Complete Poetical Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti

by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

  And at their fall, his eyes beneath grew hers;

  And with his foot and with his wing-feathers

  He swept the spring that watered my heart’s drouth.

  Then the dark ripples spread to waving hair,

  And as I stooped, her own lips rising there

  Bubbled with brimming kisses at my mouth.

  II

  And now Love sang: but his was such a song,

  So meshed with half-remembrance hard to free,

  As souls disused in death’s sterility

  May sing when the new birthday tarries long.

  And I was made aware of a dumb throng

  That stood aloof, one form by every tree,

  All mournful forms, for each was I or she,

  The shades of those our days that had no tongue.

  They looked on us, and knew us and were known;

  While fast together, alive from the abyss,

  Clung the soul-wrung implacable close kiss;

  And pity of self through all made broken moan

  Which said, ‘For once, for once, for once alone!’

  And still Love sang, and what he sang was this: —

  III

  ’O ye, all ye that walk in Willow-wood,

  That walk with hollow faces burning white;

  What fathom-depth of soul-struck widowhood,

  What long, what longer hours, one lifelong night,

  Ere ye again, who so in vain have wooed

  Your last hope lost, who so in vain invite

  Your lips to that their unforgotten food,

  Ere ye, ere ye again shall see the light!

  Alas! the bitter banks in Willowwood,

  With tear-spurge wan, with blood-wort burning red:

  Alas! if ever such a pillow could

  Steep deep the soul in sleep till she were dead, —

  Better all life forget her than this thing,

  That Willowwood should hold her wandering!’

  IV

  So sang he: and as meeting rose and rose

  Together cling through the wind’s wellaway

  Nor change at once, yet near the end of day

  The leaves drop loosened where the heart-stain glows, —

  So when the song died did the kiss unclose;

  And her face fell back drowned, and was as grey

  As its grey eyes; and if it ever may

  Meet mine again I know not if Love knows.

  Only I know that I leaned low and drank

  A long draught from the water where she sank,

  Her breath and all her tears and all her soul:

  And as I leaned, I know I felt Love’s face

  Pressed on my neck with moan of pity and grace,

  Till both our heads were in his aureole.

  WITHOUT HER

  What of her glass without her? The blank grey

  There where the pool is blind of the moon’s face.

  Her dress without her? The tossed empty space

  Of cloud-rack whence the moon has passed away.

  Her paths without her? Day’s appointed sway

  Usurped by desolate night. Her pillowed place

  Without her? Tears, ah me! for love’s good grace,

  And cold forgetfulness of night or day.

  What of the heart without her? Nay, poor heart,

  Of thee what word remains ere speech be still?

  A wayfarer by barren ways and chill,

  Steep ways and weary, without her thou art,

  Where the long cloud, the long wood’s counterpart,

  Sheds doubled darkness up the labouring hill.

  LOVE’S FATALITY

  Sweet Love, — but oh! most dread Desire of Love

  Life-thwarted. Linked in gyves I saw them stand,

  Love shackled with Vain-longing, hand to hand:

  And one was eyed as the blue vault above:

  But hope tempestuous like a fire-cloud hove

  I’ the other’s gaze, even as in his whose wand

  Vainly all night with spell-wrought power has spann’d

  The unyielding caves of some deep treasure-trove.

  Also his lips, two writhen flakes of flame,

  Made moan: ‘Alas O Love, thus leashed with me!

  Wing-footed thou, wing-shouldered, once born free:

  And I, thy cowering self, in chains grown tame,

  Bound to thy body and soul, named with thy name,

  Life’s iron heart, even Love’s Fatality.’

  STILLBORN LOVE

  The hour which might have been yet might not be,

  Which man’s and woman’s heart conceived and bore

  Yet whereof life was barren, — on what shore

  Bides it the breaking of Time’s weary sea?

  Bondchild of all consummate joys set free,

  It somewhere sighs and serves, and mute before

  The house of Love, hears through the echoing door

  His hours elect in choral consonancy.

  But lo! what wedded souls now hand in hand

  Together tread at last the immortal strand

  With eyes where burning memory lights love home?

  Lo! how the little outcast hour has turned

  And leaped to them and in their faces yearned: —

  ’I am your child: O parents, ye have come!’

  TRUE WOMAN

  I. HERSELF

  To be a sweetness more desired than Spring;

  A bodily beauty more acceptable

  Than the wild rose-tree’s arch that crowns the fell;

  To be an essence more environing

  Than wine’s drained juice; a music ravishing

  More than the passionate pulse of Philomel; —

  To be all this ‘neath one soft bosom’s swell

  That is the flower of life: — how strange a thing!

  How strange a thing to be what Man can know

  But as a sacred secret! Heaven’s own screen

  Hides her soul’s purest depth and loveliest glow;

  Closely withheld, as all things most unseen, —

  The wave-bowered pearl, the heart-shaped seal of green

  That flecks the snowdrop underneath the snow.

