Sonnet LXII: The Soul's Sphere
Some 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 unrevealèd span,—
Visions of golden futures: or that last
Wild pageant of the accumulated past
That clangs and flashes for a drowning man.
poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
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Sonnet XXXIX: Sleepless Dreams
Girt in dark growths, yet glimmering with one star,
O night desirous as the nights of youth!
Why should my heart within thy spell, forsooth,
Now beat, as the bride's finger-pulses are
Quickened within the girdling golden bar?
What wings are these that fan my pillow smooth?
And why does Sleep, waved back by Joy and Ruth,
Tread softly round and gaze at me from far?
Nay, night deep-leaved! And would Love feign in thee
Some shadowy palpitating grove that bears
Rest for man's eyes and music for his ears?
O lonely night! art thou not known to me,
A thicket hung with masks of mockery
And watered with the wasteful warmth of tears?
poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
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Sonnet XXXVII: The Love-Moon
'When that dead face, bowered in the furthest years,
Which once was all the life years held for thee,
Can now scarce bid the tides of memory
Cast on thy soul a little spray of tears,—
How canst thou gaze into these eyes of hers
Whom now thy heart delights in, and not see
Within each orb Love's philtred euphrasy
Make them of buried troth remembrancers?”
“Nay, pitiful Love, nay, loving Pity! Well
Thou knowest that in these twain I have confess'd
Two very voices of thy summoning bell.
Nay, Master, shall not Death make manifest
In these the culminant changes which approve
The love-moon that must light my soul to Love?”
poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
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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 a minute rests above
The wearied woman, no more urged to move
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
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.
poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
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Ashore At Dover
On landing, the first voice one hears is from
An English police-constable; a man
Respectful, conscious that at need he can
Enforce respect. Our custom-house at home
Strict too, but quiet. Not the foul-mouthed scum
Of passport-mongers who in Paris still
Preserve the Reign of Terror; not the till
Where the King haggles, all through Belgium.
The country somehow seems in earnest here,
Grave and sufficient:—England, so to speak;
No other word will make the thing as clear.
“Ah! habit,” you exclaim, “and prejudice!”
If so, so be it. One don't care to shriek,
“Sir, this shall be!” But one believes it is.
poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
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Sonnet LXI: 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.
poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
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Sonnet VII: Supreme Surrender
To all the spirits of Love that wander by
Along his love-sown harvest-field of sleep
My lady lies apparent; and the deep
Calls to the deep; and no man sees but I.
The bliss so long afar, at length so nigh,
Rests there attained. Methinks proud Love must weep
When Fate's control doth from his harvest reap
The sacred hour for which the years did sigh.
First touched, the hand now warm around my neck
Taught memory long to mock desire: and lo!
Across my breast the abandoned hair doth flow,
Where one shorn tress long stirred the longing ache:
And next the heart that trembled for its sake
Lies the queen-heart in sovereign overthrow.
poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
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Sonnet XLVIII: Death-in-Love
There came an image in Life's retinue
That had Love's wings and bore his gonfalon:
Fair was the web, and nobly wrought thereon,
O soul-sequestered face, thy form and hue!
Bewildering sounds, such as Spring wakens to,
Shook in its folds; and through my heart its power
Sped trackless as the immemorable hour
When birth's dark portal groaned and all was new.
But a veiled woman followed, and she caught
The banner round its staff, to furl and cling,—
Then plucked a feather from the bearer's wing
And held it to his lips that stirred it not,
And said to me, “Behold, there is no breath:
I and this Love are one, and I am Death.”
poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
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Almost Over
YOU say I should not think upon her now:
But then I have stood beside her listening,
And watched her rose—breathed lips when she would sing:
And I can scarcely yet imagine how
I ever should despise that stately brow
And flowering breast that is so pure a thing.
Alas for all the weary blood—running
When from the heart love strives to tear a vow!
And yet perchance—even as you tell me—soon
Her spirit of my spirit will leave hold,
And, when I hear her tread, I shall not blush
Doubly, for love and shame. But then the moon
Assuredly will rise, and Sleep shall fold
Her hair round me, and Death will whisper Hush!
poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
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The Staircase Of Notre Dame, Paris
As one who, groping in a narrow stair,
Hath a strong sound of bells upon his ears,
Which, being at a distance off, appears
Quite close to him because of the pent air:
So with this France. She stumbles file and square
Darkling and without space for breath: each one
Who hears the thunder says: “It shall anon
Be in among her ranks to scatter her.”
This may be; and it may be that the storm
Is spent in rain upon the unscathed seas,
Or wasteth other countries ere it die:
Till she,—having climbed always through the swarm
Of darkness and of hurtling sound,—from these
Shall step forth on the light in a still sky.
poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
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