Copyright
1896, by Macmillan & Co.
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At the close of the Revolution, however, the men from the
sea-coast region formed but an insignificant portion of the Western
pioneers. The country beyond the Alleghanies was first won and
settled by the backwoodsmen themselves, acting under their own
leaders, obeying their own desires, and following their own meth-
ods. They were marked and peculiar people. The good and
evil traits in their character were such as naturally belonged to
a strong, harsh, and homely race; which, with all its shortcom-
ings, was nevertheless bringing a tremendous work to a tri-
umphant conclusion. The backwoodsmen were above all things
characteristically American; and it is fitting that the two greatest
and most typical of all Americans should have been respectively
a sharer and an outcome of their work. Washington himself
passed the most important years of his youth heading the west-
ward movement of his people; clad in the traditional dress of the
backwoodsmen, in tasseled hunting-shirt and fringed leggings, he
led them to battle against the French and Indians, and helped to
clear the way for the American advance. The only other man
who in the American roll of honor stands by the side of Wash-
ington, was born when the distinctive work of the pioneers had
ended: and yet he was bone of their bone and flesh of their
flesh; for from the loins of this gaunt frontier folk sprang mighty
Abraham Lincoln.
Looking back, it is easy to say that much of the wrong-doing
could have been prevented; but if we examine the facts to find
out the truth, not to establish a theory, we are bound to admit
that the struggle was really one that could not possibly have
been avoided. The sentimental historians speak as if the blame
had been all ours, and the wrong all done to our foes, and as if it
would have been possible by any exercise of wisdom to reconcile
claims that were in their very essence conflicting; but their utter-
ances are as shallow as they are untruthful. Unless we were
willing that the whole continent west of the Alleghanies should
remain an unpeopled waste, the hunting-ground of savages, war
was inevitable; and even had we been willing, and had we re-
frained from encroaching on the Indians' lands, the war would
have come nevertheless, for then the Indians themselves would
## p. 12396 (#446) ##########################################
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THEODORE ROOSEVELT
have encroached on ours. Undoubtedly we have wronged many
tribes; but equally undoubtedly our first definite knowledge of
many others has been derived from their unprovoked outrages
upon our people. The Chippewas, Ottawas, and Pottawatamies
furnished hundreds of young warriors to the parties that devas-
tated our frontiers, generations before we in any way encroached
upon or wronged them.
Mere outrages could be atoned for or settled: the question
which lay at the root of our difficulties was that of the occupa
tion of the land itself; and to this there could be no solution save
war. The Indians had no ownership of the land in the way in
which we understand the term. The tribes lived far apart; each
had for its hunting-grounds all the territory from which it was
not barred by rivals. Each looked with jealousy upon all inter-
lopers, but each was prompt to act as an interloper when occasion
offered. Every good hunting-ground was claimed by many nations.
It was rare indeed that any tribe had an uncontested title to a
large tract of land: where such title existed, it rested not on
actual occupancy and cultivation, but on the recent butchery of
weaker rivals. For instance, there were a dozen tribes, all of
whom hunted in Kentucky, and fought each other there, all of
whom had equally good titles to the soil, and not one of whom
acknowledged the right of any other: as a matter of fact they
had therein no right, save the right of the strongest. The land
no more belonged to them than it belonged to Boon and the
white hunters who first ted it.
## p. 12397 (#447) ##########################################
12397
CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI
(1830-1894)
BY WILLIAM MORTON PAYNE
NGLISH poetry enjoys a unique distinction in the possession of
two women whose works must be ranked with all but the
highest achievements of our song. It is neither misplaced
sentiment nor mistaken chivalry, but the dispassionate verdict of a
searching and objective criticism, that claims for Elizabeth Browning
and Christina Rossetti two seats in the temple of fame not far below
those in which the greatest English poets
of the Victorian era are enthroned. It is
idle to inquire from which of the two we
have received the more enduring work; but
a brief comparison in general terms may be
found instructive. Mrs. Browning has un-
doubtedly won a wider acceptance than Miss
Rossetti, and enjoyed a greater popularity;
on the other hand, the acceptance won by
the latter poet has probably included the
more distinguished suffrages, while her pop-
ularity has of recent years grown apace,
and may in time outstrip that of the older
singer. Again, the matter of Mrs. Brown- CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI
ing's work was to a considerable extent
timely, which does not often mean of lasting interest; the achieve-
ment of Italian unity has somewhat outworn the passion of "Casa
Guidi Windows,' and the problems of 'Aurora Leigh are not exactly
the problems of the present day. But time is not so likely to wither
the flower of Miss Rossetti's work; for there is little of the temporal
about its themes, which are as a rule the everlasting verities of the
spirit. Finally, it must be allowed that Miss Rossetti was endowed
with a more exquisite perception of poetical form than, was attained
to by Mrs. Browning, and that her work as a whole has a higher
degree of purely artistic finish. The rich emotional nature of the
former woman was too frequently content to rely upon the first
impulsive form with which the thought became clothed in the white
heat of her imagination; in the case of the latter, with no less of
:
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CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI
imaginative glow at heart, there were superadded the powers of
intellectual control and artistic restraint.
