Waters
engulfing
or fires that devour?
Warner - World's Best Literature - v21 to v25 - Rab to Tur
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
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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? —
Earth heaped against me or death in the air?
Nay, but in day-dreams, for terror, for pity,
The trees wave their heads with an omen to tell;
Nay, but in night-dreams, throughout the dark city,
The hours, clashed together, lose count in the bell.
Shall I not one day remember thy bower,
One day when all days are one day to me? —
Thinking, "I stirred not, and yet had the power;"
Yearning, "Ah God, if again it might be! »
Peace, peace! such a small lamp illumes, on this highway,
So dimly so few steps in front of my feet,
Yet shows me that her way is parted from my way:
Out of sight, beyond light, at what goal may we meet?
SONNETS FROM THE HOUSE OF LIFE'
INTRODUCTORY SONNET
A
SONNET is a moment's monument,-
Memorial from the Soul's eternity
To one dead deathless hour.
Whether for lustral rite or dire portent,
Of its own arduous fullness reverent:
Carve it in ivory or in ebony,
As Day or Night may rule; and let Time see
Its flowering crest impearled and orient.
Look that it be,
A Sonnet is a coin: its face reveals
The soul,-its converse, to what Power 'tis due:
Whether for tribute to the august appeals
Of Life, or dower in Love's high retinue,
It serve; or, 'mid the dark wharf's cavernous breath,
In Charon's palm it pay the toll to Death.
## p. 12431 (#485) ##########################################
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
12431
LOVESIGHT
WHEN do I see thee most, beloved one?
When in the light the spirits of mine eyes
Before thy face, their altar, solemnize
The worship of that Love through thee made known?
Or when in the dusk hours (we two alone),
Close-kissed and eloquent of still replies
Thy twilight hidden glimmering visage lies,
And my soul only sees thy soul its own?
O love, my love! if I no more should see
Thyself, nor on the earth the shadow of thee,
Nor image of thine eyes in any spring,-
How then should sound upon Life's darkening slope
The ground-whirl of the perished leaves of Hope,
The wind of Death's imperishable wing?
KNOWN IN VAIN
As Two whose love, first foolish, widening scope,
Knows suddenly, to music high and soft,
The Holy of Holies; who because they scoffed
Are now amazed with shame, nor dare to cope
With the whole truth aloud, lest heaven should ope:
Yet, at their meetings, laugh not as they laughed
In speech; nor speak, at length: but sitting oft
Together, within hopeless sight of hope,
For hours are silent;-so it happeneth
When Work and Will awake too late, to gaze
After their life sailed by, and hold their breath.
Ah! who shall dare to search through what sad maze
Thenceforth their incommunicable ways
Follow the desultory feet of Death?
THE HILL SUMMIT
THIS feast-day of the sun, his altar there
In the broad west has blazed for vesper-song;
And I have loitered in the vale too long,
And gaze now a belated worshiper.
Yet may I not forget that I was 'ware,
So journeying, of his face at intervals
Transfigured where the fringed horizon falls,-
A fiery bush with coruscating hair.
## p. 12432 (#486) ##########################################
12432
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
And now that I have climbed and won this height,
I must tread downward through the sloping shade
And travel the bewildered tracks till night.
Yet for this hour I still may here be stayed,
And see the gold air and the silver fade
And the last bird fly into the last light.
THE CHOICE
I
EAT thou and drink: to-morrow thou shalt die.
Surely the earth, that's wise being very old,
Needs not our help. Then loose me, love, and hold
Thy sultry hair up from my face; that I
May pour for thee this golden wine, brim-high,
Till round the glass thy fingers glow like gold.
We'll drown all hours: thy song, while hours are tolled,
Shall leap, as fountains veil the changing sky.
Now kiss, and think that there are really those,
My own high-bosomed beauty, who increase
Vain gold, vain lore, and yet might choose our way!
Through many years they toil: then on a day
They die not,- for their life was death,- but cease;
And round their narrow lips the mold falls close.
II
WATCH thou and fear: to-morrow thou shalt die.
Or art thou sure thou shalt have time for death?
Is not the day which God's word promiseth
To come man knows not when? In yonder sky,
Now while we speak, the sun speeds forth: can I
Or thou assure him of his goal? God's breath
Even at this moment haply quickeneth
The air to a flame; till spirits, always nigh
Though screened and hid, shall walk the daylight here.
And dost thou prate of all that man shall do?
Canst thou, who hast but plagues, presume to be
Glad in his gladness that comes after thee?
Will his strength slay thy worm in Hell? Go to:
Cover thy countenance, and watch, and fear.
## p. 12433 (#487) ##########################################
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
12433
III
THINK thou and act: to-morrow thou shalt die.
Outstretched in the sun's warmth upon the shore,
Thou say'st:-"Man's measured path is all gone o'er:
Up, all his years, steeply, with strain and sigh,
Man clomb until he touched the truth; and I,
Even I, am he whom it was destined for. "
How should this be? Art thou then so much more
Than they who sowed, that thou shouldst reap thereby?
Nay, come up hither. From this wave-washed mound
Unto the furthest flood-brim look with me;
Then reach on with thy thought till it be drowned.
Miles and miles distant though the last line be,
And though thy soul sail leagues and leagues beyond,-
Still, leagues beyond those leagues, there is more sea.
LOST DAYS
THE lost days of my life until to-day,
What were they, could I see them on the street
Lie as they fell? Would they be ears of wheat
Sown once for food but trodden into clay?
Or golden coins squandered and still to pay?
Or drops of blood dabbling the guilty feet?
Or such spilt water as in dreams must cheat
The undying throats of Hell, athirst alway?
I do not see them here; but after death
God knows I know the faces I shall see,
Each one a murdered self, with low last breath.
