Takes counsel with my soul alone, -
Save what is secret and unknown,
Below the earth, above the skies.
In painting her I shrined her face
Mid mystic trees, where light falls in 20
Hardly at all; a covert place
Where you might think to find a din
Of doubtful talk, and a live flame
Wandering, and many a shape whose name
Not itself knoweth, and old dew, 25
And your own footsteps meeting you,
And all things going as they came.
A deep dim wood; and there she stands
As in that wood that day: for so
Was the still movement of her hands 30
And such the pure line’s gracious flow.
And passing fair the type must seem,
Unknown the presence and the dream.
’Tis she: though of herself, alas!
Less than her shadow on the grass 35
Or than her image in the stream.
That day we met there, I and she
One with the other all alone;
And we were blithe; yet memory
Saddens those hours, as when the moon 40
Looks upon daylight. And with her
I stooped to drink the spring-water,
Athirst where other waters sprang;
And where the echo is, she sang, -
My soul another echo there. 45
But when that hour my soul won strength
For words whose silence wastes and kills,
Dull raindrops smote us, and at length
Thundered the heat within the hills.
That eve I spoke those words again 50
Beside the pelted window-pane;
And there she hearkened what I said,
With under-glances that surveyed
The empty pastures blind with rain.
Next day the memories of these things, 55
Like leaves through which a bird has flown,
Still vibrated with Love’s warm wings;
Till I must make them all my own
And paint this picture. So, ‘twixt ease
Of talk and sweet long silences, 60
She stood among the plants in bloom
At windows of a summer room,
To feign the shadow of the trees.
And as I wrought, while all above
And all around was fragrant air, 65
In the sick burthen of my love
It seemed each sun-thrilled blossom there
Beat like a heart among the leaves.
O heart that never beats nor heaves,
In that one darkness lying still, 70
What now to thee my love’s great will
Or the fine web the sunshine weaves?
For now doth daylight disavow
Those days, - naught left to see or hear.
Only in solemn whispers now 75
At night-time these things reach mine ear,
When the leaf-shadows at a breath
Shrink in the road, and all the heath,
Forest and water, far and wide,
In limpid starlight glorified, 80
Lie like the mystery of death.
Last night at last I could have slept,
And yet delayed my sleep till dawn,
Still wandering. Then it was I wept:
For unawares I came upon 85
Those glades where once she walked with me:
And as I stood there suddenly,
All wan with traversing the night,
Upon the desolate verge of light
Yearned loud the iron-bosomed sea. 90
Even so, where Heaven holds breath and hears
The beating heart of Love’s own breast, -
Where round the secret of all spheres
All angels lay their wings to rest, -
How shall my soul stand rapt and awed, 95
When, by the new birth borne abroad
Throughout the music of the suns,
It enters in her soul at once
And knows the silence there for God!
Here with her face doth memory sit 100
Meanwhile, and wait the day’s decline,
Till other eyes shall look from it,
Eyes of the spirit’s Palestine,
Even than the old gaze tenderer:
While hopes and aims long lost with her 105
Stand round her image side by side,
Like tombs of pilgrims that have died
About the Holy Sepulchre.
AVE
Mother of the Fair Delight,
Thou handmaid perfect in God’s sight,
Now sitting fourth beside the Three,
Thyself a woman-Trinity, -
Being a daughter borne to God, 5
Mother of Christ from stall to rood,
And wife unto the Holy Ghost: -
Oh when our need is uttermost,
Think that to such as death may strike
Thou once wert sister sisterlike! 10
Thou headstone of humanity
Groundstone of the great Mystery,
Fashioned like us, yet more than we!
Mind’st thou not (when June’s heavy breath
Warmed the long days in Nazareth,) 15
That eve thou didst go forth to give
Thy flowers some drink that they might live
One faint night more amid the sands?
Far off the trees were as pale wands
Against the fervid sky: the sea 20
Sighed further off eternally
As human sorrow sighs in sleep.
Then suddenly the awe grew deep,
As of a day to which all days
Were footsteps in God’s secret ways:
Until a folding sense, like prayer,
Which is, as God is, everywhere
Gathered about thee; and a voice
Spake to thee without any noise,
Being of the silence: - ‘Hail,’ it said, 30
‘Thou that art highly favourèd;
The Lord is with thee here and now;
Blessed among all women thou.’