Christina Rossetti was born December 5th, 1830; the youngest of
the remarkable group of four children that, with their parents,
made up the London household of the exiled Italian patriot and phi-
losopher, Gabriele Rossetti. She died December 29th, 1894, after an
externally uneventful life of sixty-four years,-a life happy in its do-
mestic relations, and in its intercourse with the circle of distinguished
people that were gathered about the Rossettis; but darkened by much
physical suffering, and in its closing years by a painful and incurable
disease. She was one of the most precocious of poets, and began at
the early age of eleven to write verses, which have been carefully
preserved, and which her brother, Mr. W. M. Rossetti, has thought it
worth while to publish in the posthumous collection edited by him
not quite two years after her death. A volume of her Verses' was
privately printed as early as 1847, and in 1850 she was a contributor
to the Germ. Nearly all of her work that calls for serious consider-
ation is included within the three volumes (Goblin Market and Other
Poems, 1862; The Prince's Progress and Other Poems,' 1866; and
'A Pageant and Other Poems,' 1881) published during her lifetime,
and the posthumous volume of New Poems' (1896) to which allus-
ion has already been made. The titles of her other books, most of
which are of a devotional nature and in prose, are as follows: 'Com-
monplace and Other Short Stories,' 'Sing-Song: A Nursery Rhyme-
Book,' 'Speaking Likenesses,' 'Annus Domini: A Prayer for Every
Day in the Year,' 'Seek and Find,' 'Called to the Saints,' 'Letter
and Spirit,' and Time Flies. ' These books would be noticeable
enough if they stood alone; but the thoughts and the moods which
they embody find a far more intense and rapturous expression in
the four volumes of poems upon which the author's reputation is so
securely based.
Very varied are the contents of these volumes, which range from
a divine simplicity to a richness that is the very ecstasy of religious.
utterance; from a cloying sweetness of diction to a noble auster-
ity; from a picturesque and almost dramatic style to one so chast-
ened and so ethereal that the spirit soars with it to a higher than
the earthly plane. Yet certain insistent characteristics may hardly
be missed anywhere in Christina Rossetti's work: certain qualities of
dreamy tenderness and ardent mysticism, a certain strain of pensive
melancholy, based upon a recognition of the essential vanity of the
external forms of human existence, and upon an unshaken faith in
the reality of that "city of the soul" whereof poets and philosophers
have in all ages dreamed. It is indeed as the poet of religious aspi-
ration and spiritual vision that she is pre-eminent among English
## p. 12399 (#449) ##########################################
CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI
12399
singers. Compared with her work, the best of Newman and Keble
seems forced and formal; the inspiration of Herbert and Vaughan
seems to flash out but fitfully when contrasted with the steady glow
of hers. Such poems as 'Up-Hill,' 'Amor Mundi,' and 'Old and
New Year Ditties' must be ranked among the very noblest examples
of the religious lyric to be found in English literature. And although
these poems, together with their many fellow-songs, were inspired by
the doctrines of the Anglican communion, of which the author was
ever a devoted adherent, there is nothing narrow or dogmatic about
them; rather do they appeal to the general religious consciousness
that is shared by all fervid and lofty souls: while their stately har-
monies of thought and of emotion move in a region in which all
symbols are valued but as symbols, in which theology becomes but
the handmaid of religion, and in which all technical differences of
belief fade in the effulgence of the vision vouchsafed to the spirit.
Cette layer
HOPE IS LIKE A HAREBELL
H
OPE is like a harebell, trembling from its birth;
Love is like a rose, the joy of all the earth.
Faith is like a lily lifted high and white;
Love is like a lovely rose, the world's delight.
Harebells and sweet lilies show a thornless growth,
But the rose with all its thorns excels them both.
DREAM-LAND
From Poems. Macmillan & Co. : 1894
HERE sunless rivers weep
Their waves into the deep,
She sleeps a charmèd sleep:
Awake her not.
WH
Led by a single star,
She came from very far
To seek where shadows are
Her pleasant lot.
## p. 12400 (#450) ##########################################
CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI
12400
She left the rosy morn,
She left the fields of corn,
For twilight cold and lorn
And water springs.
Through sleep, as through a veil,
She sees the sky look pale,
And hears the nightingale
That sadly sings.
Rest, rest, a perfect rest
Shed over brow and breast;
Her face is toward the west,
The purple land.
She cannot see the grain
Ripening on hill and plain;
She cannot feel the rain
Upon her hand.
Rest, rest, forevermore
Upon a mossy shore;
Rest, rest at the heart's core
Till time shall cease:
Sleep that no pain shall wake,
Night that no morn shall break,
Till joy shall overtake
Her perfect peace.
A BIRTHDAY
From Poems. ' Macmillan & Co. : 1894
Y HEART is like a singing bird
Whose nest is in a watered shoot;
My heart is like an apple-tree
Whose boughs are bent with thick-set fruit;
Μ'
My heart is like a rainbow shell
That paddles in a halcyon sea;
My heart is gladder than all these
Because my love is come to me.
Raise me a dais of silk and down;
Hang it with vair and purple dyes;
Carve it in doves and pomegranates,
And peacocks with a hundred eyes;
## p. 12401 (#451) ##########################################
CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI
12401
XXI-776
Work it in gold and silver grapes,
In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys:
Because the birthday of my life
Is come, my love is come to me.
AFTER DEATH
From Poems. ' Macmillan & Co. . 1894
THE
HE curtains were half drawn, the floor was swept
And strewn with rushes; rosemary and may
Lay thick upon the bed on which I lay,
Where through the lattice ivy shadows crept.
He leaned above me, thinking that I slept
And could not hear him; but I heard him say,
"Poor child, poor child! " and as he turned away
Came a deep silence, and I knew he wept.
He did not touch the shroud, or raise the fold
That hid my face, or take my hand in his,
Or ruffle the smooth pillows for my head.
He did not love me living: but once dead
He pitied me; and very sweet it is
To know he still is warm, though I am cold.