"I am thyself,— what hast thou done to me? "
"And I and I-thyself" (lo! each one saith),
"And thou thyself to all eternity! "
A SUPERSCRIPTION
Look in my face; my name is Might-have-been;
I am also called No-more, Too-late, Farewell;
Unto thine ear I hold the dead-sea shell
Cast up thy Life's foam-fretted feet between;
Unto thine eyes the glass where that is seen
Which had Life's form and Love's, but by my spell
Is now a shaken shadow intolerable,
Of ultimate things unuttered the frail screen.
XXI-778
## p. 12434 (#488) ##########################################
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
12434
Mark me, how still I am! But should there dart
One moment through thy soul the soft surprise
Of that winged Peace which lulls the breath of sighs,-
Then shalt thou see me smile, and turn apart
Thy visage to mine ambush at thy heart,
Sleepless with cold commemorative eyes.
ON REFUSAL OF AID BETWEEN NATIONS
N°T
Or that the earth is changing, O my God!
Nor that the seasons totter in their walk,-
Not that the virulent ill of act and talk
Seethes ever as a winepress ever trod,-
Not therefore are we certain that the rod
Weighs in thine hand to smite thy world; though now
Beneath thine hand so many nations bow,
So many kings: not therefore, O my God! -
But because Man is parceled out in men
To-day because, for any wrongful blow,
No man not stricken asks, "I would be told
Why thou dost thus;" but his heart whispers then,
"He is he, I am I. " By this we know
That the earth falls asunder, being old.
FOR A VENETIAN PASTORAL,' BY GIORGIONE, IN THE LOUVRE
ATER, for anguish of the solstice: nay,
But dip the vessel slowly,- nay, but lean
And hark how at its verge the wave sighs in
Reluctant. Hush! Beyond all depth away
The heat lies silent at the brink of day:
Now the hand trails upon the viol-string
That sobs, and the brown faces cease to sing,
Sad with the whole of pleasure. Whither stray
Her eyes now, from whose mouth the slim pipes creep
And leave it pouting, while the shadowed grass
Is cool against her naked side? Let be:
Say nothing now unto her lest she weep,
Nor name this ever. Be it as it was,-
Life touching lips with Immortality.
WATER
-
## p. 12434 (#489) ##########################################
## p. 12434 (#490) ##########################################
J. J. ROUSSEAU.
## p. 12434 (#491) ##########################################
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## p. 12434 (#492) ##########################################
## p. 12435 (#493) ##########################################
12435
DGX
JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU
(1712-1778)
BY ÉDOUARD ROD
HROUGHOUT his life, Rousseau was tossed about as by an inner
storm, in exciting the violence of which malicious circum-
stances seemed to delight. He was born at Geneva, June
28th, 1712, in a troubled atmosphere, among the riots and agitations
which were beginning to threaten the old Genevan oligarchy. He
lost his mother at birth. His father, who was a watchmaker, scarcely
concerned himself with his early education except to read Plutarch
and Richardson with him. When forced to leave Geneva, he in-
trusted the boy to the care of a maternal uncle. Jean Jacques was
a dreamy, romantic child, sentimental, and not without a touch of
perversity. Early embarked on a wandering and adventurous life,
he was successively engraver's apprentice, vagabond, lackey, secre-
tary. He improvised himself into a musician; he even made him-
self a traveling tradesman. The counsels of a benefactress whose
influence over him was very great-Madame de Warens - converted
him to Catholicism, a faith which he afterward renounced. He
traveled. He saw Italy. He read French, English, and German phi-
losophers pell-mell, while studying music, history, and mathematics
without method. Engaged as a preceptor at the elder Mably's,-
brother of the Abbé Mably,- he was introduced to the literary soci-
ety of the epoch. After some fruitless gropings he was to conquer
first place in a competition before the Academy of Dijon, by a memo-
rial (which was crowned) upon this question: 'Has the progress of
sciences and arts contributed to corrupt or to purify morals? ' (1749).
The success of this initial work, which contains the germs of most
of the ideas developed in his later works, was both brilliant and bel-
ligerent.
Suddenly famous, Rousseau became at the same time distrustful,
solitary, misanthropic; and these characteristics were intensified by
his alliance with her who was to be the companion of his life,- a
person of inferior heart and mind, from whom he suffered much,
and with whom he could not break. The 'Discourse on the Arts and
Sciences' was soon followed by a new competitive essay assigned by
the same Academy of Dijon,-'A Discourse on the Inequality among
## p. 12436 (#494) ##########################################
12436
JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU
Men,' — which is a fuller and more authoritative exposition of the
earlier theme. The fundamental idea of this work the keystone
of all Rousseau's philosophy. It is summed up in this simple remark:
"Men are bad; my own sad experience furnishes the proof: yet man
is naturally good, as I think I have shown. What then can so have
degraded him, except the changes in his condition, the progress he
has made, and the knowledge he has acquired? " The Academy of
Dijon did not crown this second discourse, which was thought too
radical; and Rousseau continued a career filled with triumphs whose
bitterness alone he felt. His theories were violently opposed by the
literary and philosophic classes; but the public was with him.
In 1752, his opera 'Le Devin du Village' (The Village Sooth-
sayer), played at court under his direction, brought him a pension
from the King. He became the fashion; great lords and lovely ladies
invited him, petted him, patronized him. In less than five years
he was to launch on the world the works which made him the most
formidable protagonist of the new era: 'La Nouvelle Héloïse,' which
inaugurated "romantic" literature long before the word was found
to characterize it; the Contrat Social,' which preludes the doctrines
of the Revolution; and 'Émile,' which attempts to reform the princi-
ples of education. These three works brought Rousseau an unexam-
pled popularity. But the violent controversies they aroused, the real
hatreds they excited, the condemnations they drew upon him,- at
Paris where the Parliament decreed his arrest, and at Geneva where
'Émile' was burned by the executioner,- hurried him into a mel-
ancholy more and more bitter and afflicting. He took refuge with
different friends, whom his suspicions presently transformed into per-
secutors, in different places, where he always believed himself perse-
cuted.
