Must haunt you while those singing spirits reap
All night the field of hospitable sleep -
Whose song, past the whole sea, finds counter-chime.
Can the year change, and I not think of thee,
With whom so many changes of the year 10
So many years were watched, - our love’s degree
Alone the same? Ah, still for thee and me,
Winter or summer, Woolner, here or there,
One grief, one joy, one loss, one victory.
THE SEED OF DAVID
Christ sprang from David Shepherd, and even so
From David King, being born of high and low.
The Shepherd lays his crook, the King his crown,
Here at Christ’s feet, and high and low bend down.
DENNIS SHAND
The shadows fall along the wall,
It’s night at Haye-la-Serre;
The maidens weave since day grew eve,
The lady’s in her chair.
O passing slow the long hours go 5
With time to think and sigh,
When weary maidens weave beneath
A listless lady’s eye.
It’s two days that Earl Simon’s gone
And it’s the second night; 10
At Haye-la-Serre the lady’s fair,
In June the moon is light.
O it’s ‘Maids, ye’ll wake till I come back,’
And the hound’s i’ the lady’s chair:
No shuttles fly, the work stands by, 15
It’s play at Haye-la-Serre.
The night is worn, the lamp’s forlorn,
The shadows waste and fail;
There’s morning air at Haye-la-Serre,
The watching maids look pale. 20
O all unmarked the birds at dawn
Where drowsy maidens be;
But heard too soon the lark’s first tune
Beneath the trysting tree.
‘Hold me thy hand, sweet Dennis Shand,’ 25
Says the Lady Joan de Haye,
‘That thou to-morrow do forget
To-day and yesterday.
‘For many a weary month to come
My lord keeps house with me, 30
And sighing summer must lie cold
In winter’s company.
‘And many an hour I’ll pass thee by
And see thee and be seen;
Yet not a glance must tell by chance 35
How sweet these hours have been.
‘We’ve all to fear; there’s Maud the spy,
There’s Ann whose face I scor’d,
There’s Blanch tells Huot everything,
And Huot loves my lord. 40
‘But O and it’s my Dennis’ll know,
When my eyes look weary dim,
Who finds the gold for his girdle-fee
And who keeps love for him.’
The morrow’s come and the morrow-night, 45
It’s feast at Haye-la-Serre,
And Dennis Shand the cup must hand
Beside Earl Simon’s chair.
And still when the high pouring’s done
And cup and flagon clink, 50
Till his lady’s lips have touched the brim
Earl Simon will not drink.
But it’s, ‘Joan my wife,’ Earl Simon says,
‘Your maids are white and wan.’
And it’s, ‘O,’ she says, ‘they’ve watched the night 55
With Maud’s sick sister Ann.’
But it’s, ‘Lady Joan and Joan my bird,
Yourself look white and wan.’
And it’s, ‘O, I’ve walked the night myself
To pull the herbs for Ann: 60
‘And some of your knaves were at the hutch
And some in the cellarage,
But the only one that watched with us
Was Dennis Shand your page.
‘Look on the boy, sweet honey lord, 65
How drooped his eyelids be:
The rosy colour’s not yet back
That paled in serving me.’
O it’s, ‘Wife, your maids are foolish jades,
And you’re a silly chuck, 70
And the lazy knaves shall get their staves
About their ears for luck:
‘But Dennis Shand may take the cup
And pour the wine to his hand;
Wife, thou shalt touch it with thy lips, 75
And drink thou, Dennis Shand!’
AFTER THE FRENCH LIBERATION OF ITALY
As when the last of the paid joys of love
Has come and gone, and with a single kiss
At length, and with one laugh of satiate bliss
The wearied man one minute rests above
The wearied woman, no more urged to move 5
In those long throes of longing, till they glide
Now lightlier clasped, each to the other’s side,
In joys past acting, not past dreaming of.
So Europe now beneath this paramour
Lies for a little out of use - full oft 10
Submissive to his lust, a loveless whore.
He wakes, she sleeps, the breath falls slow and soft.
Wait: the bought body holds a birth within,
An harlot’s child, to scourge her for her sin!