REMEMBER
From 'Poems. ' Macmillan & Co. : 1894
R
EMEMBER me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go, yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more, day by day,
You tell me of our future that you planned;
Only remember me: you understand
It will be late to counsel then, or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve;
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.
## p. 12402 (#452) ##########################################
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CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI
ECHO
From 'Poems. Macmillan & Co. : 1894
OME to me in the silence of the night;
Come in the speaking silence of a dream;
Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright
C
As sunlight on a stream;
Come back in tears,
O memory, hope, love, of finished years.
O dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet,
Whose wakening should have been in Paradise,
Where souls brimful of love abide and meet;
Where thirsting longing eyes
Watch the slow door
That opening, letting in, lets out no more.
Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live
My very life again though cold in death;
Come back to me in dreams, that I may give
Pulse for pulse, breath for breath:
Speak low, lean low,
As long ago, my love, how long ago!
SONG
From 'Poems. ' Macmillan & Co. : 1894
HEN I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress-tree:
WHEN
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.
I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on, as if in pain;
And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise or set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.
## p. 12403 (#453) ##########################################
CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI
12403
REST
From Poems. ' Macmillan & Co. : 1894
EARTH, lie heavily upon her eyes;
O
Seal her sweet eyes weary of watching, Earth;
Lie close around her; leave no room for mirth
With its harsh laughter, nor for sound of sighs.
She hath no questions, she hath no replies,
Hushed in and curtained with a blessed dearth
Of all that irked her from the hour of birth;
With stillness that is almost Paradise.
Darkness more clear than noonday holdeth her;
Silence more musical than any song;
Even her very heart has ceased to stir:
Until the morning of Eternity
Her rest shall not begin nor end, but be;
And when she wakes she will not think it long.
UP-HILL
From Poems. ) Macmillan & Co. : 1894
OES the road wind up-hill all the way? —
Yes, to the very end.
Will the day's journey take the whole long day? —
From morn to night, my friend.
DOR
But is there for the night a resting-place? —
A roof for when the slow dark hours begin.
May not the darkness hide it from my face? —
You cannot miss that inn.
Shall I meet other wayfarers at night? -
Those who have gone before.
Then must I knock, or call, when just in sight? -
They will not keep you standing at that door.
Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak? -
Of labor you shall find the sum.
Will there be beds for me and all who seek?
Yea, beds for all who come.
## p. 12404 (#454) ##########################################
CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI
12404
THE THREE ENEMIES
From 'Poems. ' Macmillan & Co. : 1894
THE FLESH
WEET, thou art pale. "
"SWEET,
Christ hung upon the cruel tree
And bore his Father's wrath for me. "
"Sweet, thou art sad. "
"More pale to see,
"Beneath a rod
More heavy, Christ for my sake trod
The wine-press of the wrath of God. "
"Sweet, thou art weary. "
"Not so Christ;
Whose mighty love of me sufficed
For Strength, Salvation, Eucharist. "
"Sweet, thou art footsore. »
"If I bleed,
His feet have bled; yea, in my need
His heart once bled for mine indeed. "
THE WORLD
"SWEET, thou art young. "
"So He was young
Who for my sake in silence hung
Upon the Cross with Passion wrung. "
"Look, thou art fair. "
"He was more fair
Than men, who deigned for me to wear
A visage marred beyond compare. "
"And thou hast riches. "
"Daily bread:
All else is His who living, dead,
For me lacked where to lay his head. ”
"And life is sweet. "
"It was not so
To Him whose cup did overflow
With mine unutterable woe. "
## p. 12405 (#455) ##########################################
CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI
12405
THE DEVIL
"THOU drinkest deep. "
"When Christ would sup,
He drained the dregs from out my cup:
So how should I be lifted up? "
"Thou shalt win glory. "
"In the skies,
Lord Jesus, cover up mine eyes,
Lest they should look on vanities. "
"Thou shalt have knowledge. "
"Helpless dust,
In thee, O Lord, I put my trust:
Answer thou for me, Wise and Just. "
"And might. "
"Get thee behind me. Lord,
Who hast redeemed and not abhorred
My soul, O keep it by thy Word. "
OLD AND NEW YEAR DITTIES
From Poems. Roberts Bros. : 1866
I
NEW
EW YEAR met me somewhat sad:
Old Year leaves me tired,
Stripped of favorite things I had,
Balked of much desired;
Yet farther on my road to-day,-
God willing, farther on my way.
-
New Year, coming on apace,
What have you to give me?
Bring you scathe, or bring you grace,
Face me with an honest face;
You shall not deceive me:
Be it good or ill, be it what you will,
It needs shall help me on my road,
My rugged way to heaven, please God.
## p. 12406 (#456) ##########################################
12406
CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI
II
WATCH with me, men, women, and children dear,
You whom I love, for whom I hope and fear,
Watch with me this last vigil of the year.
Some hug their business, some their pleasure-scheme;
Some seize the vacant hour to sleep or dream;
Heart locked in heart some kneel and watch apart.
Watch with me, blessed spirits, who delight
All through the holy night to walk in white,
Or take your ease after the long-drawn fight.
I know not if they watch with me; I know
They count this eve of resurrection slow,
And cry, "How long? " with urgent utterance strong.
Watch with me, Jesus, in my loneliness:
Though others say me nay, yet say thou yes;
Though others pass me by, stop thou to bless.
Yea, thou dost stop with me this vigil-night;
To-night of pain, to-morrow of delight:
I, Love, am thine; thou, Lord my God, art mine.
III
PASSING away, saith the world, passing away:
Chances, beauty, and youth sapped day by day;
Thy life never continueth in one stay.
Is the eye waxen dim, is the dark hair changing to gray
That hath won neither laurel nor bay?