Returning to Paris in 1770, he passed there several years of anxious
poverty: copying music for a livelihood; composing, in answer to
demands which honored him, such works as the 'Considerations on
the Government of Poland'; or to defend himself before posterity,
books like The Confessions,' and the Rêveries d'un Promeneur
Solitaire' (Musings of a Solitary Stroller), which did not appear until
after his death. In 1778 he accepted a refuge offered by one of
his faithful friends, René de Girardin, on his estate of Ermenonville.
There his mind seemed to be growing calmer in the serene contem-
plation of the green and smiling country, when he died suddenly, on
the 2d of July, 1778, in his sixty-seventh year. At first, suicide was
suspected; but an autopsy disclosed the cause of death to be serous
apoplexy. His body, buried at two o'clock at night under the pop-
lars of Ermenonville,- "by the most beautiful moonlight and in the
calmest weather," says a witness,- was transported to the Pantheon
## p. 12437 (#495) ##########################################
JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU
12437
in 1794 by order of the Convention. But in 1814 it was exhumed,
as was Voltaire's, without official order; and the bones of the two
philosophers, placed in the same sack, were thrust under ground in
the waste land toward Bercy.
What especially strikes the writer who attempts to analyze the
moral and intellectual personality of Rousseau, is the predominance
of his imagination. He was a poet and a romancer,— a romancer
who made theories instead of making romances; but 'Émile' is cer-
tainly a pedagogical story, as the Contrat Social' is a story, as the
'Discours sur l'Inégalité' is a historical, or if you like, an anthro-
pological story. This fertile imagination was constantly excited by a
very lively sensibility, which exalted itself in ardent friendships, in
ardent passions, which embraced all humanity, reaching out to ani-
mals and even to inanimate things, and finding only in communion
with nature some little joy and compensation. The disordered ac-
tion of the romantic imagination upon this morbid sensibility would
naturally produce and did produce errors of judgment, such as the
doctrines of the Contrat, of Émile, etc. ; and also errors in life, of
which the gravest was that systematic and deliberate abandonment
of his children, with which Rousseau has been so strongly reproached.
But these errors came from the mind, not from the heart. Many
facts prove that despite his paradoxes of thought and conduct, this
man possessed a sincere kindness, a generosity which could pardon
the worst offenses, a simple and touching tenderness of soul, a dis-
interestedness so great as to deprive him of all profit from his tal-
ents. These qualities are sometimes spoiled or perverted by a pride
to which perhaps must be attributed some of his acts of generosity
or devotion, as well as some of his errors; and which later became
exaggerated to mania in the mental malady of which it is impossi-
ble to say whether it was cause or effect. This pride, from which
he suffered more than any one else, was his only vice; in spite of his
having allowed himself to be drawn into certain culpable acts, such
as once to have stolen and often to have lied,-offenses which would
never have been known but for his own confession.
In spite of such errors, committed in hours of temptation, and
expiated by long and sincere regrets, it would be unjust to deny
Rousseau's true nobility of soul. If that soul seems to us sullied,
the blame rests upon the hazards of his neglected childhood and
adventurous youth; upon the storms of his genius, his sufferings dur-
ing the long period when he was forced to seek his true self among
the worst obstacles, upon the tempests he aroused; and finally, later,
upon the maddening mirages with which his sick imagination sur-
rounded him.
## p. 12438 (#496) ##########################################
12438
JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU
-
The elements of Rousseau's character were also those of his gen-
ius. Although he delighted to reason according to the method
which Descartes had inaugurated, and from which he could not free
himself, that old vessel in which bubbled up the new wine of his
thought, yet it is unreasonable to expect much reason from him.
His logic usually ends in paradox. Upon going back to the origin of
his ideas and attempting to analyze them, one finds that taken sep-
arately they are neither very original nor very profound: all return
to that fundamental conception of the superiority of "the state of
nature" over "the social state," - a too inadequate conception, of
which it is impossible to prove the truth. It is that which inspired
his earliest Discourses. ' At first the 'Contrat Social' seemed to
contradict them: for how could a philosopher who hated society just-
ify the basis of its organization; and especially how could he conclude,
as he does, that to this fatal and illegitimate society the citizen owes
the sacrifice of himself? But after this passing infidelity to his dom-
inant faith, he returned to it again in 'Émile,' where he maintains
that normal education should isolate a child from society in order that
his natural qualities may develop; and he held this view to the end,
as appears in those Confessions,' which, in the portrait they give
of himself, explain without justifying the fundamental idea of all his
doctrine. The defects of his early education Rousseau never sup-
plied; his reading, insufficient and fantastic, left him defenseless to
all external influences. His religion was a vague spiritualism; his
morality, an unconvincing optimism; his politics, a Utopia, pastoral
in the 'Discours sur l'Inégalité,' epic in the 'Contrat Social. ' Finally,
he seems never to have known any other man than himself; and the
psychology of his 'Nouvelle Héloïse' remains essentially personal.
Whence comes it then, that in spite of so much weakness he was the
greatest French writer of his century,- or at least the most influen-
tial, the most universal, and the most persistent?
