The Cloud Confines
The day is dark and the night
To him that would search their heart;
No lips of cloud that will part
Nor morning song in the light:
Only, gazing alone,
To him wild shadows are shown,
Deep under deep unknown
And height above unknown height.
Still we say as we go,--
"Strange to think by the way,
Whatever there is to know,
That shall we know one day."
The Past is over and fled;
Nam'd new, we name it the old;
Thereof some tale hath been told,
But no word comes from the dead;
Whether at all they be,
Or whether as bond or free,
Or whether they too were we,
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poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
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The Song Of The Bower
SAY, is it day, is it dusk in thy bower,
Thou whom I long for, who longest for me?
Oh! be it light, be it night, 'tis Love's hour,
Love's that is fettered as Love's that is free.
Free love has leaped to that innermost chamber,
Oh! the last time, and the hundred before:
Fettered love, motionless, can but remember,
Yet something that sighs from him passes the door.
Nay, but my heart when it flies to thy bower,
What does it find there that knows it again?
There it must droop like a shower-beaten flower,
Red at the rent core and dark with the rain.
Ah! yet what shelter is still shed above it,—
What waters still image its leaves torn apart?
Thy soul is the shade that clings round it to love it,
And tears are its mirror deep down in thy heart.
What were my prize, could I enter thy bower,
This day, to-morrow, at eve or at morn?
Large lovely arms and a neck like a tower,
Bosom then heaving that now lies forlorn.
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poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
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Last Sonnets At Paris
I
Chins that might serve the new Jerusalem;
Streets footsore; minute whisking milliners,
Dubbed graceful, but at whom one's eye demurs,
Knowing of England; ladies, much the same;
Bland smiling dogs with manes—a few of them
At pains to look like sporting characters;
Vast humming tabbies smothered in their furs;
Groseille, orgeat, meringues à la crême—
Good things to study; ditto bad—the maps
Of sloshy colour in the Louvre; cinq-francs
The largest coin; and at the restaurants
Large Ibrahim Pachas in Turkish caps
To pocket them. Un million d'habitants:
Cast up, they'll make an Englishman—perhaps.
II
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poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
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Sonnets LXXIV: LXXV:LXXVI: Old and New Art
I. ST. LUKE THE PAINTER
Give honour unto Luke Evangelist;
For he it was (the aged legends say)
Who first taught Art to fold her hands and pray.
Scarcely at once she dared to rend the mist
Of devious symbols: but soon having wist
How sky-breadth and field-silence and this day
Are symbols also in some deeper way,
She looked through these to God and was God's priest.
And if, past noon, her toil began to irk,
And she sought talismans, and turned in vain
To soulless self-reflections of man's skill,—
Yet now, in this the twilight, she might still
Kneel in the latter grass to pray again,
Ere the night cometh and she may not work.
II. NOT AS THESE
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poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
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Sonnets LVI:LVII: LVIII: 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
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poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
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Sacred To the Memory of Algernon R. G. Stanhope
“THE silver cord is loosed,” he said,
“The golden bowl is broken;
A few more prayers having been prayed,
A few more love-words spoken,
I shall turn my face unto the wall,
And sleeping, not be woken.”
“Is it a better place, my child,
That thou art gone unto?
Upon this earth that thou hast left
Hadst thou not much to do?
Would not thy joys have been a crowd
And thy troubles small and few?
“Beauty and rank and friends and wealth,
Genius and excellence,—
Could not all these, thy heritage,
Win thee from hastening hence?
Was the soul so much more unto thee
Than joys of mind and sense?
“And, bending with an English grace,
The ladies of our isle,
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poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
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Sonnets LLXXI:LXXII:LXXIII: 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
May pour for thee this golden wine, brim-high,
Till round the glass thy fingers glow like gold.
We'll drown all hours: thy song, while hours are toll'd,
Shall leap, as fountains veil the changing sky.
Now kiss, and think that there are really those,
My own high-bosomed beauty, who increase
Vain gold, vain lore, and yet might choose our way!
Through many years they toil; then on a day
They die not,—for their life was death,—but cease;
And round their narrow lips the mould falls close.
II
Watch thou and fear; to-morrow thou shalt die.
Or art thou sure thou shalt have time for death?
Is not the day which God's word promiseth
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poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
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Wellington's Funeral
18th November 1852
“VICTORY!”
So once more the cry must be.
Duteous mourning we fulfil
In God's name; but by God's will,
Doubt not, the last word is still
“Victory!”
Funeral,
In the music round this pall,
Solemn grief yields earth to earth;
But what tones of solemn mirth
In the pageant of new birth
Rise and fall?
For indeed,
If our eyes were openèd,
Who shall say what escort floats
Here, which breath nor gleam denotes,—
Fiery horses, chariots
Fire-footed?
Trumpeter,
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poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
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My Sister's Sleep
She fell asleep on Christmas Eve:
At length the long-ungranted shade
Of weary eyelids overweigh'd
The pain nought else might yet relieve.
Our mother, who had lean'd all day
Over the bed from chime to chime,
Then rais'd herself for the first time,
And as she sat her down, did pray.
Her little work-table was spread
With work to finish. For the glare
Made by her candle, she had care
To work some distance from the bed.
Without, there was a cold moon up,
Of winter radiance sheer and thin;
The hollow halo it was in
Was like an icy crystal cup.
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poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
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Johannes Ronge
Silesian shepherd, blesed be
The sequel of that history
That I have read with heart elate,
Entwining it with my own fate;
So dear to me the visions seem
That thou, oh child unknown, didst dream—
In earliest days on mountain wild:—
How dreadful spirits sternly smiled,
And prophecied thy future days,
And pointed out untrodden ways,
And gave thee weapons strong & good,
As the wierd lady of the Wood
To young St. George. Must I compare
With those dove winged guardians fair
Who to the little English maid
In crowded streets brief visits paid;
For in the year that gave me birth
Didst thou appear upon this earth:
And we have wandered far & wide
Seeking for truth on every side.
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poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
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