I shall clothe myself in spring and bud in May:
Thou, root-stricken, shalt not rebuild thy decay
On my bosom for aye.
Then I answered, Yea.
Passing away, saith my soul, passing away;
With its burden of fear and hope, of labor and play.
Hearken what the past doth witness and say:-
Rust in thy gold, a moth is in thine array,
A canker is in thy bud, thy leaf must decay.
At midnight, at cock-crow, at morning one certain day
Lo, the Bridegroom shall come and shall not delay:
Watch thou and pray.
Then I answered, Yea.
―
## p. 12407 (#457) ##########################################
CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI
12407
Passing away, saith my God, passing away:
Winter passeth after long delay;
New grapes on the vine, new figs on the tender spray,
Turtle calleth turtle in heaven's May.
Though I tarry, wait for me, trust me, watch and pray.
Arise, come away; night is past, and lo, it is day,
My love, my sister, my spouse, thou shalt hear me say.
Then I answered, Yea.
AMOR MUNDI
From 'Poems. Macmillan & Co. : 1894
"O"
H, WHERE are you going with your love-locks flowing
On the west wind blowing along this valley track? ”.
"The down-hill path is easy; come with me an it please ye:
We shall escape the up-hill by never turning back. "
So they two went together in glowing August weather:
The honey-breathing heather lay to their left and right;
And dear she was to doat on, her swift feet seemed to float on
The air like soft twin pigeons too sportive to alight.
"Oh, what is that in heaven where gray cloud-flakes are seven,
Where blackest clouds hang riven just at the rainy skirt ? » —
"Oh, that's a meteor sent us, a message dumb, portentous,
An undeciphered solemn signal of help or hurt. ”
"Oh, what is that glides quickly where velvet flowers grow thickly,
Their scent comes rich and sickly? "-"A scaled and hooded
>>
worm.
"Oh, what's that in the hollow, so pale I quake to follow? "
"Oh, that's a thin dead body which waits the eternal term. "
-
"Turn again, O my sweetest,- turn again, false and fleetest:
This beaten way thou beatest I fear is hell's own track. ” —
"Nay, too steep for hill mounting; nay, too late for cost counting:
This downward path is easy, but there's no turning back. "
## p. 12408 (#458) ##########################################
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CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI
LIFE HIDDEN
From New Poems. Copyright 1896, by Macmillan & Co.
OSES and lilies grow above the place
R
Where she sleeps the long sleep that doth not
dream.
If we could look upon her hidden face,
Nor shadow would be there, nor garish gleam
Of light; her life is lapsing like a stream
That makes no noise, but floweth on apace
Seawards, while many a shade and shady beam
Vary the ripples in their gliding chase.
She doth not see, but knows; she doth not feel,
And yet is sensible; she hears no sound,
Yet counts the flight of time and doth not err.
Peace far and near, peace to ourselves and her:
Her body is at peace in holy ground,
Her spirit is at peace where angels kneel.
WHITSUN EVE
From New Poems. Copyright 1896, by Macmillan & Co.
HE white dove cooeth in her downy nest,
TH
Keeping her young ones warm beneath her breast;
The white moon saileth through the cool clear sky,
Screened by a tender mist in passing by;
The white rose buds, with thorns upon its stem,
All the more precious and more dear for them;
The stream shines silver in the tufted grass,
The white clouds scarcely dim it as they pass;
Deep in the valleys lily-cups are white,
They send up incense all the holy night.
Our souls are white, made clean in Blood once shed;
White blessed angels watch around our bed:
O spotless Lamb of God, still keep us so,
Thou who wert born for us in time of snow.
## p. 12409 (#459) ##########################################
CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI
12409
HEAVEN OVERARCHES
From New Poems.
Copyright 1896, by Macmillan & Co.
Η HA
EAVEN overarches earth and sea,
Earth-sadness and sea-bitterness.
Heaven overarches you and me:
A little while and we shall be-
Please God-where there is no more sea
Nor barren wilderness.
Heaven overarches you and me,
And all earth's gardens and her graves.
Look up with me, until we see
The day break and the shadows flee.
What though to-night wrecks you and me
If so to-morrow saves?
THE HEART KNOWETH ITS OWN BITTERNESS
From New Poems. Copyright 1896, by Macmillan & Co.
HEN all the over-work of life
WHEN
Is finished once, and fast asleep
We swerve no more beneath the knife,
But taste the silence cool and deep:
Forgetful of the highways rough,
Forgetful of the thorny scourge,
Forgetful of the tossing surge,
Then shall we find it is enough?
How can we say "enough" on earth —
«< Enough" with such a craving heart?
I have not found it since my birth,
But still have bartered part for part.
I have not held and hugged the whole,
But paid the old to gain the new:
Much have I paid, yet much is due,
Till I am beggared sense and soul.
I used to labor, used to strive
For pleasure with a restless will:
Now if I save my soul alive,
All else what matters, good or ill?
## p. 12410 (#460) ##########################################
12410
CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI
I used to dream alone, to plan
Unspoken hopes and days to come:
Of all my past this is the sum,-
I will not lean on child of man.
-
To give, to give, not to receive!
I long to pour myself, my soul,
Not to keep back or count or leave,
But king with king to give the whole.
I long for one to stir my deep,-
I have had enough of help and gift;
I long for one to search and sift
Myself, to take myself, and keep.
-
You scratch my surface with your pin,
You stroke me smooth with hushing breath:
Nay, pierce, nay, probe, nay, dig within,-
Probe my quick core and sound my depth.
