path; and now she spoke as when
The stars sang in their spheres.
The sun was gone now; the curled moon
Was like a little feather
Fluttering far down the gulf; and now
She spoke through the still weather.
Her voice was like the voice the stars
Had when they sang together.
(Ah sweet! Even now, in that bird's song,
Strove not her accents there,
Fain to be hearkened? When those bells
Possessed the midday air,
Strove not her steps to reach my side
Down all the echoing stair? )
"I wish that he were come to me,
For he will come," she said.
"Have I not prayed in Heaven? -on earth,
Lord, Lord, has he not prayed?
Are not two prayers a perfect strength?
And shall I feel afraid?
"When round his head the aureole clings,
And he is clothed in white,
I'll take his hand and go with him
To the deep wells of light;
As unto a stream we will step down,
And bathe there in God's sight.
## p. 12418 (#472) ##########################################
12418
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
"We two will stand beside that shrine,
Occult, withheld, untrod,
Whose lamps are stirred continually
With prayer sent up to God;
And see our old prayers, granted, melt
Each like a little cloud.
"We two will lie i' the shadow of
That living mystic tree
Within whose secret growth the Dove
Is sometimes felt to be,
While every leaf that his plumes touch
Saith his name audibly.
"And I myself will teach to him,
I myself, lying so,
The songs I sing here; which his voice
Shall pause in, hushed and slow,
And find some knowledge at each pause,
Or some new thing to know. "
(Alas! We two, we two, thou say'st!
Yea, one wast thou with me
That once of old. But shall God lift
To endless unity
The soul whose likeness with thy soul
Was but its love for thee? )
"We two," she said, "will seek the groves
Where the lady Mary is,
With her five handmaidens, whose names
Are five sweet symphonies,-
Cecily, Gertrude, Magdalen,
Margaret, and Rosalys.
"Circlewise sit they, with bound locks
And foreheads garlanded;
Into the fine cloth white like flame
Weaving the golden thread,
To fashion the birth-robes for them
Who are just born, being dead.
"He shall fear, haply, and be dumb;
Then will I lay my cheek
To his, and tell about our love,
Not once abashed or weak:
## p. 12419 (#473) ##########################################
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
12419
And the dear Mother will approve
My pride, and let me speak.
"Herself shall bring us, hand in hand,
To Him round whom all souls
Kneel, the clear-ranged unnumbered heads
Bowed with their aureoles:
And angels meeting us shall sing
To their citherns and citoles.
"There will I ask of Christ the Lord
Thus much for him and me:
Only to live as once on earth
With Love,-only to be,
As then awhile, for ever now
Together, I and he. »
She gazed and listened, and then said,
Less sad of speech than mild,
"All this is when he comes. " She ceased.
The light thrilled towards her, filled
With angels in strong level flight.
Her eyes prayed, and she smiled.
(I saw her smile. ) But soon their path
Was vague in distant spheres;
And then she cast her arms along
The golden barriers,
And laid her face between her hands,
And wept. (I heard her tears. )
THE DOUBLE BETRAYAL
From Rose Mary'
SHE
HE signed all folk from the threshold stone,
And gazed in the dead man's face alone.
The fight for life found record yet
In the clenched lips and the teeth hard-set;
The wrath from the bent brow was not gone,
And stark in the eyes the hate still shone
Of that they last had looked upon.
The blazoned coat was rent on his breast
Where the golden field was goodliest;
## p. 12420 (#474) ##########################################
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
12420
But the shivered sword, close-gripped, could tell
That the blood shed round him where he fell
Was not all his in the distant dell.
The lady recked of the corpse no whit,
But saw the soul and spoke to it:
A light there was in her steadfast eyes,—
The fire of mortal tears and sighs
That pity and love immortalize.
"By thy death have I learnt to-day
Thy deed, O James of Heronhaye!
Great wrong thou hast done to me and mine;
And haply God hath wrought for a sign
By our blind deed this doom of thine.
"Thy shrift, alas! thou wast not to win;
But may death shrive thy soul herein!
Full well do I know thy love should be
Even yet had life but stayed with thee —
Our honor's strong security. "
She stooped, and said with a sob's low stir,
"Peace be thine - but what peace for her? »
But ere to the brow her lips were pressed,
She marked, half hid in the riven vest,
A packet close to the dead man's breast.
'Neath surcoat pierced and broken mail
It lay on the blood-stained bosom pale.
The clot clung round it, dull and dense,
And a faintness seized her mortal sense
As she reached her hand and drew it thence.