THE ORCHARD-PIT
Piled deep below the screening apple-branch
They lie with bitter apples in their hands:
And some are only ancient bones that blanch,
And some had ships that last year’s wind did launch,
And some were yesterday the lords of lands. 5
In the soft dell, among the apple-trees,
High up above the hidden pit she stands,
And there for ever sings, who gave to these,
That lie below, her magic hour of ease,
And those her apples holden in their hands. 10
This in my dreams is shown me; and her hair
Crosses my lips and draws my burning breath;
Her song spreads golden wings upon the air,
Life’s eyes are gleaming from her forehead fair,
And from her breasts the ravishing eyes of Death. 15
Men say to me that sleep hath many dreams,
Yet I knew never but this dream alone:
There, from a dried-up channel, once the stream’s,
The glen slopes up; even such in sleep it seems
As to my waking sight the place well known. 20
* * * * *
My love I call her, and she loves me well:
But I love her as in the maelstrom’s cup
The whirled stone loves the leaf inseparable
That clings to it round all the circling swell,
And that the same last eddy swallows up. 25
TO ART
I loved thee ere I loved a woman, Love.
ON BURNS
In whomsoe’er, since Poesy began,
A Poet most of all men we may scan,
Burns of all poets is the most a Man.
FIN DI MAGGIO
Oh! May sits crowned with hawthorn-flower,
And is Love’s month, they say;
And Love’s the fruit that is ripened best
By ladies’ eyes in May.
AFTER THE GERMAN SUBJUGATION OF FRANCE, 1871
Lo the twelfth year - the wedding-feast come round
With years for months - and lo the babe new-born;
Out of the womb’s rank furnace cast forlorn,
And with contagious effluence seamed and crown’d.
To hail this birth, what fiery tongues surround 5
Hell’s Pentecost - what clamour of all cries
That swell, from Absalom’s scoff to Shimei’s,
One scornful gamut of tumultuous sound!
For now the harlot’s heart on a new sleeve
Is prankt; and her heart’s lord of yesterday 10
(Spurned from her bed, whose worm-s
pun silks o’erlay
Such fretwork as that other worm can weave)
Takes in his ears the vanished world’s last yell,
And in his flesh the closing teeth of Hell.
THE QUESTION
(FOR A DESIGN)
I
This sea, deep furrowed as the face of Time,
Mirrors the ghost of the removed moon;
The peaks stand bristling round the waste lagoon;
While up the difficult summit steeply climb
Youth, Manhood, Age, one triple labouring mime; 5
And to the measure of some mystic rune
Hark how the restless waters importune
These echoing steps with chime and counter-chime.
What seek they? Lo, upreared against the rock
The Sphinx, Time’s visible silence, frontleted 10
With Psyche wings, with eagle plumes arched o’er.
Ah, when those everlasting lips unlock
And the old riddle of the world is read,
What shall man find? or seeks he evermore?
II
Lo, the three seekers! Youth has sprung the first
To question the Unknown: but see! he sinks
Prone to the earth - becomes himself a sphinx, -
A riddle of early death no love may burst.
Sorely anhungered, heavily athirst 5
For knowledge, Manhood next to reach the Truth
Peers in those eyes; till haggard and uncouth
Weak Eld renews that question long rehearsed.
Oh! and what answer? From the sad sea brim
The eyes o’ the Sphinx stare through the midnight spell, 10
Unwavering, - Man’s eternal quest to quell:
While round the rock-steps of her throne doth swim
Through the wind-serried wave the moon’s faint rim,
Some answer from the heaven invisible.
NOTEBOOK FRAGMENTS
And the Sibyl, you know. I saw her with my own eyes at Cumae, hanging in a jar; and when the boys asked her, ‘What would you, Sibyl?’ she answered, ‘I would die.’ - Petronius
‘I saw the Sibyl at Cumæ’
(One said) ‘with mine own eye.
She hung in a cage, and read her rune
To all the passers-by.
Said the boys, “What wouldst thou, Sibyl?”
She answered, “I would die.”’
As balmly as the breath of her you love
When deep between her breasts it comes to you.
With golden mantle, rings, and necklace fair,
It likes her best to wear
Only a rose within her golden hair.
A golden robe, yet will she wear
Only a rose in her golden hair.
An ant-sting’s prickly at first,
But the pain soon dies away;
A gnat-sting’s worse the next day;
But a wasp ’tis that stings the worst.
O thou whose name, being alone, aloud
I utter oft, and though thou art not there,
Toward thine imaged presence kiss the air.
As much as in a hundred years, she’s dead:
Yet is to-day the day on which she died.
Who shall say what is said in me,
With all that I might have been dead in me?
‘Was it a friend or foe that spread these lies?’