You call me with a puny call,
-
You talk, you smile, you nothing do:
How should I spend my heart on you,
My heart that so outweighs you all?
Your vessels are by much too strait:
Were I to pour you, you could not hold.
Bear with me: I must bear to wait,
A fountain sealed through heat and cold.
Bear with me days or months or years:
Deep must call deep until the end,
When friend shall no more envy friend
Nor vex his friend at unawares.
Not in this world of hope deferred,
This world of perishable stuff;
Eye hath not seen nor ear hath heard
Nor heart conceived that full "enough":
Here moans the separating sea;
Here harvests fail; here breaks the heart:
There God shall join and no man part,
I full of Christ and Christ of me.
## p. 12410 (#461) ##########################################
## p. 12410 (#462) ##########################################
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12411
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
(1828-1882)
BY WILLIAM MORTON PAYNE
N THE tender 'One Word More' with which Browning dedi-
cated to his wife the "fifty poems finished" of "Men and
Women,' the poet speaks of the lost "century of sonnets »
said to have been written by Raphael, and of the painting affirmed
by tradition to have been begun by Dante. Since the days of
Dante and Raphael, other poets have been painters, and other
painters poets; but probably no one has attained to the high and
equal mastery of both arts that we find exemplified in the work of
Rossetti. In such a case, it was only natural that each art should
react upon the other: that the paintings should be peculiarly poeti-
cal in conception and execution; that the poems should have much
of the pictorial quality, however abstract their themes and however
idealized their motives. Although the present article can say nothing
of Rossetti the painter, the fact that the poet was also a painter
of the highest achievement must constantly be kept in view; for it
helps to account for many things in the poems,-from the statement
that the hair of the Blessèd Damozel "was yellow like ripe corn,"
to "the flame turned cloud, the cloud returned to flame," that sym-
bolizes the changing moods of the soul stirred to its depths by the
magic of the musician. Yet it must not be inferred from all this
that the artist (two-souled, as Michelangelo was four-souled) either
unconsciously or deliberately confused the distinct aims of poetry
and painting, or that his work in either art transcends, to any consid-
erable degree, the limitations laid down by Lessing's searching criti-
cism in the 'Laocoön. ' If we examine the cases in which Rossetti
brought the two arts into the closest juxtaposition, as in the sonnets
which he wrote for certain of his own pictures, we shall find that
while the poems comment upon the paintings, the descriptive ele-
ment is far less important than the elements of retrospection, antici-
pation, and gnomic philosophical utterance.
Rossetti takes his place in English literature as one of the six
major poets of the later Victorian era, and as the oldest of the sub-
group of three associated with the artistic revival vaguely known as
Pre-Raphaelitism. Although several years the senior of Morris and
Swinburne, the public knew little of him as a poet for some years
## p. 12412 (#466) ##########################################
12412
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
after their reputations had been fairly well established. Yet much
of his most characteristic work had been done long before Morris
published his first volume, or Swinburne made the earliest displays
of his astonishing virtuosity; and both of these men in some sense
regarded Rossetti as their master. But his contributions to the Germ
(1850) and the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine (1856) did not reach
the larger public; and it was not until the 'Poems' appeared in
1870 that the world discovered how bright a planet had swum into
its ken. Meanwhile the small group of Rossetti's friends had long
cherished his work, and manuscript copies of many of his pieces had
circulated from hand to hand. In fact, when the time of publication
approached, it may be said that rumor had so heralded the advent
of the new poet that when the volume of 1870 appeared, it was, as
Mr. Gosse remarks, "after such expectation and tiptoe curiosity as
have preceded no other book in our generation. " The story of that
volume is one of the most familiar bits of literary history: buried in
the grave of a beloved wife, who died after but two years of wed-
ded happiness, it was only upon the earnest solicitation of his friends
that Rossetti permitted the manuscript to be unearthed, seven years
later, and made arrangements for its publication.
When this volume appeared, the poet was just completing his
forty-second year. Born in London, May 12th, 1828, he was named
Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti, which appellation was in early man-
hood modified into the form that became generally familiar. The
means of his family were scanty; and at the age of fifteen he left
school and began the study of painting. In 1848 he united with two
of his fellow-students in art - Millais and Holman Hunt - and with
the sculptor-poet Woolner, to form the famous Pre-Raphaelite Brother-
hood. In 1860, after a long engagement, he married Elizabeth Sid-
dal, who died less than two years thereafter. His reputation as a
painter was by this time firmly established; but his literary work,
mostly contributed to the periodicals above mentioned, was known
to but few readers. In 1861 he published the marvelous volume of
translations at first entitled 'The Early Italian Poets,' and after-
wards republished as 'Dante and his Circle. ' This is one of the few
works of translation into English that are almost beyond praise. It
includes, besides the 'New Life' of Dante, a selection of poems by
about a dozen of Dante's contemporaries,-chief among them being
Guido Cavalcanti,- and by a still greater number of the twelfth and
thirteenth century poets who came before Dante. The path of the
translator, we read in Rossetti's preface, "is like that of Aladdin
through the enchanted vaults: many are the precious fruits and
flowers which he must pass by unheeded in search for the lamp
alone; happy if at last, when brought to light, it does not prove that
his old lamp has been exchanged for a new one-glittering indeed to
## p. 12413 (#467) ##########################################
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
12413
the eye, but scarcely of the same virtue nor with the same genius
at its summons. " Precious indeed are these translations of old Ital-
ian poetry, for they interpret with perfect insight and sympathy an
important literary epoch; and precious also are Rossetti's infrequent
later experiments in translation, which include the Francesca epi-
sode of the 'Inferno' and some of the ballads of Villon. His version
of the 'Ballade des Dames de Temps Jadis' (Ballad of the Ladies of
Bygone Times) has received such praise from men like Pater and
Swinburne, that ordinary words seem inadequate to convey the sense
of its matchless charm.