'Twas steeped in the heart's flood welling high
From the heart it there had rested by;
'Twas glued to a broidered fragment gay,—
A shred by spear thrust rent away
From the heron wings of Heronhaye.
She gazed on the thing with piteous eyne:
"Alas, poor child, some pledge of thine!
Ah me! in this troth the hearts were twain,
And one hath ebbed to this crimson stain,
And when shall the other throb again ? »
She opened the packet heedfully;
The blood was stiff, and it scarce might be.
## p. 12421 (#475) ##########################################
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
She found but a folded paper there,
And round it, twined with tenderest care,
A long bright tress of golden hair.
Even as she looked, she saw again
That dark-haired face in its swoon of pain:
It seemed a snake with a golden sheath
Crept near, as a slow flame flickereth,
And stung her daughter's heart to death.
She loosed the tress, but her hand did shake
As though indeed she had touched a snake;
And next she undid the paper's fold,
But that too trembled in her hold,
And the sense scarce grasped the tale it told.
"My heart's sweet lord" ('twas thus she read),
"At length our love is garlanded.
At Holy Cross, within eight days' space,
I seek my shrift; and the time and place
Shall fit thee too for thy soul's good grace.
"From Holycleugh on the seventh day
My brother rides, and bides away;
And long or e'er he is back, mine own,
Afar where the face of fear's unknown
We shall be safe with our love alone.
"Ere yet at the shrine my knees I bow,
I shear one tress for our holy vow.
As round these words these threads I wind,
So, eight days hence, shall our loves be twined,
Says my lord's poor lady, JOCELIND. "
She read it twice, with a brain in thrall,
And then its echo told her all.
O'er brows low-fallen her hands she drew:-
"O God! " she said, as her hands fell too,-
"The Warden's sister of Holycleugh! "
She rose upright with a long low moan,
And stared in the dead man's face new-known.
Had it lived indeed? She scarce could tell:
'Twas a cloud where fiends had come to dwell,-
A mask that hung on the gate of hell.
She lifted the lock of gleaming hair,
And smote the lips and left it there.
12421
## p. 12422 (#476) ##########################################
12422
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
"Here's gold that Hell shall take for thy toll!
Full well hath thy treason found its goal,
O thou dead body and damnèd soul! »
She turned, sore dazed, for a voice was near,
And she knew that some one called to her.
On many a column fair and tall
A high court ran round the castle hall;
And thence it was that the priest did call.
"I sought your child where you bade me go,
And in rooms around and in rooms below;
But where, alas! may the maiden be?
Fear naught, we shall find her speedily,-
But come, come hither, and seek with me. "
Α
-
She reached the stair like a lifelorn thing,
But hastened upward murmuring:-
"Yea, Death's is a face that's fell to see;
But bitterer pang Life hoards for thee,
Thou broken heart of Rose Mary! "
THE SECOND-SIGHT
From The King's Tragedy'
GAINST the coming of Christmastide
That year the King bade call
I' the Black Friars' Charterhouse of Perth
A solemn festival.
And we of his household rode with him
In a close-ranked company;
But not till the sun had sunk from his throne
Did we reach the Scotish Sea.
That eve was clenched for a boding storm,
'Neath a toilsome moon half seen:
The cloud stooped low and the surf rose high;
And where there was a line of the sky,
Wild wings loomed dark between.
And on a rock of the black beach-side,
By the veiled moon dimly lit,
There was something seemed to heave with life
As the King drew nigh to it.
## p. 12423 (#477) ##########################################
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
12423
And was it only the tossing furze
Or brake of the waste sea-wold?
Or was it an eagle bent to the blast?
When near we came, we knew it at last
For a woman tattered and old.
But it seemed as though by a fire within
Her writhen limbs were wrung;
And as soon as the King was close to her
She stood up gaunt and strong.
'Twas then the moon sailed clear of the rack,
On high in her hollow dome;
And still as aloft with hoary crest
Each clamorous wave rang home,
Like fire in snow the moonlight blazed
Amid the champing foam.
And the woman held his eyes with her eyes:-
"O King, thou art come at last;
But thy wraith has haunted the Scotish Sea
To my sight for four years past.
"Four years it is since first I met,
'Twixt the Duchray and the Dhu,
A shape whose feet clung close in a shroud,
And that shape for thine I knew.
"A year again, and on Inchkeith Isle
I saw thee pass in the breeze,
With the cere cloth risen above thy feet
And wound about thy knees.
