Even while I beg the boon.
So, in that hour of sighs
Assuaged, shall we beside this stone
Yield thanks for grace; while in thy mirror shown 195
The twofold image softly lies,
Until we kiss, and each in other’s eyes
Is imaged all alone.
Still silent? Can no art
Of Love’s then move thy pity? Nay, 200
To thee let nothing come that owns his sway:
Let happy lovers have no part
With thee; nor even so sad and poor a heart
As thou hast spurned to-day.
To-day? Lo! night is here. 205
The glen grows heavy with some veil
Risen from the earth or fall’n to make earth pale;
And all stands hushed to eye and ear,
Until the night-wind shake the shade like fear
And every covert quail. 210
Ah! by a colder wave
On deathlier airs the hour must come
Which to thy heart, my love, shall call me home.
Between the lips of the low cave
Against that night the lapping waters lave, 215
And the dark lips are dumb.
But there Love’s self doth stand,
And with Life’s weary wings far-flown,
And with Death’s eyes that make the water moan,
Gathers the water in his hand: 220
And they that drink know nought of sky or land
But only love alone.
O soul-sequestered face
Far off, - O were that night but now!
So even beside that stream even I and thou 225
Through thirsting lips should draw Love’s grace,
And in the zone of that supreme embrace
Bind aching breast and brow.
O water whispering
Still through the dark into mine ears, - 230
As with mine eyes, is it not now with hers? -
Mine eyes that add to thy cold spring,
Wan water, wandering water weltering,
This hidden tide of tears.
ON THE SITE OF A MULBERRY-TREE
Planted by Wm. Shakspeare; felled by the Rev. F. Gastrell
This tree, here fall’n, no common birth or death
Shared with its kind. The world’s enfranchised son,
Who found the trees of Life and Knowledge one,
Here set it, frailer than his laurel-wreath.
Shall not the wretch whose hand it fell beneath 5
Rank also singly - the supreme unhung?
Lo! Sheppard, Turpin, pleading with black tongue
This viler thief’s unsuffocated breath!
We’ll search thy glossary, Shakspeare! whence almost,
And whence alone, some name shall be reveal’d 10
For this deaf drudge, to whom no length of ears
Sufficed to catch the music of the spheres;
Whose soul is carrion now, - too mean to yield
Some tailor’s ninth allotment of a ghost.
DOWN STREAM
Between Holmscote and Hurstcote
The river-reaches wind,
The whispering trees accept the breeze,
The ripple’s cool and kind:
With love low-whispered ‘twixt the shores, 5
With rippling laughters gay,
With white arms bared to ply the oars,
On last year’s first of May.
Between Holmscote and Hurstcote
The river’s brimmed with rain, 10
Through close-met banks and parted banks
Now near, now far again:
With parting tears caressed to smiles,
With meeting promised soon,
With every sweet vow that beguiles, 15
On last year’s first of June.
Between Holmscote and Hurstcote
The river’s flecked with foam,
‘Neath shuddering clouds that hang in shrouds
And lost winds wild for home: 20
With infant wailings at the breast,
With homeless steps astray,
With wanderings shuddering tow’rds one rest
On this year’s first of May.
Between Holmscote and Hurstcote 25
The summer river flows
With doubled flight of moons by night
And lilies’ deep repose:
With lo! beneath the moon’s white stare
A white face not the moon, 30
With lilies meshed in tangled hair,
On this year’s first of June.
Between Holmscote and Hurstcote
A troth was given and riven,
From heart’s trust grew one life to two, 35
Two lost lives cry to Heaven:
With banks spread calm to meet the sky,
With meadows newly mowed,
The harvest-paths of glad July,
The sweet school-children’s road. 40
THE CLOUD, CONFINES
The 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, 5
To him wild shadows are shown,
Deep under deep unknown
And height above unknown height.