The 'Poems' of 1870 found, as has already been stated, an audi-
ence half prepared to receive them; and a chorus of critical enthu-
siasm greeted their appearance. With the exception of Swinburne's
'Poems and Ballads,' it may be said that no other volume of Eng-
lish poetry published during the last half-century has created so great
a sensation, or been received with so much acclaim. But while all
serious critics were agreed in recognizing the advent of a new great
poet, the emergence of a new and distinctly individual note in the
chorus of English song,—the dovecotes of literature were not a little
fluttered by the swoop of one bird of prey. A little more than a
year after the publication of the Poems,' an unimportant scribbler,
whose name does not deserve to be dignified by mention, obtained
access to the pages of a leading review, and published over a pseu-
donymous signature an article entitled 'The Fleshly School of Poetry. '
This article was a direct attack upon Rossetti's poems, and fairly
reeked with what Swinburne calls a "rancid morality. " Utterly un-
fair in its methods and unjust in its conclusions, this article seized
upon certain of the more sensuous passages in the 'Poems,' and
strove to create the impression that they were merely sensual,-
very different thing. The injustice of this attack was afterwards
acknowledged by its author, and the incident would hardly call for
notice were it not for the effect produced upon Rossetti's morbidly
sensitive nature. He was already suffering from the insomnia that
was to wreck his life a few years later, besides being threatened
with the loss of his eyesight; and it is not surprising that under
these circumstances he magnified the significance of the contemptible
attack. He fell "into the belief that he was fast becoming the object
of wide-spread calumny and obloquy, not less malignant and insidi-
ous than unprovoked and undeserved," — so his brother tells us. An
alarming illness followed; and when he recovered from it, so far as
he did recover, he was a changed man. The exuberant vitality of
his earlier years, and the unaffected geniality which had made him
so companionable, gave place to moodiness, depression, and a gloomy
irritability, that estranged many of his friends, and almost made him
a recluse for the last ten years of his life.
-a
-
## p. 12414 (#468) ##########################################
12414
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
A few words about these last years may properly precede the dis-
cussion of Rossetti's poetical achievement. He worked diligently at
his painting, and made some additions to his poems during this
period; and his life was not without intervals of its old-time serenity.
But the excessive use of chloral as a remedy for sleeplessness was
steadily sapping his energies; and he was becoming more and more
of a physical wreck. For a time he lived almost wholly with William
Morris at Kelmscot; but from 1874 on, his home was the house in
Chelsea which he had occupied at intervals ever since the death of
his wife. In 1881 he issued a new edition of his 'Poems'; and also
the volume of 'Ballads and Sonnets,' which included the now com-
pleted 'House of Life' and a number of long poems hitherto unpub-
lished. In December of this year he suffered a paralytic shock, and
was removed to Birchington, where he died on the 9th of April,
1882, and where his remains were interred.
The entire works of Rossetti, in prose and verse, original and
translated, fill two stout volumes in the standard edition. A single
volume of no inordinate bulk suffices to contain all the poems. Thus
we see that of the six great poets of his age, Rossetti was one of
the least voluminous. The bulk of his work is about equal to that
of Matthew Arnold, but is much less than that of Tennyson; and
falls far short of the opulence of Browning, Morris, and Swinburne.
Although its composition covered a period of more than thirty years,
little is to be gained from a study of its chronological sequence; for
the wings of the poet were full-fledged almost from the start, and
it would be difficult to show anything like the steady development
of power that may be traced in the activity of many of his contem-
poraries. If The Blessed Damozel' (written at eighteen) bears
the marks of immaturity upon its magical beauty, 'The Burden of
Nineveh' (written only three or four years later) is the work of a
strong man of fully ripened powers. What we have to say of the
poems, then, need take no account of their dates; and we are left
free to group them according to subject-matter and form.
First of all, we may mention the long narrative poems and bal-
lads: the chronicle history of Dante at Verona,' which is the noblest
of the several tributes of Rossetti's genius to what was probably the
deepest artistic influence of his life; the intensely dramatic 'A Last
Confession, which rivals the strongest of Browning's dramatic idyls;
the story of Jenny,' with its frank but delicate treatment of one of
the most difficult of subjects; the unfinished poem called 'The Bride's
Prelude'; and the four great ballads Sister Helen,' 'Rose Mary,'
( The White Ship,' and 'The King's Tragedy. ' Then, following the
classification of Mr. W. M. Rossetti, we come to the great sonnet-
sequence named 'The House of Life'; a brimming century of poems,
which embody in splendid imagery and harmonious measure the
1
i
## p. 12415 (#469) ##########################################
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
12415
experiences that youth and change and fate bring to the life of man.
These sonnets alone would suffice to insure the immortality of the
poet; for they must be ranked no lower than with the greatest in
the language,-with those of Shakespeare and of Milton, of Words-
worth and of Keats. Finally, in the miscellaneous section of the
poems we find many more sonnets of equal beauty and power, in-
cluding the important group of 'Sonnets for Pictures'; such ballads
as Troy Town' and 'Eden Bower'; such matchless lyrics as 'The
Sea Limits, The Cloud Confines,' and 'The Song of the Bower';
and so impressive and solemn an utterance as 'The Burden of Nin-
eveh. ' Here are many different forms and styles, in some cases
represented by but a single example: it seems as if Rossetti, whose
distinctive forms of expression were the ballad, the lyric, and the
sonnet, had made such single ventures in other manners as 'Jenny,'
'A Last Confession,' and 'The Burden of Nineveh,' merely to show
that he could do these things if he chose, and do them supremely
well.