‘Nay, who but infants question in such wise?
’Twas one of my most intimate enemies.’
At her step the water-hen
Springs from her nook, and skimming the clear stream,
Ripples its waters in a sinuous curve,
And dives again in safety.
Would God I knew there were a God to thank
When thanks rise in me!
I shut myself in with my soul,
And the shapes come eddying forth.
She bound her green sleeve on my helm,
Sweet pledge of love’s sweet meed:
Warm was her bared arm round my neck
As well she bade me speed;
And her kiss clings still between my lips,
Heart’s beat and strength at need.
THE HOUSE OF LIFE
PART I. YOUTH AND CHANGE
INTRODUCTORY SONNET
A Sonnet is a moment’s monument, —
Memorial from the Soul’s eternity
To one dead deathless hour. Look that it be,
Whether for lustral rite or dire portent,
Of its own arduous fulness reverent:
Carve it in ivory or in ebony,
As Day or Night may rule; and let Time see
Its flowering crest impearled and orient.
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.
LOVE ENTHRONED
I marked all kindred Powers the heart finds fair: —
Truth, with awed lips; and Hope, with eyes upcast;
And Fame, whose loud wings fan the ashen Past
To signal-fires, Oblivion’s flight to scare;
And Youth, with still some single golden hair
Unto his shoulder clinging, since the last
Embrace wherein two sweet arms held him fast;
And Life, still wreathing flowers for Death to wear.
Love’s throne was not with these; but far above
All passionate wind of welcome and farewell
He sat in breathless bowers they dream not of;
Though Truth foreknow Love’s heart, and Hope foretell,
And Fame be for Love’s sake desirable,
And Youth be dear, and Life be sweet to Love.
BRIDAL BIRTH
As when desire, long darkling, dawns, and first
The mother looks upon the new-born child,
Even so my Lady stood at gaze and smiled
When her soul knew at length the Love it nursed.
Born with her life, creature of poignant thirst
And exquisite hunger, at her heart Love lay
Quickening in darkness, till a voice that day
Cried on him, and the bonds of birth were burst.
Now, shielded in his wings, our faces yearn
Together, as his fullgrown feet now range
The grove, and his warm hands our couch prepare:
Till to his song our bodiless souls in turn
Be born his children, when Death’s nuptial change
Leaves us for light the halo of his hair.
REDEMPTION
O Thou who at Love’s hour ecstatically
Unto my lips dost evermore present
The body and blood of Love in sacrament;
Whom I have neared and felt thy breath to be
The inmost incense of his sanctuary;
Who without speech hast owned him, and intent
Upon his will, thy life with mine hast blent,
And murmured o’er the cup, Remember me! —
O what from thee the grace, for me the prize,
And what to Love the glory, — when the whole
Of the deep stair thou tread’st to the dim shoal
And weary water of the place of sighs,
And there dost work deliverance, as thine eyes
Draw up my prisoned spirit to thy soul!
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?
HEART’S HOPE
By what word’s power, the key of paths untrod,
Shall I the difficult deeps of Love explore,
Till parted waves of Song yield up the shore
Even as that sea which Israel crossed dry-shod?
For lo! in some poor rhythmic period,
Lady, I fain would tell how evermore
Thy soul I know not from thy body, nor
Thee from myself, neither our love from God.
Yea, in God’s name, and Love’s, and thine, would I
Draw from one loving heart such evidence
As to all hearts all things shall signify;
Tender as dawn’s first hill-fire, and intense
As instantaneous penetrating sense,
In Spring’s birth-hour, of other Springs gone by.
THE KISS
What smouldering senses in death’s sick delay
Or seizure of malign vicissitude
Can rob this body of honour, or denude
This soul of wedding-raiment worn to-day?
For lo! even now my lady’s lips did play
With these my lips such consonant interlude
As laurelled Orpheus longed for when he wooed
The half-drawn hungering face with that last lay.
I was a child beneath her touch, — a man
When breast to breast we clung, even I and she, —
A spirit when her spirit looked through me, —
A god when all our life-breath met to fan
Our life-blood, till love’s emulous ardours ran,
Fire within fire, desire in deity.*
*[sic]
NUPTIAL SLEEP
At length their long kiss severed, with sweet smart:
And as the last slow sudden drops are shed
From sparkling eaves when all the storm has fled,
So singly flagged the pulses of each heart.
Complete Poetical Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti Page 27