To understand this curious fact, we must consider Rousseau in his
century and environment. At that period, literature found itself in
flagrant conflict with the morality whose aspirations it was supposed
to express. The writers, most of them new-comers from another class,
usually ended by adding themselves to the old society and adopting
its conventions; or, penetrated with new sentiments, failed to adopt
new tools, and clung to the rhetoric inherited from the preceding
age. Dry, arid, "oldish" in Goethe's apt phrase, they tried in vain
to cultivate sensibility; and when they endeavored to depart from
routine, achieved only the artificial, as Diderot's plays show. The
strength and greatness of Rousseau was, above all, his sincerity: if
he was the first to discard conventional rhetoric, and to express his
own sensibility, it is because he possessed true sensibility; moreover,
---
-
## p. 12439 (#497) ##########################################
JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU
12439
plebeian by birth, he remained plebeian from resolute pride. Differ-
ent from his contemporaries in these two essentials, which conse-
crated his superiority, he became the supreme interpreter of those
ideas, feelings, passions, which were fermenting in the decomposition
of the Old World. He was sentimental and revolutionary, romantic
and rebellious. Animated by the fierce breath of the spirit of nega-
tion, he set himself against all authority, against all tradition; and
his attack was the more resistless, that the charm of his romantic
spirit dissembled its violence.
In the discharge of this little understood and almost fatal office,
he was aided by his wonderful literary gifts. With his most illustri-
ous rivals, French prose had become a conversational language,—
rapid, facile, and brilliant; but without the life which captivates or
the power which impresses itself. Rousseau instinctively abandoned
this use to return to the great oratorical style, to rediscover the lost
secrets of eloquence. For the short sentence, dry, laconic, and inci-
sive, which is that of the best writers of his time, he adopted the long
balanced period, sometimes even too rhythmic, which seizes the atten-
tion and holds it to the end. For the abstract terms in which those
about him delighted, he substituted words of color, living and ardent;
words which paint, words which feel, words which vibrate and weep.
The same instinct which thus revealed to him a new skill in the
sentence, revealed to him also a new and corresponding skill in com-
position. His sentences-long, vivid, and musical-link themselves
together to form a kind of organic charm; so that the complete work
may exercise the same fascination as each of its component parts.
It was the language of passion succeeding that of reason, or rather
of reasoning. The effect could not be doubtful. This effect was
extremely violent, not only upon ideas but upon morals. Is it neces-
sary to recall that after the 'Nouvelle Héloïse,' everybody wanted to
love like Saint-Preux and Julie? that 'Émile' transformed the cur-
rent opinions upon education? that people wished to be emotional,
to dream in the fields, to reascend the current of civilization, to
make their spirits ingenuous, primitive, or at least "natural"? Who
then first uttered the cry of the period, "O Nature! Nature! " the cry
which soon became a new affectation?
Thus Rousseau appears to us as the most enticing guide of his
century. "Beside him," says M. Faguet, "Voltaire appears at times
merely a witty student, and Buffon only a very remarkable teacher
of rhetoric. Montesquieu alone, inferior as a man of imagination,
equals him in strength of view, and excels him in clearness of vis-
ion. " But exactly because he lacked imagination, Montesquieu was
not a harbinger. Rousseau was essentially a forerunner. One may
say that he has shaped the whole century which followed him. His
## p. 12440 (#498) ##########################################
12440
JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU
principal works not only called forth successions of imitations, but
the world is imbued with his ideas, whose consequences continue to
renew or overturn the human soul and society. The 'Contrat Social'
accounts in part for the excesses of the Revolution; and as to the
chief revolutionists, the most dangerous indeed were "Spartans," as
Rousseau had recommended. The vague yet ardent spiritualism pro-
claimed in the 'Profession de Foi du Vicaire Savoyard' (The Savoyard
Vicar's Creed), led to the Festival of the Supreme Being, and pro-
voked the religious reaction of the beginning of the century. The
notions concerning a return to the primitive life which he developed
in his first work, and which remained the basis of his doctrine, may
be found again with the socialists of 1848, underlying the Utopias of
the Saint-Simons, the Fouriers, the Enfantiers, and perhaps even in
the origin of the "collectivism" which has replaced those innocent
dreams. His optimism, his faith in the constant progress of humanity,
inspired during the same period not only the "reformer" who trans-
ported the golden age of the past to the future, but also the most
moderate, most clear-sighted, and most politic minds. The 'Nouvelle
Héloïse' created romanticism, that perilous and seductive disposition
of spirit to which we owe so many affecting works: Saint-Preux is
an elder brother of Werther, and what a posterity follows them!
Before Rousseau, a few English poets alone had perceived Nature.
After him, no one dared longer ignore her. Every one prided him-
self upon loving her. She found sincere adorers who perhaps would
never have perceived her if they had not listened to her worshiper's
enchanting voice.
In such details we get the impression of the whole man. Others
have left works more perfect, and above all more beneficent; but I do
not believe that in the whole history of literature there exists the man
whose influence has been so decisive, so far-reaching, and upon whom
it is so difficult to form a fair judgment. Measured from the point
of view of to-day, this influence seems disproportioned to the genius
which exercised it, and to the value of the works of that genius.
But the most perfect works do not necessarily count the most; and
the keenest criticism cannot always explain the mysterious affinities
of genius, of thought, and of morals. It has been questioned whether
this influence, the extent and duration of which are incontestable, has
been a salutary one. We are not now to consider this. An alluring,
an irresistible guide, Rousseau has not been an infallible one. Many
have gone astray in following him. If he had a kind and feeling
heart, he had not less a faulty intellect; and his paradoxes often par-
alyzed his good intention. The ability with which he followed them
to their extreme conclusion, like the eloquence he employed in their
service, only served to render them more dangerous. Therefore in
## p. 12441 (#499) ##########################################
JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU
12441
penetrating so deeply the consciousness of the generations that fol-
lowed im, Rousseau's thought has drawn upon them many ills. It
has involved them in many gropings and errors, in many delusive
visions and sufferings. It has spread abroad in the Old World a
general agitation, which the violent convulsions following it did not
succeed in dispelling.