To sum up the characteristics of the poet in a few concluding
words, it may be said that he possessed in an extraordinary degree
both richness of imagination, and the power to pack a world of
meaning into one pregnant and melodious phrase. But both his pic-
torial faculty and his intellectual force were tempered by a strain of
mysticism, for which he has been charged with obscurity by hard-
headed and dull-witted readers. He was at once the most spiritual
and the most material of poets; and the accusation of sensuality from
which he was made to suffer could only result from inability to see
more than one side of the Druid shield of his poetical personality.
Mr. Pater, who saw both sides of the shield, compared him with the
Florentine whose name he bore; and his words may be borrowed to
crown with a touch of grace this brief study of Rossetti's work.
"Practically, the Church of the Middle Age, by its æsthetic worship, its
sacramentalism, its real faith in the resurrection of the flesh, had set itself
against the Manichean opposition of spirit and matter, and its results in
men's ways of taking life; and in this, Dante is the central representative of its
spirit. To him, in the vehement and impassioned heat of his conceptions,
the material and the spiritual are fused and blent: if the spiritual attains
the definite visibility of a crystal, what is material loses its earthiness and
impurity. And here again, by force of instinct, Rossetti is one with him.
His chosen type of beauty is one-
"Whose speech Truth knows not from her thought,
Nor Love her body from her soul. '»
Attelage
## p. 12416 (#470) ##########################################
12416
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
THE BLESSED DAMOZEL
THE
HE blessèd damozel leaned out
From the gold bar of Heaven:
Her eyes were deeper than the depth
Of waters stilled at even;
She had three lilies in her hand,
And the stars in her hair were seven.
Her robe, ungirt from clasp to hem,
No wrought flowers did adorn,
But a white rose of Mary's gift,
For service meetly worn;
Her hair that lay along her back
Was yellow like ripe corn.
Herseemed she scarce had been a day
One of God's choristers;
The wonder was not yet quite gone
From that still look of hers:
Albeit, to them she left, her day
Had counted as ten years.
(To one, it is ten years of years.
Yet now, and in this place,
Surely she leaned o'er me her hair
Fell all about my face. —
Nothing: the autumn fall of leaves.
The whole year sets apace. )
-
It was the rampart of God's house
That she was standing on:
By God built over the sheer depth
The which is Space begun;
So high, that looking downward thence
She scarce could see the sun.
It lies in Heaven, across the flood
Of ether, as a bridge.
Beneath, the tides of day and night
With flame and darkness ridge
The void, as low as where this earth
Spins like a fretful midge.
Around her, lovers, newly met
'Mid deathless love's acclaims,
## p. 12417 (#471) ##########################################
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
12417
XXI-777
Spoke evermore among themselves
Their heart-remembered names;
And the souls mounting up to God
Went by her like thin flames.
And still she bowed herself and stooped
Out of the circling charm;
Until her bosom must have made
The bar she leaned on warm,
And the lilies lay as if asleep
Along her bended arm.
From the fixed place of Heaven she saw
Time like a pulse shake fierce
Through all the worlds. Her gaze still strove
Within the gulf to pierce
Its path; and now she spoke as when
The stars sang in their spheres.
The sun was gone now; the curled moon
Was like a little feather
Fluttering far down the gulf; and now
She spoke through the still weather.
Her voice was like the voice the stars
Had when they sang together.
(Ah sweet! Even now, in that bird's song,
Strove not her accents there,
Fain to be hearkened? When those bells
Possessed the midday air,
Strove not her steps to reach my side
Down all the echoing stair? )
"I wish that he were come to me,
For he will come," she said.
"Have I not prayed in Heaven? -on earth,
Lord, Lord, has he not prayed?
Are not two prayers a perfect strength?
And shall I feel afraid?
"When round his head the aureole clings,
And he is clothed in white,
I'll take his hand and go with him
To the deep wells of light;
As unto a stream we will step down,
And bathe there in God's sight.
## p. 12418 (#472) ##########################################
12418
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
"We two will stand beside that shrine,
Occult, withheld, untrod,
Whose lamps are stirred continually
With prayer sent up to God;
And see our old prayers, granted, melt
Each like a little cloud.
"We two will lie i' the shadow of
That living mystic tree
Within whose secret growth the Dove
Is sometimes felt to be,
While every leaf that his plumes touch
Saith his name audibly.
"And I myself will teach to him,
I myself, lying so,
The songs I sing here; which his voice
Shall pause in, hushed and slow,
And find some knowledge at each pause,
Or some new thing to know. "
(Alas! We two, we two, thou say'st!
Yea, one wast thou with me
That once of old. But shall God lift
To endless unity
The soul whose likeness with thy soul
Was but its love for thee? )
"We two," she said, "will seek the groves
Where the lady Mary is,
With her five handmaidens, whose names
Are five sweet symphonies,-
Cecily, Gertrude, Magdalen,
Margaret, and Rosalys.
"Circlewise sit they, with bound locks
And foreheads garlanded;
Into the fine cloth white like flame
Weaving the golden thread,
To fashion the birth-robes for them
Who are just born, being dead.
"He shall fear, haply, and be dumb;
Then will I lay my cheek
To his, and tell about our love,
Not once abashed or weak:
## p. 12419 (#473) ##########################################
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
12419
And the dear Mother will approve
My pride, and let me speak.