  II. HER LOVE

  She loves him; for her infinite soul is Love,

  And he her lodestar. Passion in her is

  A glass facing his fire, where the bright bliss

  Is mirrored, and the heat returned. Yet move

  That glass, a stranger’s amorous flame to prove,

  And it shall turn, by instant contraries,

  Ice to the moon; while her pure fire to his

  For whom it burns, clings close i’ the heart’s alcove.

  Lo! they are one. With wifely breast to breast

  And circling arms, she welcomes all command

  Of love, — her soul to answering ardours fann’d:

  Yet as morn springs or twilight sinks to rest,

  Ah! who shall say she deems not loveliest

  The hour of sisterly sweet hand-in-hand?

  III. HER HEAVEN

  If to grow old in Heaven is to grow young,

  (As the Seer saw and said,) then blest were he

  With youth forevermore, whose heaven should be

  True Woman, she whom these weak notes have sung.

  Here and hereafter, — choir-strains of her tongue, —

  Sky-spaces of her eyes, — sweet signs that flee

  About her soul’s immediate sanctuary, —

  Were Paradise all uttermost worlds among.

  The sunrise blooms and withers on the hill

  Like any hillflower; and the noblest troth

  Dies here to dust. Yet shall Heaven’s promise clothe

  Even yet those lovers who have cherished still

  This test for love: — in every kiss sealed fast

  To feel the first kiss and forebode the last.

  LOVE’S LAST GIFT

  Love to his singer held a glistening leaf,
<
br />   And said: ‘The rose-tree and the apple-tree

  Have fruits to vaunt or flowers to lure the bee;

  And golden shafts are in the feathered sheaf

  Of the great harvest-marshal, the year’s chief,

  Victorious Summer; aye, and ‘neath warm sea

  Strange secret grasses lurk inviolably

  Between the filtering channels of sunk reef.

  All are my blooms; and all sweet blooms of love

  To thee I gave while Spring and Summer sang;

  But Autumn stops to listen, with some pang

  From those worse things the wind is moaning of.

  Only this laurel dreads no winter days:

  Take my last gift; thy heart hath sung my praise.’

  PART II. CHANGE AND FATE

  TRANSFIGURED LIFE

  As growth of form or momentary glance

  In a child’s features will recall to mind

  The father’s with the mother’s face combin’d, —

  Sweet interchange that memories still enhance:

  And yet, as childhood’s years and youth’s advance,

  The gradual mouldings leave one stamp behind,

  Till in the blended likeness now we find

  A separate man’s or woman’s countenance: —

  So in the Song, the singer’s Joy and Pain,

  Its very parents, evermore expand

  To bid the passion’s fullgrown birth remain,

  By Art’s transfiguring essence subtly spann’d;

  And from that song-cloud shaped as a man’s hand

  There comes the sound as of abundant rain.

  THE SONG-THROE

  By thine own tears thy song must tears beget,

  O Singer! Magic mirror thou hast none

  Except thy manifest heart; and save thine own

  Anguish or ardour, else no amulet.

  Cisterned in Pride, verse is the feathery jet

  Of soulless air-flung fountains; nay, more dry

  Than the Dead Sea for throats that thirst and sigh,

  That song o’er which no singer’s lids grew wet.

  The Song-god — He the Sun-god — is no slave

  Of thine: thy Hunter he, who for thy soul

  Fledges his shaft: to no august control

  Of thy skilled hand his quivered store he gave:

  But if thy lips’ loud cry leap to his smart,

  The inspir’d recoil shall pierce thy brother’s heart.

  THE SOUL’S SPHERE

  Come prisoned moon in steep cloud-fastnesses, —

  Throned queen and thralled; some dying sun whose pyre

  Blazed with momentous memorable fire; —

  Who hath not yearned and fed his heart with these?

  Who, sleepless, hath not anguished to appease

  Tragical shadow’s realm of sound and sight

  Conjectured in the lamentable night?…

  Lo! the soul’s sphere of infinite images!

  What sense shall count them? Whether it forecast

  The rose-winged hours that flutter in the van

  Of Love’s unquestioning unreveale’d span, —

  Visions of golden futures: or that last

  Wild pageant of the accumulated past

  That clangs and flashes for a drowning man.

  INCLUSIVENESS

  The changing guests, each in a different mood,

  Sit at the roadside table and arise:

  And every life among them in likewise

  Is a soul’s board set daily with new food.

  What man has bent o’er his son’s sleep, to brood

  How that face shall watch his when cold it lies? —

  Or thought, as his own mother kissed his eyes,

  Of what her kiss was when his father wooed?

  May not this ancient room thou sit’st in dwell

  In separate living souls for joy or pain?

  Nay, all its corners may be painted plain

  Where Heaven shows pictures of some life spent well;

  And may be stamped, a memory all in vain,

  Upon the sight of lidless eyes in Hell.