"And yet a year, in the Links of Forth,
As a wanderer without rest,
Thou cam'st with both thine arms i' the shroud
That clung high up thy breast.
"And in this hour I find thee here,
And well mine eyes may note
That the winding-sheet hath passed thy breast
And risen around thy throat.
"And when I meet thee again, O King,
That of death hast such sore drouth,—
Except thou turn again on this shore,
The winding-sheet will have moved once more
And covered thine eyes and mouth.
## p. 12424 (#478) ##########################################
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
12424
"O King whom poor men bless for their king,
Of thy fate be not so fain;
But these my words for God's message take,
And turn thy steed, O King, for her sake
Who rides beside thy rein! "
While the woman spoke, the King's horse reared
As if it would breast the sea,
And the Queen turned pale as she heard on the gale
The voice die dolorously.
When the woman ceased, the steed was still,
But the King gazed on her yet;
And in silence save for the wail of the sea
His eyes and her eyes met.
At last he said:-"God's ways are his own;
Man is but shadow and dust.
Last night I prayed by his altar-stone;
To-night I wend to the Feast of his Son:
And in him I set my trust.
"I have held my people in sacred charge,
And have not feared the sting
Of proud men's hate,-to His will resigned
Who has but one same death for a hind
And one same death for a king.
"And if God in his wisdom have brought close
The day when I must die,
That day by water or fire or air
My feet shall fall in the destined snare
Wherever my road may lie.
"What man can say but the Fiend hath set
Thy sorcery on my path,
My heart with the fear of death to fill,
And turn me against God's very will
To sink in his burning wrath ? »
The woman stood as the train rode past,
And moved nor limb nor eye;
And when we were shipped, we saw her there
Still standing against the sky.
As the ship made way, the moon once more
Sank low in her rising pall;
And I thought of the shrouded wraith of the King,
And I said, "The Heavens know all. "
## p. 12425 (#479) ##########################################
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
12425
THE CARD-DEALER
OULD you not drink her gaze like wine?
Yet though its splendor swoon
Into the silence languidly
As a tune into a tune,
Those eyes unravel the coiled nigh
And know the stars at noon.
C
The gold that's heaped beside her hand,
In truth rich prize it were;
And rich the dreams that wreathe her brows
With magic stillness there;
And he were rich who should unwind
That woven golden hair.
Around her, where she sits, the dance
Now breathes its eager heat;
And not more lightly or more true
Fall there the dancers' feet
Than fall her cards on the bright board
As 'twere an heart that beat.
Her fingers let them softly through,
Smooth polished silent things;
And each one as it falls reflects
In swift light-shadowings,
Blood-red and purple, green and blue,
The great eyes of her rings.
Whom plays she with? With thee, who lov'st
Those gems upon her hand;
With me, who search her secret brows;
With all men, blessed or banned.
We play together, she and we,
Within a vain strange land:
A land without any order,—
Day even as night (one saith),—
Where who lieth down ariseth not
Nor the sleeper awakeneth;
A land of darkness as darkness itself
And of the shadow of death.
What be her cards, you ask? Even these:-
The heart, that doth but crave
More, having fed; the diamond,
Skilled to make base seem brave;
## p. 12426 (#480) ##########################################
12426
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
The club, for smiting in the dark;
The spade, to dig a grave.
And do you ask what game she plays?
With me 'tis lost or won;
With thee it is playing still; with him
It is not well begun;
But 'tis a game she plays with all
Beneath the sway o' the sun.
Thou seest the card that falls,-she knows
The card that followeth :
Her game in thy tongue is called Life,
As ebbs thy daily breath:
When she shall speak, thou'lt learn her tongue
And know she calls it Death.
SUDDEN LIGHT
HAVE been here before,
I
But when or how I cannot tell:
I know the grass beyond the door,
The sweet keen smell,
The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.
You have been mine before,—
How long ago I may not know:
But just when at that swallow's soar
Your neck turned so,
Some veil did fall,-I knew it all of yore.
Has this been thus before?
And shall not thus time's eddying flight
Still with our lives our loves restore
In death's despite,
And day and night yield one delight once more?
THE WOODSPURGE
THE
HE wind flapped loose, the wind was still,
Shaken out dead from tree and hill:
I had walked on at the wind's will,-
I sat now, for the wind was still.
-
Between my knees my forehead was, -
My lips, drawn in, said not Alas!
## p. 12427 (#481) ##########################################
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
My hair was over in the grass,
My naked ears heard the day pass.