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? —
Earth heaped against me or death in the air?
Nay, but in day-dreams, for terror, for pity,
The trees wave their heads with an omen to tell;
Nay, but in night-dreams, throughout the dark city,
The hours, clashed together, lose count in the bell.
Shall I not one day remember thy bower,
One day when all days are one day to me? —
Thinking, "I stirred not, and yet had the power;"
Yearning, "Ah God, if again it might be! »
Peace, peace! such a small lamp illumes, on this highway,
So dimly so few steps in front of my feet,
Yet shows me that her way is parted from my way:
Out of sight, beyond light, at what goal may we meet?
SONNETS FROM THE HOUSE OF LIFE'
INTRODUCTORY SONNET
A
SONNET is a moment's monument,-
Memorial from the Soul's eternity
To one dead deathless hour.
Whether for lustral rite or dire portent,
Of its own arduous fullness reverent:
Carve it in ivory or in ebony,
As Day or Night may rule; and let Time see
Its flowering crest impearled and orient.
Look that it be,
A Sonnet is a coin: its face reveals
The soul,-its converse, to what Power 'tis due:
Whether for tribute to the august appeals
Of Life, or dower in Love's high retinue,
It serve; or, 'mid the dark wharf's cavernous breath,
In Charon's palm it pay the toll to Death.
## p. 12431 (#485) ##########################################
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
12431
LOVESIGHT
WHEN do I see thee most, beloved one?
When in the light the spirits of mine eyes
Before thy face, their altar, solemnize
The worship of that Love through thee made known?
Or when in the dusk hours (we two alone),
Close-kissed and eloquent of still replies
Thy twilight hidden glimmering visage lies,
And my soul only sees thy soul its own?
O love, my love! if I no more should see
Thyself, nor on the earth the shadow of thee,
Nor image of thine eyes in any spring,-
How then should sound upon Life's darkening slope
The ground-whirl of the perished leaves of Hope,
The wind of Death's imperishable wing?
KNOWN IN VAIN
As Two whose love, first foolish, widening scope,
Knows suddenly, to music high and soft,
The Holy of Holies; who because they scoffed
Are now amazed with shame, nor dare to cope
With the whole truth aloud, lest heaven should ope:
Yet, at their meetings, laugh not as they laughed
In speech; nor speak, at length: but sitting oft
Together, within hopeless sight of hope,
For hours are silent;-so it happeneth
When Work and Will awake too late, to gaze
After their life sailed by, and hold their breath.
Ah! who shall dare to search through what sad maze
Thenceforth their incommunicable ways
Follow the desultory feet of Death?
THE HILL SUMMIT
THIS feast-day of the sun, his altar there
In the broad west has blazed for vesper-song;
And I have loitered in the vale too long,
And gaze now a belated worshiper.
Yet may I not forget that I was 'ware,
So journeying, of his face at intervals
Transfigured where the fringed horizon falls,-
A fiery bush with coruscating hair.
## p. 12432 (#486) ##########################################
12432
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
And now that I have climbed and won this height,
I must tread downward through the sloping shade
And travel the bewildered tracks till night.
Yet for this hour I still may here be stayed,
And see the gold air and the silver fade
And the last bird fly into the last light.
THE CHOICE
I
EAT thou and drink: to-morrow thou shalt die.
Surely the earth, that's wise being very old,
Needs not our help. Then loose me, love, and hold
Thy sultry hair up from my face; that I
May pour for thee this golden wine, brim-high,
Till round the glass thy fingers glow like gold.
We'll drown all hours: thy song, while hours are tolled,
Shall leap, as fountains veil the changing sky.
Now kiss, and think that there are really those,
My own high-bosomed beauty, who increase
Vain gold, vain lore, and yet might choose our way!
Through many years they toil: then on a day
They die not,- for their life was death,- but cease;
And round their narrow lips the mold falls close.
II
WATCH thou and fear: to-morrow thou shalt die.
Or art thou sure thou shalt have time for death?
Is not the day which God's word promiseth
To come man knows not when? In yonder sky,
Now while we speak, the sun speeds forth: can I
Or thou assure him of his goal? God's breath
Even at this moment haply quickeneth
The air to a flame; till spirits, always nigh
Though screened and hid, shall walk the daylight here.
And dost thou prate of all that man shall do?
Canst thou, who hast but plagues, presume to be
Glad in his gladness that comes after thee?
Will his strength slay thy worm in Hell? Go to:
Cover thy countenance, and watch, and fear.
## p. 12433 (#487) ##########################################
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
12433
III
THINK thou and act: to-morrow thou shalt die.
Outstretched in the sun's warmth upon the shore,
Thou say'st:-"Man's measured path is all gone o'er:
Up, all his years, steeply, with strain and sigh,
Man clomb until he touched the truth; and I,
Even I, am he whom it was destined for. "
How should this be? Art thou then so much more
Than they who sowed, that thou shouldst reap thereby?
Nay, come up hither. From this wave-washed mound
Unto the furthest flood-brim look with me;
Then reach on with thy thought till it be drowned.
Miles and miles distant though the last line be,
And though thy soul sail leagues and leagues beyond,-
Still, leagues beyond those leagues, there is more sea.
LOST DAYS
THE lost days of my life until to-day,
What were they, could I see them on the street
Lie as they fell? Would they be ears of wheat
Sown once for food but trodden into clay?
Or golden coins squandered and still to pay?
Or drops of blood dabbling the guilty feet?
Or such spilt water as in dreams must cheat
The undying throats of Hell, athirst alway?
I do not see them here; but after death
God knows I know the faces I shall see,
Each one a murdered self, with low last breath.