  ARDOUR AND MEMORY

  The cuckoo-throb, the heartbeat of the Spring;

  The rosebud’s blush that leaves it as it grows

  Into the full-eyed fair unblushing rose;

  The summer clouds that visit every wing

  With fires of sunrise and of sunsetting;

  The furtive flickering streams to light re-born

  ’Mid airs new-fledged and valorous lusts of morn,

  While all the daughters of the daybreak sing: —

  These ardour loves, and memory: and when flown

  All joys, and through dark forest-boughs in flight

  The wind swoops onward brandishing the light,

  Even yet the rose-tree’s verdure left alone

  Will flush all ruddy though the rose be gone;

  With ditties and with dirges infinite.

  KNOWN IN VAIN

  As two whose love, first foolish, widening scope,

  Knows suddenly, with music high and soft,

  The Holy of holies; who because they scoff’d

  Are now amazed with shame, nor dare to cope

  With the whole truth aloud, lest heaven should ope;

  Yet, at their meetings, laugh not as they

  In speech; nor speak, at length; but sitting oft

  Together, within hopeless sight of hope

  For hours are silent: — So it happeneth

  When Work and Will awake too late, to gaze

  After their life sailed by, and hold their breath.

  Ah! who shall dare to search through what sad maze

  Thenceforth their incommunicable ways

  Follow the desultory feet of Death?

  HEART OF THE NIGHT

  From child to youth; from youth to arduous man;

  From lethargy to fever of the heart;

  From faithful life to dream-dowered days apart;

  From trust to doubt; from doubt to brink of ban; —

  Thus much of change in one swift cycle ran

  Till now. Alas, the soul! — how soon must she

  Accept her primal immortality, —

  The flesh resume its dust whence it began?

  O Lord of work and peace! O Lord of life!

  O Lord, the awful Lord of will! though late,

  Even yet renew this soul with duteous breath:

  That when the peace is garnered in from strife,

  The work retrieved, the will regenerate,

  This soul may see thy face, O Lord of death!

  THE LANDMARK

  Was that the landmark? What, — the foolish well

  Whose wave, low down, I did not stoop to drink,

  But sat and flung the pebbles from its brink

  In sport to send its imaged skies pell-mell,

  (And mine own image, had I noted well!)

  Was that my point of turning? — I had thought

  The stations of my course should rise unsought,

  As altar-stone or ensigned citadel.

  But lo! the path is missed, I must go back,

  And thirst to drink when next I reach the spring

  Which once I stained, which since may have grown black.

  Yet though no light be left nor bird now sing

  As here I turn, I’ll thank God, hastening,

  That the same goal is still on the same track.

  A DARK DAY

  The gloom that breathes upon me with these airs

  Is like the drops which strike the traveller’s brow

  Who knows not, darkling, if they bring him now

  Fresh storm, or be old rain the covert bears.

  Ah! bodes this hour some harvest of new tares,

  Or hath but memory of the day whose plough

  Sowed hunger once, — the night at length when thou,

  O prayer found vain, didst fall from out my prayers?

  How prickly we
re the growths which yet how smooth,

  Along the hedgerows of this journey shed,

  Lie by Time’s grace till night and sleep may soothe!

  Even as the thistledown from pathsides dead

  Gleaned by a girl in autumns of her youth,

  Which one new year makes soft her marriage-bed.

  AUTUMN IDLENESS

  This sunlight shames November where he grieves

  In dead red leaves, and will not let him shun

  The day, though bough with bough be over-run.

  But with a blessing every glade receives

  High salutation; while from hillock-eaves

  The deer gaze calling, dappled white and dun,

  As if, being foresters of old, the sun

  Had marked them with the shade of forest-leaves.

  Here dawn to-day unveiled her magic glass;

  Here noon now gives the thirst and takes the dew;

  Till eve bring rest when other good things pass.

  And here the lost hours the lost hours renew

  While I still lead my shadow o’er the grass,

  Nor know, for longing, that which I should do.

  THE HILL SUMMIT

  This feast-day of the sun, his altar there

  In the broad west has blazed for vesper-song;

  And I have loitered in the vale too long

  And gaze now a belated worshipper.

  Yet may I not forget that I was ‘ware,

  So journeying, of his face at intervals

  Transfigured where the fringed horizon falls, —

  A fiery bush with coruscating hair.

  And now that I have climbed and won this height,

  I must tread downward through the sloping shade

  And travel the bewildered tracks till night.

  Yet for this hour I still may here be stayed

  And see the gold air and the silver fade

  And the last bird fly into the last light.

  THE CHOICE

  I

  Eat thou and drink; to-morrow thou shalt die.

  Surely the earth, that’s wise being very old,

  Needs not our help. Then loose me, love, and hold

  Thy sultry hair up from my face that I