Complete Poetical Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti Read online

  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