"I am thyself,— what hast thou done to me? "
"And I and I-thyself" (lo! each one saith),
"And thou thyself to all eternity! "
A SUPERSCRIPTION
Look in my face; my name is Might-have-been;
I am also called No-more, Too-late, Farewell;
Unto thine ear I hold the dead-sea shell
Cast up thy Life's foam-fretted feet between;
Unto thine eyes the glass where that is seen
Which had Life's form and Love's, but by my spell
Is now a shaken shadow intolerable,
Of ultimate things unuttered the frail screen.
XXI-778
## p. 12434 (#488) ##########################################
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
12434
Mark me, how still I am! But should there dart
One moment through thy soul the soft surprise
Of that winged Peace which lulls the breath of sighs,-
Then shalt thou see me smile, and turn apart
Thy visage to mine ambush at thy heart,
Sleepless with cold commemorative eyes.
ON REFUSAL OF AID BETWEEN NATIONS
N°T
Or that the earth is changing, O my God!
Nor that the seasons totter in their walk,-
Not that the virulent ill of act and talk
Seethes ever as a winepress ever trod,-
Not therefore are we certain that the rod
Weighs in thine hand to smite thy world; though now
Beneath thine hand so many nations bow,
So many kings: not therefore, O my God! -
But because Man is parceled out in men
To-day because, for any wrongful blow,
No man not stricken asks, "I would be told
Why thou dost thus;" but his heart whispers then,
"He is he, I am I. " By this we know
That the earth falls asunder, being old.
FOR A VENETIAN PASTORAL,' BY GIORGIONE, IN THE LOUVRE
ATER, for anguish of the solstice: nay,
But dip the vessel slowly,- nay, but lean
And hark how at its verge the wave sighs in
Reluctant. Hush! Beyond all depth away
The heat lies silent at the brink of day:
Now the hand trails upon the viol-string
That sobs, and the brown faces cease to sing,
Sad with the whole of pleasure. Whither stray
Her eyes now, from whose mouth the slim pipes creep
And leave it pouting, while the shadowed grass
Is cool against her naked side? Let be:
Say nothing now unto her lest she weep,
Nor name this ever. Be it as it was,-
Life touching lips with Immortality.
WATER
-
## p. 12434 (#489) ##########################################
## p. 12434 (#490) ##########################################
J. J. ROUSSEAU.
## p. 12434 (#491) ##########################################
1
1
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## p. 12435 (#493) ##########################################
12435
DGX
JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU
(1712-1778)
BY ÉDOUARD ROD
HROUGHOUT his life, Rousseau was tossed about as by an inner
storm, in exciting the violence of which malicious circum-
stances seemed to delight. He was born at Geneva, June
28th, 1712, in a troubled atmosphere, among the riots and agitations
which were beginning to threaten the old Genevan oligarchy. He
lost his mother at birth. His father, who was a watchmaker, scarcely
concerned himself with his early education except to read Plutarch
and Richardson with him. When forced to leave Geneva, he in-
trusted the boy to the care of a maternal uncle. Jean Jacques was
a dreamy, romantic child, sentimental, and not without a touch of
perversity. Early embarked on a wandering and adventurous life,
he was successively engraver's apprentice, vagabond, lackey, secre-
tary. He improvised himself into a musician; he even made him-
self a traveling tradesman. The counsels of a benefactress whose
influence over him was very great-Madame de Warens - converted
him to Catholicism, a faith which he afterward renounced. He
traveled. He saw Italy. He read French, English, and German phi-
losophers pell-mell, while studying music, history, and mathematics
without method. Engaged as a preceptor at the elder Mably's,-
brother of the Abbé Mably,- he was introduced to the literary soci-
ety of the epoch. After some fruitless gropings he was to conquer
first place in a competition before the Academy of Dijon, by a memo-
rial (which was crowned) upon this question: 'Has the progress of
sciences and arts contributed to corrupt or to purify morals? ' (1749).
The success of this initial work, which contains the germs of most
of the ideas developed in his later works, was both brilliant and bel-
ligerent.
Suddenly famous, Rousseau became at the same time distrustful,
solitary, misanthropic; and these characteristics were intensified by
his alliance with her who was to be the companion of his life,- a
person of inferior heart and mind, from whom he suffered much,
and with whom he could not break. The 'Discourse on the Arts and
Sciences' was soon followed by a new competitive essay assigned by
the same Academy of Dijon,-'A Discourse on the Inequality among
## p. 12436 (#494) ##########################################
12436
JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU
Men,' — which is a fuller and more authoritative exposition of the
earlier theme. The fundamental idea of this work the keystone
of all Rousseau's philosophy. It is summed up in this simple remark:
"Men are bad; my own sad experience furnishes the proof: yet man
is naturally good, as I think I have shown. What then can so have
degraded him, except the changes in his condition, the progress he
has made, and the knowledge he has acquired? " The Academy of
Dijon did not crown this second discourse, which was thought too
radical; and Rousseau continued a career filled with triumphs whose
bitterness alone he felt. His theories were violently opposed by the
literary and philosophic classes; but the public was with him.
In 1752, his opera 'Le Devin du Village' (The Village Sooth-
sayer), played at court under his direction, brought him a pension
from the King. He became the fashion; great lords and lovely ladies
invited him, petted him, patronized him. In less than five years
he was to launch on the world the works which made him the most
formidable protagonist of the new era: 'La Nouvelle Héloïse,' which
inaugurated "romantic" literature long before the word was found
to characterize it; the Contrat Social,' which preludes the doctrines
of the Revolution; and 'Émile,' which attempts to reform the princi-
ples of education. These three works brought Rousseau an unexam-
pled popularity. But the violent controversies they aroused, the real
hatreds they excited, the condemnations they drew upon him,- at
Paris where the Parliament decreed his arrest, and at Geneva where
'Émile' was burned by the executioner,- hurried him into a mel-
ancholy more and more bitter and afflicting. He took refuge with
different friends, whom his suspicions presently transformed into per-
secutors, in different places, where he always believed himself perse-
cuted.