"Herself shall bring us, hand in hand,
To Him round whom all souls
Kneel, the clear-ranged unnumbered heads
Bowed with their aureoles:
And angels meeting us shall sing
To their citherns and citoles.
"There will I ask of Christ the Lord
Thus much for him and me:
Only to live as once on earth
With Love,-only to be,
As then awhile, for ever now
Together, I and he. »
She gazed and listened, and then said,
Less sad of speech than mild,
"All this is when he comes. " She ceased.
The light thrilled towards her, filled
With angels in strong level flight.
Her eyes prayed, and she smiled.
(I saw her smile. ) But soon their path
Was vague in distant spheres;
And then she cast her arms along
The golden barriers,
And laid her face between her hands,
And wept. (I heard her tears. )
THE DOUBLE BETRAYAL
From Rose Mary'
SHE
HE signed all folk from the threshold stone,
And gazed in the dead man's face alone.
The fight for life found record yet
In the clenched lips and the teeth hard-set;
The wrath from the bent brow was not gone,
And stark in the eyes the hate still shone
Of that they last had looked upon.
The blazoned coat was rent on his breast
Where the golden field was goodliest;
## p. 12420 (#474) ##########################################
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
12420
But the shivered sword, close-gripped, could tell
That the blood shed round him where he fell
Was not all his in the distant dell.
The lady recked of the corpse no whit,
But saw the soul and spoke to it:
A light there was in her steadfast eyes,—
The fire of mortal tears and sighs
That pity and love immortalize.
"By thy death have I learnt to-day
Thy deed, O James of Heronhaye!
Great wrong thou hast done to me and mine;
And haply God hath wrought for a sign
By our blind deed this doom of thine.
"Thy shrift, alas! thou wast not to win;
But may death shrive thy soul herein!
Full well do I know thy love should be
Even yet had life but stayed with thee —
Our honor's strong security. "
She stooped, and said with a sob's low stir,
"Peace be thine - but what peace for her? »
But ere to the brow her lips were pressed,
She marked, half hid in the riven vest,
A packet close to the dead man's breast.
'Neath surcoat pierced and broken mail
It lay on the blood-stained bosom pale.
The clot clung round it, dull and dense,
And a faintness seized her mortal sense
As she reached her hand and drew it thence.
'Twas steeped in the heart's flood welling high
From the heart it there had rested by;
'Twas glued to a broidered fragment gay,—
A shred by spear thrust rent away
From the heron wings of Heronhaye.
She gazed on the thing with piteous eyne:
"Alas, poor child, some pledge of thine!
Ah me! in this troth the hearts were twain,
And one hath ebbed to this crimson stain,
And when shall the other throb again ? »
She opened the packet heedfully;
The blood was stiff, and it scarce might be.
## p. 12421 (#475) ##########################################
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
She found but a folded paper there,
And round it, twined with tenderest care,
A long bright tress of golden hair.
Even as she looked, she saw again
That dark-haired face in its swoon of pain:
It seemed a snake with a golden sheath
Crept near, as a slow flame flickereth,
And stung her daughter's heart to death.
She loosed the tress, but her hand did shake
As though indeed she had touched a snake;
And next she undid the paper's fold,
But that too trembled in her hold,
And the sense scarce grasped the tale it told.
"My heart's sweet lord" ('twas thus she read),
"At length our love is garlanded.
At Holy Cross, within eight days' space,
I seek my shrift; and the time and place
Shall fit thee too for thy soul's good grace.
"From Holycleugh on the seventh day
My brother rides, and bides away;
And long or e'er he is back, mine own,
Afar where the face of fear's unknown
We shall be safe with our love alone.
"Ere yet at the shrine my knees I bow,
I shear one tress for our holy vow.
As round these words these threads I wind,
So, eight days hence, shall our loves be twined,
Says my lord's poor lady, JOCELIND. "
She read it twice, with a brain in thrall,
And then its echo told her all.
O'er brows low-fallen her hands she drew:-
"O God! " she said, as her hands fell too,-
"The Warden's sister of Holycleugh! "
She rose upright with a long low moan,
And stared in the dead man's face new-known.
Had it lived indeed? She scarce could tell:
'Twas a cloud where fiends had come to dwell,-
A mask that hung on the gate of hell.
She lifted the lock of gleaming hair,
And smote the lips and left it there.
12421
## p. 12422 (#476) ##########################################
12422
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
"Here's gold that Hell shall take for thy toll!
Full well hath thy treason found its goal,
O thou dead body and damnèd soul! »
She turned, sore dazed, for a voice was near,
And she knew that some one called to her.
On many a column fair and tall
A high court ran round the castle hall;
And thence it was that the priest did call.
"I sought your child where you bade me go,
And in rooms around and in rooms below;
But where, alas! may the maiden be?
Fear naught, we shall find her speedily,-
But come, come hither, and seek with me. "
Α
-
She reached the stair like a lifelorn thing,
But hastened upward murmuring:-
"Yea, Death's is a face that's fell to see;
But bitterer pang Life hoards for thee,
Thou broken heart of Rose Mary! "
THE SECOND-SIGHT
From The King's Tragedy'
GAINST the coming of Christmastide
That year the King bade call
I' the Black Friars' Charterhouse of Perth
A solemn festival.
And we of his household rode with him
In a close-ranked company;
But not till the sun had sunk from his throne
Did we reach the Scotish Sea.
That eve was clenched for a boding storm,
'Neath a toilsome moon half seen:
The cloud stooped low and the surf rose high;
And where there was a line of the sky,
Wild wings loomed dark between.
And on a rock of the black beach-side,
By the veiled moon dimly lit,
There was something seemed to heave with life
As the King drew nigh to it.