‘Ah! knew’st thou of the end, when first
That Babe was on thy bosom nurs’d?- 35
Or when He tottered round thy knee
Did thy great sorrow dawn on thee? -
And through His boyhood, year by year
Eating with Him the Passover,
Didst thou discern confusedly 40
That holier sacrament, when He,
The bitter cup about to quaff,
Should break the bread and eat thereof? -
Or came not yet the knowledge, even
Till on some day forecast in Heaven 45
His feet passed through thy door to press
Upon His Father’s business? -
Or still was God’s high secret kept?
Nay, but I think the whisper crept
Like growth through childhood. Work and play,
Things common to the course of day,
Awed thee with meanings unfulfill’d;
And all through girlhood, something still’d
Thy senses like the birth of light,
When thou hast trimmed thy lamp at night 55
Or washed thy garments in the stream;
To whose white bed had come the dream
That He was thine and thou wast His
Who feeds among the field-lilies.
O solemn shadow of the end 60
In that wise spirit long contain’d!
O awful end! and those unsaid
Long years when It was Finishèd!
Mind’st thou not (when the twilight gone
Left darkness in the house of John,) 65
Between the naked window-bars
That spacious vigil of the stars? -
For thou, a watcher even as they,
Wouldst rise from where throughout the day
Thou
wroughtest raiment for His poor; 70
And, finding the fixed terms endure
Of day and night which never brought
Sounds of His coming chariot,
Wouldst lift through cloud-waste unexplor’d
Those eyes which said, ‘How long, O Lord?’ 75
Then that disciple whom He loved,
Well heeding, haply would be moved
To ask thy blessing in His name;
And that one thought in both, the same
Though silent, then would clasp ye round 80
To weep together, - tears long bound,
Sick tears of patience, dumb and slow.
Yet, ‘Surely I come quickly,’ - so
He said, from life and death gone home.
Amen: even so, Lord Jesus, come! 85
But oh! what human tongue can speak
That day when death was sent to break
From the tir’d spirit, like a veil,
Its covenant with Gabriel
Endured at length unto the end? 90
What human thought can apprehend
That mystery of motherhood
When thy Beloved at length renew’d
The sweet communion severèd,-
His left hand underneath thine head 95
And His right hand embracing thee?-
Lo! He was thine, and this is He!
Soul, is it Faith, or Love, or Hope,
That lets me see her standing up
Where the light of the Throne is bright? 100
Unto the left, unto the right,
The cherubim, arrayed, conjoint,
Float inward to a golden point,
And from between the seraphim
The glory issues for a hymn. 105
O Mary Mother, be not loth
To listen, - thou whom the stars clothe,
Who seëst and mayst not be seen!
Hear us at last, O Mary Queen!
Into our shadow bend thy face, 110
Bowing thee from the secret place,
O Mary Virgin, full of grace!
A LAST CONFESSION (REGNO LOMBARDO-VENETO, 1848)
Our Lombard country-girls along the coast
Wear daggers in their garters; for they know
That they might hate another girl to death
Or meet a German lover. Such a knife
I bought her, with a hilt of horn and pearl. 5
Father, you cannot know of all my thoughts
That day in going to meet her, - that last day
For the last time, she said; - of all the love
And all the hopeless hope that she might change
And go back with me. Ah! and everywhere, 10
At places we both knew along the road,
Some fresh shape of herself as once she was
Grew present at my side; until it seemed -
So close they gathered round me - they would all
Be with me when I reached the spot at last, 15
To plead my cause with her against herself
So changed. O Father, if you knew all this
You cannot know, then you would know too, Father,
And only then, if God can pardon me.
What can be told I’ll tell, if you will hear. 20
I passed a village-fair upon my road,
And thought, being empty-handed, I would take
Some little present: such might prove, I said,
Either a pledge between us, or (God help me!)
A parting gift. And there it was I bought 25
The knife I spoke of such as women wear.
That day, some three hours afterwards, I found
For certain, it must be a parting gift.
And, standing silent now at last, I looked
Into her scornful face; and heard the sea 30
Still trying hard to din into my ears
Some speech it knew which still might change her heart
If only it could make me understand.
One moment thus. Another, and her face
Seemed further off than the last line of sea, 35
So that I thought, if now she were to speak
I could not hear her. Then again I knew
All, as we stood together on the sand
At Iglio, in the first thin shade o’ the hills.
‘Take it,’ I said, and held it out to her, 40
While the hilt glanced within my trembling hold;
‘Take it and keep it for my sake,’ I said.