My eyes, wide open, had the run
Of some ten weeds to fix upon;
Among those few, out of the sun,
The woodspurge flowered, three cups in one.
From perfect grief there need not be
Wisdom, or even memory:
One thing then learnt remains to me,-
The woodspurge has a cup of three.
THE SEA-LIMITS
ONSIDER the sea's listless chime:
C
Time's self it is, made audible,-
The murmur of the earth's own shell.
Secret continuance sublime
Is the sea's end: our sight may pass
No furlong further. Since time was,
This sound hath told the lapse of time.
No quiet, which is death's,—it hath
The mournfulness of ancient life,
Enduring always at dull strife.
As the world's heart of rest and wrath,
Its painful pulse is in the sands.
Last utterly, the whole sky stands,
Gray and not known, along its path.
Listen alone beside the sea,
Listen alone among the woods;
Those voices of twin solitudes
Shall have one sound alike to thee:
Hark where the murmurs of thronged men
Surge and sink back and surge again,—
Still the one voice of wave and tree.
Gather a shell from the strown beach
And listen at its lips: they sigh
The same desire and mystery,
The echo of the whole sea's speech.
And all mankind is thus at heart
Not anything but what thou art:
And Earth, Sea, Man, are all in each.
12427
## p. 12428 (#482) ##########################################
12428
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
THE CLOUD CONFINES
HE day is dark and the night
To him that would search their heart;
No lips of cloud that will part,
Nor morning song in the light:
Only, gazing alone,
To him wild shadows are shown,
Deep under deep unknown
And height above unknown height.
Still we say as we go,-
THE
"Strange to think by the way,
Whatever there is to know,
That shall we know one day. "
The Past is over and fled;
Named new, we name it the old:
Thereof some tale hath been told,
But no word comes from the dead;
Whether at all they be,
Or whether as bond or free,
Or whether they too were we,
Or by what spell they have sped.
Still we say as we go,-
"Strange to think by the way,
Whatever there is to know,
That shall we know one day. "
What of the heart of hate
That beats in thy breast, O Time? —
Red strife from the furthest prime,
And anguish of fierce debate;
War that shatters her slain,
And peace that grinds them as grain,
And eyes fixed ever in vain
On the pitiless eyes of Fate.
Still we say as we go,-
"Strange to think by the way,
Whatever there is to know,
That shall we know one day. "
What of the heart of love
That bleeds in thy breast, O Man? .
Thy kisses snatched 'neath the ban
Of fangs that mock them above;
## p. 12429 (#483) ##########################################
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
Thy bells prolonged unto knells,
Thy hope that a breath dispels,
Thy bitter forlorn farewells
And the empty echoes thereof?
Still we say as we go,—
"Strange to think by the way,
Whatever there is to know,
That shall we know one day. ”
-
The sky leans dumb on the sea,
Aweary with all its wings;
And oh! the song the sea sings
Is dark everlastingly.
Our past is clean forgot,
Our present is and is not,
Our future's a sealed seed-plot,
And what betwixt them are we?
We who say as we go,-
"Strange to think by the way,
Whatever there is to know,
That shall we know one day. "
SONG OF THE BOWER
AY, is it day, is it dusk in thy bower,
SAY, Thou whom I long for, who longest for me?
Oh! be it light, be it night, 'tis Love's hour,
Love's that is fettered as Love's that is free.
Free Love has leaped to that innermost chamber,
Oh! the last time, and the hundred before:
Fettered Love, motionless, can but remember,
Yet something that sighs from him passes the door.
Nay, but my heart when it flies to thy bower,
What does it find there that knows it again?
There it must droop like a shower-beaten flower,
Red at the rent core and dark with the rain.
Ah! yet what shelter is still shed above it,-
What waters still image its leaves torn apart?
Thy soul is the shade that clings round it to love it,
And tears are its mirror deep down in thy heart.
12429
What were my prize could I enter thy bower,
This day, to-morrow, at eve or at morn?
T
## p. 12430 (#484) ##########################################
12430
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
Large lovely arms and a neck like a tower,
Bosom then heaving that now lies forlorn.
Kindled with love-breath, (the sun's kiss is colder! )
Thy sweetness all near me, so distant to-day;
My hand round thy neck and thy hand on my shoulder,
My mouth to thy mouth as the world melts away.
What is it keeps me afar from thy bower,-
My spirit, my body, so fain to be there?
Waters engulfing or fires that devour?