Still we say as we go,-
‘Strange to think by the way, 10
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, 15
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. 20
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 25
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, 30
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, 35
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; 40
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,- 45
‘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; 50
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 seedplot, 55
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.’ 60
SUNSET WINGS
To-night this sunset spreads two golden wings
Cleaving the western sky;
Winged too with wind it is, and winnowings
Of birds; as if the day’s last hour in rings
Of strenuous flight must die.? 5
Sun-steeped in fire, the homeward pinions sway
Above the dovecote-tops;
And clouds of starlings, ere they rest with day,
Sink, clamorous like mill-waters, at wild play,
By turns in every copse: 10
Each tree heart-deep the wrangling rout receives, -
Save for the whirr within,
You could not tell the starlings from the leaves;
Then one great puff of wings, and the swarm heaves
Away with all its din. 15
Even thus Hope’s hours, in ever-eddying flight,
To many a refuge tend;
With the first light she laughed, and the last light
Glows round her still; who natheless in the night
At length must make an end. 20
And now the mustering rooks innumerable
Together sail and soar,
While for the day’s death, like a tolling knell,
Unto the heart they seem to cry, Farewell,
No more, farewell, no more! 25
Is Hope not plumed, as ‘twere a fiery dart?
And oh! thou dying day,
Even as thou goest must she too depart,
And Sorrow fold such pinions on the heart
As will not fly away? 30
THE YOUNG GIRL
Even as a child that weeps,
Lulled by the love it keeps,
My grief lies back and sleeps.
Yes, it is Love bears up
My soul on his spread wings, 5
Which the days would else chafe out
With their infinite harassings.
To quicken it, he brings
The inward look and mild
That thy face wears, my child. 10
As in a gilded room
Shines ‘mid the braveries
Some wild-flower, by the bloom
Of its delicate quietness
Recalling the forest-trees 15
In whose shadow it was,
And the water and the green grass: -
Even so, ‘mid the stale loves
The city prisoneth,
Thou touchest me gratefully, 20
Like Nature’s wholesome breath:
Thy heart nor hardeneth
In pride, nor putteth on
Obeisance not its own.
Not thine the skill to shut 25
The love up in thine heart,
Neither to seem more tender,
Less tender than thou art.
Thou dost not hold apart
In silence when thy joys 30
Most long to find a voice.
Let the proud river-course,
That shakes its mane and champs,
Run between marble shores
By the light of many lamps, 35
While all the ooze and the damps
Of the city’s choked-up ways
Make it their draining-place.
Rather the little stream
For me; which, hardly heard, 40
Unto the flower, its friend,
Whispers as with a word.
The timid journeying bird
Of the pure drink that flows
Takes but one drop, and goes. 45
LATER POEMS
A FAREWELL
I soothed and pitied thee: and for thy lips, -
A smile, a word (sure guide
To love that’s ill to hide!)
Was all I had thereof.
Even as an orphan boy, who, sore distress’d, 5
A gentle woman meets beside the road
And takes him home with her, - so to thy breast
Thou didst take home my image: pure abode!
’Twas but a virgin’s dream. This heart bestow’d
Respect and piety 10
And friendliness on thee:
But it is poor in love.
No, I am not for thee. Thou art too new,
I am too old, to the old beaten way.
The griefs are not the same which grieve us two: 15
Less than I wish, more than I hope, alway
Are heart and soul in thee.
Thou art too much for me
Sister, and not enough.
A better and a fresher heart than mine 20
Perchance may meet thee ere thy youth be told;
Or, cheated by the longing that is thine,
Waiting for life perchance thou shalt wax old.
Perchance the time may come when I may hold
It had been best for me 25
To have had thy ministry
On the steep path and rough.
THE LEAF
LEOPARDI
‘Torn from your parent bough,
Poor leaf all withered now,
Where go you?’
‘I cannot tell.
Storm-stricken is the oak-tree
Where I grew, whence I fell. 5
Changeful continually,
The zephyr and hurricane
Since that day bid me flee
From deepest woods to the lea,
From highest hills to the plain 10
Where the wind carries me
I go without fear or grief:
I go whither each one goes, -
Thither the leaf of the rose
And thither the laurel-leaf.’ 15
WINTER
How large that thrush looks on the bare thorn-tree!
A swarm of such, three little months ago,
Had hidden in the leaves and let none know
Save by the outburst of their minstrelsy.
