Sonnet XL: Severed Selves
Two separate divided silences,
Which, brought together, would find loving voice;
Two glances which together would rejoice
In love, now lost like stars beyond dark trees;
Two hands apart whose touch alone gives ease;
Two bosoms which, heart-shrined with mutual flame,
Would, meeting in one clasp, be made the same;
Two souls, the shores wave-mocked of sundering seas:—
Such are we now. Ah! may our hope forecast
Indeed one hour again, when on this stream
Of darkened love once more the light shall gleam?—
An hour how slow to come, how quickly past,—
Which blooms and fades, and only leaves at last,
Faint as shed flowers, the attenuated dream.
poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
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A Foretaste
AT length the then of my long hope was now;
Yet had my spirit an extreme unrest:
I knew the good from better was grown best
At length, but could not just as yet tell how.
So I lay straight along, and thrust my brow
Under the heights of grass. Hours struck. The West,
I knew, must be at change; but gazed not, lest
The heat against my naked face (no bough
For shade) should tease me mad, like poisoned spice.
I lay along, letting my whole self think,
Pressing my brow down that the thoughts might fix:
Just as a dicer who holds loaded dice,
Sure of his cast, keeps trifling with his drink
Ere he will throw, and still must taste and mix.
poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
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St. Wagner’s Eve
THE hop—shop is shut up: the night doth wear.
Here, early, Collinson this evening fell
“Into the gulfs of sleep”; and Deverell
Has turned upon the pivot of his chair
The whole of this night long; and Hancock there
Has laboured to repeat, in accents screechy,
“Guardami ben, ben son, ben son Beatrice”;
And Bernhard Smith still beamed, serene and square.
By eight, the coffee was all drunk. At nine
We gave the cat some milk. Our talk did shelve,
Ere ten, to gasps and stupor. Helpless grief
Made, towards eleven, my inmost spirit pine,
Knowing North's hour. And Hancock, hard on twelve,
Showed an engraving of his bas-—relief.
poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
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The Last Three From Trafalgar At The Anniversary Banquet, st October
IN grappled ships around The Victory,
Three boys did England's Duty with stout cheer,
While one dread truth was kept from every ear,
More dire than deafening fire that churned the sea:
For in the flag-ship's weltering cockpit, he
Who was the Battle's Heart without a peer,
He who had seen all fearful sights save Fear,
Was passing from all life save Victory.
And round the old memorial board to-day,
Three greybeards—each a warworn British Tar—
View through the mist of years that hour afar:
Who soon shall greet, 'mid memories of fierce fray,
The impassioned soul which on its radiant way
Soared through the fiery cloud of Trafalgar.
poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
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Czar Alexander The Second
FROM him did forty million serfs, endow'd
Each with six feet of death-due soil, receive
Rich freeborn lifelong land, whereon to sheave
Their country's harvest. These to-day aloud
Demand of Heaven a Father's blood,—sore bow'd
With tears and thrilled with wrath; who, while they grieve,
On every guilty head would fain achieve
All torment by his edicts disallow'd.
He stayed the knout's red-ravening fangs; and first
Of Russian traitors, his own murderers go
White to the tomb. While he,—laid foully low
With limbs red-rent, with festering brain which erst
Willed kingly freedom,—'gainst the deed accurst
To God bears witness of his people's woe.
poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
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Sir Peter Paul Rubens (Antwerp)
“Messieurs, le Dieu des peintres”: We felt odd:
'Twas Rubens, sculptured. A mean florid church
Was the next thing we saw,—from vane to porch
His drivel. The museum: as we trod
Its steps, his bust held us at bay. The clod
Has slosh by miles along the wall within.
(“I say, I somehow feel my gorge begin
To rise.”)—His chair in a glass case, by God!
. . . To the Cathedral. Here too the vile snob
Has fouled in every corner. (“Wherefore brave
Our fate? Let's go.”) There is a monument
We pass. “Messieurs, you tread upon the grave
Of the great Rubens.” “Well, that's one good job!
What time this evening is the train for Ghent?”
poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
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Sonnet LXXXIX: The Trees of the Garden
Ye who have passed Death's haggard hills; and ye
Whom trees that knew your sires shall cease to know
And still stand silent:—is it all a show,—
A wisp that laughs upon the wall?—decree
Of some inexorable supremacy
Which ever, as man strains his blind surmise
From depth to ominous depth, looks past his eyes,
Sphinx-faced with unabashèd augury?
Nay, rather question the Earth's self. Invoke
The storm-felled forest-trees moss-grown to-day
Whose roots are hillocks where the children play;
Or ask the silver sapling 'neath what yoke
Those stars, his spray-crown's clustering gems, shall wage
Their journey still when his boughs shrink with age.
poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
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The House of Life: 41. Through Death to Love
Like labour-laden moonclouds faint to flee
From winds that sweep the winter-bitten wold,--
Like multiform circumfluence manifold
Of night's flood-tide,--like terrors that agree
Of hoarse-tongued fire and inarticulate sea,--
Even such, within some glass dimm'd by our breath,
Our hearts discern wild images of Death,
Shadows and shoals that edge eternity.
Howbeit athwart Death's imminent shade doth soar
One Power, than flow of stream or flight of dove
Sweeter to glide around, to brood above.
Tell me, my heart,--what angel-greeted door
Or threshold of wing-winnow'd threshing-floor
Hath guest fire-fledg'd as thine, whose lord is Love?
poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
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For An Allegorical Dance Of Women By Andrea Mantegna
(In the Louvre)
SCARCELY, I think; yet it indeed may be
The meaning reached him, when this music rang
Clear through his frame, a sweet possessive pang,
And he beheld these rocks and that ridged sea.
But I believe that, leaning tow'rds them, he
Just felt their hair carried across his face
As each girl passed him; nor gave ear to trace
How many feet; nor bent assuredly
His eyes from the blind fixedness of thought
To know the dancers. It is bitter glad
Even unto tears. Its meaning filleth it,
A secret of the wells of Life: to wit:—
The heart's each pulse shall keep the sense it had
With all, though the mind's labour run to nought.
poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
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XLI Through Death To Love
Like labour-laden moonclouds faint to flee
From winds that sweep the winter-bitten wold,--
Like multiform circumfluence manifold
Of night's flood-tide,--like terrors that agree
Of hoarse-tongued fire and inarticulate sea,--
Even such, within some glass dimm'd by our breath,
Our hearts discern wild images of Death,
Shadows and shoals that edge eternity.
Howbeit athwart Death's imminent shade doth soar
One Power, than flow of stream or flight of dove
Sweeter to glide around, to brood above.
Tell me, my heart,--what angel-greeted door
Or threshold of wing-winnow'd threshing-floor
Hath guest fire-fledg'd as thine, whose lord is Love?
poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
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