Her neck unbent not, neither did her eyes
Move, nor her foot left beating of the sand;
Only she put it by from her and laughed. 45
Father, you hear my speech and not her laugh;
But God heard that. Will God remember all?
It was another laugh than the sweet sound
Which rose from her sweet childish heart, that day
Eleven years before, when first I found her 50
Alone upon the hill-side; and her curls
Shook down in the warm grass as she looked up
Out of her curls in my eyes bent to hers.
She might have served a painter to pourtray
That heavenly child which in the latter days 55
Shall walk between the lion and the lamb.
I had been for nights in hiding, worn and sick
And hardly fed; and so her words at first
Seemed fitful like the talking of the trees
And voices in the air that knew my name. 60
And I remember that I sat me down
Upon the slope with her, and thought the world
Must be all over or had never been,
We seemed there so alone. And soon she told me
Her parents both were gone away from her. 65
I thought perhaps she meant that they had died;
But when I asked her this, she looked again
Into my face, and said that yestereve
They kissed her long, and wept and made her weep,
And gave her all the bread they had with them, 70
And then had gone together up the hill
Where we were sitting now, and had walked on
Into the great red light: ‘and so,’ she said,
‘I have come up here too; and when this evening
They step out of the light as they stepped in, 75
I shall be here to kiss them.’ And she laughed.
Then I bethought me suddenly of the famine;
And how the church-steps throughout all the town,
When last I had been there a month ago,
Swarmed with starved folk; and how the bread was weighed 80
By Austrians armed; and women that I knew
For wives and mothers walked the public street,
Saying aloud that if their husbands feared
To snatch the children’s food, themselves would stay
Till they had earned it there. So then this child 85
Was piteous to me; for all told me then
Her parents must have left her to God’s chance,
To man’s or to the Church’s charity,
Because of the great famine, rather than
To watch her growing thin between their knees. 90
With that, God took my mother’s voice and spoke,
And sights and sounds came back and things long since,
And all my childhood found me on the hills;
And so I took her with me.
I was young,
Scarce man then, Father; but the cause which gave 95
The wounds I die of now had brought me then
Some wounds already; and I lived alone,
As any hiding hunted man must live.
It was no easy thing to keep a child
In safety; for herself it was not safe, 100
And doubled my own danger: but I knew
That God would help me.
Yet a little while
Pardon me, Father, if I pause. I think
>
I have been speaking to you of some matters
There was no need to speak of, have I not? 105
You do not know how clearly those things stood
Within my mind, which I have spoken of,
Nor how they strove for utterance. Life all past
Is like the sky when the sun sets in it,
Clearest where furthest off.
I told you how 110
She scorned my parting gift and laughed. And yet
A woman’s laugh’s another thing sometimes:
I think they laugh in Heaven. I know last night
I dreamed I saw into the garden of God,
Where women walked whose painted images 115
I have seen with candles round them in the church.
They bent this way and that, one to another,
Playing: and over the long golden hair
Of each there floated like a ring of fire
Which when she stooped stooped with her, and when she rose 120
Rose with her. Then a breeze flew in among them,
As if a window had been opened in heaven
For God to give his blessing from, before
This world of ours should set; (for in my dream
I thought our world was setting, and the sun 125
Flared, a spent taper;) and beneath that gust
The rings of light quivered like forest-leaves.
Then all the blessed maidens who were there
Stood up together, as it were a voice
That called them; and they threw their tresses back 130
And smote their palms, and all laughed up at once,
For the strong heavenly joy they had in them
To hear God bless the world. Wherewith I woke:
And looking round, I saw as usual
That she was standing there with her long locks 135
Pressed to her side; and her laugh ended theirs.
For always when I see her now, she laughs.
And yet her childish laughter haunts me too,
The life of this dead terror; as in days
When she, a child, dwelt with me. I must tell 140
Something of those days yet before the end.
I brought her from the city - one such day
When she was still a merry loving child, -
The earliest gift I mind my giving her;
A little image of a flying Love 145
Made of our coloured glass-ware, in his hands
A dart of gilded metal and a torch.
And him she kissed and me, and fain would know
Why were his poor eyes blindfold, why the wings
And why the arrow. What I knew I told 150
Of Venus and of Cupid, - strange old tales.
And when she heard that he could rule the loves
Of men and women, still she shook her head
And wondered; and, ‘Nay, nay,’ she murmured still,
‘So strong, and he a younger child than I!’ 155
Complete Poetical Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti Page 6