A white flake here and there - a snow-lily 5
Of last night’s frost - our naked flower-beds hold;
And for a rose-flower on the darkling mould
The hungry redbreast gleams. No bloom, no bee.
The current shudders to its ice-bound sedge:
Nipped in their bath, the stark reeds one by one 10
Flash each its clinging diamond in the sun:
‘Neath winds which for this Winter’s sovereign pledge
Shall curb great king-masts to the ocean’s edge
And leave memorial forest-kings o’erthrown.
SPRING
Soft-littered is the new-year’s lambing-fold,
And in the hollowed haystack at its side
The shepherd lies o’ nights now, wakeful-eyed
At the ewes’ travailing call through the dark cold.
The young rooks cheep ‘mid the thick caw o’ the old: 5
And near unpeopled stream-sides, on the ground,
By her spring-cry the moorhen’s nest is found,
Where the drained flood-lands flaunt their marigold.
Chill are the gusts to which the pastures cower,
And chill the current where the young reeds stand 10
As green and close as the young wheat on land:
Yet here the cuckoo and the cuckoo-flower
Plight to the heart Spring’s perfect imminent hour
Whose breath shall soothe you like your dear one’s hand.
UNTIMELY LOST
OLIVER MADOX BROWN. BORN 1855; DIED 1874
Upon the landscape of his coming life
A youth high-gifted gazed, and found it fair:
The heights of work, the floods of praise, were there.
What friendships, what desires, what love, what wife? -
All things to come. The fanned springtide was rife 5
With imminent solstice; and the ardent air
Had summer sweets and autumn fires to bear; -
Heart’s ease full-pulsed with perfect strength for strife.
A mist has risen: we see the youth no more:
Does he see on and strive on? And may we 10
Late-tottering world-worn hence, find his to be
The young strong hand which helps us up that shore?
Or, echoing the No More with Nevermore,
Must Night be ours and his? We hope: and he?
PROSERPINA (ENGLISH)
(FOR A PICTURE)
Af
ar away the light that brings cold cheer
Unto this wall, - one instant and no more
Admitted at my distant palace-door.
Afar the flowers of Enna from this drear
Dire fruit, which, tasted once, must thrall me here. 5
Afar those skies from this Tartarean grey
That chills me; and afar, how far away,
The nights that shall be from the days that were.
Afar from mine own self I seem, and wing
Strange ways in thought, and listen for a sign: 10
And still some heart unto some soul doth pine,
(Whose sounds mine inner sense is fain to bring,
Continually together murmuring,) -
‘Woe’s me for thee, unhappy Proserpine!’
PROSERPINA (ITALIAN)
(PER UN QUADRO)
Lungi è la luce che in sù questo muro
Rifrange appena, un breve istante scorta
Del rio palazzo alia soprana porta.
Lungi quei fîori d’Enna, O lido oscuro,
Dal frutto tuo fatal che omai m’è duro. 5
Lungi quel cielo dal tartareo manto
Che qui mi cuopre: e lungi ahi lungi ahi quanto
Le notti che saran dai di che furo.
Lungi da me mi sento; e ognor sognando
Cerco e ricerco, e resto ascoltatrice; 10
E qualche cuore a qualche anima dice,
(Di cui mi giunge il suon da quando in quando.
Continuamente insieme sospirando,) -
Oimè per te, Proserpina infelice!’
LA BELLA MANO (ENGLISH)
(FOR A PICTURE)
O lovely hand, that thy sweet self dost lave
In that thy pure and proper element,
Whence erst the Lady of Love’s high advent
Was born, and endless fires sprang from the wave:-
Even as her Loves to her their offerings gave, 5
For thee the jewelled gifts they bear; while each
Looks to those lips, of music-measured speech
The fount, and of more bliss than man may crave.
In royal wise ring-girt and bracelet-spann’d,
A flower of Venus’ own virginity, 10
Go shine among thy sisterly sweet band;
In maiden-minded converse delicately
Evermore white and soft; until thou be,
O hand! heart-handsel’d in a lover’s hand.
LA BELLA MANO (ITALIAN)
(PER UN QUADRO)
O bella Mano, che ti lavi e piaci
In quel medesmo tuo puro elemento
Complete Poetical Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti Page 15