Returning to Paris in 1770, he passed there several years of anxious
poverty: copying music for a livelihood; composing, in answer to
demands which honored him, such works as the 'Considerations on
the Government of Poland'; or to defend himself before posterity,
books like The Confessions,' and the Rêveries d'un Promeneur
Solitaire' (Musings of a Solitary Stroller), which did not appear until
after his death. In 1778 he accepted a refuge offered by one of
his faithful friends, René de Girardin, on his estate of Ermenonville.
There his mind seemed to be growing calmer in the serene contem-
plation of the green and smiling country, when he died suddenly, on
the 2d of July, 1778, in his sixty-seventh year. At first, suicide was
suspected; but an autopsy disclosed the cause of death to be serous
apoplexy. His body, buried at two o'clock at night under the pop-
lars of Ermenonville,- "by the most beautiful moonlight and in the
calmest weather," says a witness,- was transported to the Pantheon
## p. 12437 (#495) ##########################################
JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU
12437
in 1794 by order of the Convention. But in 1814 it was exhumed,
as was Voltaire's, without official order; and the bones of the two
philosophers, placed in the same sack, were thrust under ground in
the waste land toward Bercy.
What especially strikes the writer who attempts to analyze the
moral and intellectual personality of Rousseau, is the predominance
of his imagination. He was a poet and a romancer,— a romancer
who made theories instead of making romances; but 'Émile' is cer-
tainly a pedagogical story, as the Contrat Social' is a story, as the
'Discours sur l'Inégalité' is a historical, or if you like, an anthro-
pological story. This fertile imagination was constantly excited by a
very lively sensibility, which exalted itself in ardent friendships, in
ardent passions, which embraced all humanity, reaching out to ani-
mals and even to inanimate things, and finding only in communion
with nature some little joy and compensation. The disordered ac-
tion of the romantic imagination upon this morbid sensibility would
naturally produce and did produce errors of judgment, such as the
doctrines of the Contrat, of Émile, etc. ; and also errors in life, of
which the gravest was that systematic and deliberate abandonment
of his children, with which Rousseau has been so strongly reproached.
But these errors came from the mind, not from the heart. Many
facts prove that despite his paradoxes of thought and conduct, this
man possessed a sincere kindness, a generosity which could pardon
the worst offenses, a simple and touching tenderness of soul, a dis-
interestedness so great as to deprive him of all profit from his tal-
ents. These qualities are sometimes spoiled or perverted by a pride
to which perhaps must be attributed some of his acts of generosity
or devotion, as well as some of his errors; and which later became
exaggerated to mania in the mental malady of which it is impossi-
ble to say whether it was cause or effect. This pride, from which
he suffered more than any one else, was his only vice; in spite of his
having allowed himself to be drawn into certain culpable acts, such
as once to have stolen and often to have lied,-offenses which would
never have been known but for his own confession.
In spite of such errors, committed in hours of temptation, and
expiated by long and sincere regrets, it would be unjust to deny
Rousseau's true nobility of soul. If that soul seems to us sullied,
the blame rests upon the hazards of his neglected childhood and
adventurous youth; upon the storms of his genius, his sufferings dur-
ing the long period when he was forced to seek his true self among
the worst obstacles, upon the tempests he aroused; and finally, later,
upon the maddening mirages with which his sick imagination sur-
rounded him.
## p. 12438 (#496) ##########################################
12438
JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU
-
The elements of Rousseau's character were also those of his gen-
ius. Although he delighted to reason according to the method
which Descartes had inaugurated, and from which he could not free
himself, that old vessel in which bubbled up the new wine of his
thought, yet it is unreasonable to expect much reason from him.
His logic usually ends in paradox. Upon going back to the origin of
his ideas and attempting to analyze them, one finds that taken sep-
arately they are neither very original nor very profound: all return
to that fundamental conception of the superiority of "the state of
nature" over "the social state," - a too inadequate conception, of
which it is impossible to prove the truth. It is that which inspired
his earliest Discourses. ' At first the 'Contrat Social' seemed to
contradict them: for how could a philosopher who hated society just-
ify the basis of its organization; and especially how could he conclude,
as he does, that to this fatal and illegitimate society the citizen owes
the sacrifice of himself? But after this passing infidelity to his dom-
inant faith, he returned to it again in 'Émile,' where he maintains
that normal education should isolate a child from society in order that
his natural qualities may develop; and he held this view to the end,
as appears in those Confessions,' which, in the portrait they give
of himself, explain without justifying the fundamental idea of all his
doctrine. The defects of his early education Rousseau never sup-
plied; his reading, insufficient and fantastic, left him defenseless to
all external influences. His religion was a vague spiritualism; his
morality, an unconvincing optimism; his politics, a Utopia, pastoral
in the 'Discours sur l'Inégalité,' epic in the 'Contrat Social. ' Finally,
he seems never to have known any other man than himself; and the
psychology of his 'Nouvelle Héloïse' remains essentially personal.
Whence comes it then, that in spite of so much weakness he was the
greatest French writer of his century,- or at least the most influen-
tial, the most universal, and the most persistent?
To understand this curious fact, we must consider Rousseau in his
century and environment. At that period, literature found itself in
flagrant conflict with the morality whose aspirations it was supposed
to express. The writers, most of them new-comers from another class,
usually ended by adding themselves to the old society and adopting
its conventions; or, penetrated with new sentiments, failed to adopt
new tools, and clung to the rhetoric inherited from the preceding
age. Dry, arid, "oldish" in Goethe's apt phrase, they tried in vain
to cultivate sensibility; and when they endeavored to depart from
routine, achieved only the artificial, as Diderot's plays show. The
strength and greatness of Rousseau was, above all, his sincerity: if
he was the first to discard conventional rhetoric, and to express his
own sensibility, it is because he possessed true sensibility; moreover,
---
-
## p. 12439 (#497) ##########################################
JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU
12439
plebeian by birth, he remained plebeian from resolute pride. Differ-
ent from his contemporaries in these two essentials, which conse-
crated his superiority, he became the supreme interpreter of those
ideas, feelings, passions, which were fermenting in the decomposition
of the Old World. He was sentimental and revolutionary, romantic
and rebellious. Animated by the fierce breath of the spirit of nega-
tion, he set himself against all authority, against all tradition; and
his attack was the more resistless, that the charm of his romantic
spirit dissembled its violence.
In the discharge of this little understood and almost fatal office,
he was aided by his wonderful literary gifts. With his most illustri-
ous rivals, French prose had become a conversational language,—
rapid, facile, and brilliant; but without the life which captivates or
the power which impresses itself. Rousseau instinctively abandoned
this use to return to the great oratorical style, to rediscover the lost
secrets of eloquence. For the short sentence, dry, laconic, and inci-
sive, which is that of the best writers of his time, he adopted the long
balanced period, sometimes even too rhythmic, which seizes the atten-
tion and holds it to the end. For the abstract terms in which those
about him delighted, he substituted words of color, living and ardent;
words which paint, words which feel, words which vibrate and weep.
The same instinct which thus revealed to him a new skill in the
sentence, revealed to him also a new and corresponding skill in com-
position. His sentences-long, vivid, and musical-link themselves
together to form a kind of organic charm; so that the complete work
may exercise the same fascination as each of its component parts.
It was the language of passion succeeding that of reason, or rather
of reasoning. The effect could not be doubtful. This effect was
extremely violent, not only upon ideas but upon morals. Is it neces-
sary to recall that after the 'Nouvelle Héloïse,' everybody wanted to
love like Saint-Preux and Julie? that 'Émile' transformed the cur-
rent opinions upon education? that people wished to be emotional,
to dream in the fields, to reascend the current of civilization, to
make their spirits ingenuous, primitive, or at least "natural"? Who
then first uttered the cry of the period, "O Nature! Nature! " the cry
which soon became a new affectation?
Thus Rousseau appears to us as the most enticing guide of his
century. "Beside him," says M. Faguet, "Voltaire appears at times
merely a witty student, and Buffon only a very remarkable teacher
of rhetoric. Montesquieu alone, inferior as a man of imagination,
equals him in strength of view, and excels him in clearness of vis-
ion. " But exactly because he lacked imagination, Montesquieu was
not a harbinger. Rousseau was essentially a forerunner. One may
say that he has shaped the whole century which followed him. His
## p. 12440 (#498) ##########################################
12440
JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU
principal works not only called forth successions of imitations, but
the world is imbued with his ideas, whose consequences continue to
renew or overturn the human soul and society. The 'Contrat Social'
accounts in part for the excesses of the Revolution; and as to the
chief revolutionists, the most dangerous indeed were "Spartans," as
Rousseau had recommended. The vague yet ardent spiritualism pro-
claimed in the 'Profession de Foi du Vicaire Savoyard' (The Savoyard
Vicar's Creed), led to the Festival of the Supreme Being, and pro-
voked the religious reaction of the beginning of the century. The
notions concerning a return to the primitive life which he developed
in his first work, and which remained the basis of his doctrine, may
be found again with the socialists of 1848, underlying the Utopias of
the Saint-Simons, the Fouriers, the Enfantiers, and perhaps even in
the origin of the "collectivism" which has replaced those innocent
dreams. His optimism, his faith in the constant progress of humanity,
inspired during the same period not only the "reformer" who trans-
ported the golden age of the past to the future, but also the most
moderate, most clear-sighted, and most politic minds. The 'Nouvelle
Héloïse' created romanticism, that perilous and seductive disposition
of spirit to which we owe so many affecting works: Saint-Preux is
an elder brother of Werther, and what a posterity follows them!
Before Rousseau, a few English poets alone had perceived Nature.
After him, no one dared longer ignore her. Every one prided him-
self upon loving her. She found sincere adorers who perhaps would
never have perceived her if they had not listened to her worshiper's
enchanting voice.
In such details we get the impression of the whole man. Others
have left works more perfect, and above all more beneficent; but I do
not believe that in the whole history of literature there exists the man
whose influence has been so decisive, so far-reaching, and upon whom
it is so difficult to form a fair judgment. Measured from the point
of view of to-day, this influence seems disproportioned to the genius
which exercised it, and to the value of the works of that genius.
But the most perfect works do not necessarily count the most; and
the keenest criticism cannot always explain the mysterious affinities
of genius, of thought, and of morals. It has been questioned whether
this influence, the extent and duration of which are incontestable, has
been a salutary one. We are not now to consider this. An alluring,
an irresistible guide, Rousseau has not been an infallible one. Many
have gone astray in following him. If he had a kind and feeling
heart, he had not less a faulty intellect; and his paradoxes often par-
alyzed his good intention. The ability with which he followed them
to their extreme conclusion, like the eloquence he employed in their
service, only served to render them more dangerous. Therefore in
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JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU
12441
penetrating so deeply the consciousness of the generations that fol-
lowed im, Rousseau's thought has drawn upon them many ills. It
has involved them in many gropings and errors, in many delusive
visions and sufferings. It has spread abroad in the Old World a
general agitation, which the violent convulsions following it did not
succeed in dispelling.
