Sonnets XLIX: L: LI: LII: Willowwood
I
I sat with Love upon a woodside well,
Leaning across the water, I and he;
Nor ever did he speak nor looked at me,
But touched his lute wherein was audible
The certain secret thing he had to tell:
Only our mirrored eyes met silently
In the low wave; and that sound came to be
The passionate voice I knew; and my tears fell.
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
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poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
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London To Folkestone (Half-Past One To Half-Past Five)
A constant keeping-past of shaken trees,
And a bewildered glitter of loose road;
Banks of bright growth, with single blades atop
Against white sky; and wires—a constant chain—
That seem to draw the clouds along with them
(Things which one stoops against the light to see
Through the low window; shaking by at rest,
Or fierce like water as the swiftness grows);
And, seen through fences or a bridge far off,
Trees that in moving keep their intervals
Still one 'twixt bar and bar; and then at times
Long reaches of green level, where one cow,
Feeding among her fellows that feed on,
Lifts her slow neck, and gazes for the sound.
There are six of us: I that write away;
Hunt reads Dumas, hard-lipped, with heavy jowl
And brows hung low, and the long ends of hair
Standing out limp. A grazier at one end
(Thank luck not my end!) has blocked out the air,
And sits in heavy consciousness of guilt.
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poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
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Dennis Shand
THE shadows fall along the wall,
It's night at Haye-la-Serre;
The maidens weave since day grew eve,
The lady's in her chair.
O passing slow the long hours go
With time to think and sigh,
When weary maidens weave beneath
A listless lady's eye.
It's two days that Earl Simon's gone
And it's the second night;
At Haye-la-Serre the lady's fair,
In June the moon is light.
O it's “Maids, ye'll wake till I come back,”
And the hound's i' the lady's chair:
No shuttles fly, the work stands by,
It's play at Haye-la-Serre.
The night is worn, the lamp's forlorn,
The shadows waste and fail;
There's morning air at Haye-la-Serre,
The watching maids look pale.
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poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
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Troy Town
HEAVENBORN Helen, Sparta's queen,
(O Troy Town!)
Had two breasts of heavenly sheen,
The sun and moon of the heart's desire:
All Love's lordship lay between.
(O Troy's down,
Tall Troy's on fire!)
Helen knelt at Venus' shrine,
(O Troy Town!)
Saying, “A little gift is mine,
A little gift for a heart's desire.
Hear me speak and make me a sign!
(O Troy's down,
Tall Troy's on fire!)
“Look, I bring thee a carven cup;
(O Troy Town!)
See it here as I hold it up,—
Shaped it is to the heart's desire,
Fit to fill when the gods would sup.
(O Troy's down,
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poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
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The English Revolution Of 1848
HO ye that nothing have to lose! ho rouse ye, one and all!
Come from the sinks of the New Cut, the purlieus of Vauxhall!
Did ye not hear the mighty sound boom by ye as it went—
The Seven Dials strike the hour of man's enfranchisement?
Ho cock your eyes, my gallant pals, and swing your heavy staves:
Remember—Kings and Queens being out, the great cards will be Knaves.
And when the pack is ours—oh then at what a slapping pace
Shall the tens be trodden down to five, and the fives kicked down to ace!
It was but yesterday the Times and Post and Telegraph
Told how from France King Louy-Phil. was shaken out like chaff;
To-morrow, boys, the National, the Siècle, and the Débats,
Shall have to tell the self-same tale of “La Reine Victoria.”
What! shall our incomes we've not got be taxed by puny John?
Shall the policeman keep Time back by bidding us move on?
Shall we too follow in the steps of that poor sneak Cochrane?
Shall it be said, “They came, they saw,—and bolted back again”?
Not so! albeit great men have been among us, and are floor'd—
(Frost, Williams, Jones, and other ones who now reside abroad)—
Among the master-spirits of the age there still are those
Who'll pick up fame—even though, when smelt, it makes men hold the nose.
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poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
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Soothsay
Let no man ask thee of anything
Not yearborn between Spring and Spring.
More of all worlds than he can know,
Each day the single sun doth show.
A trustier gloss than thou canst give
From all wise scrolls demonstrative,
The sea doth sigh and the wind sing.
Let no man awe thee on any height
Of earthly kingship's mouldering might.
The dust his heel holds meet for thy brow
Hath all of it been what both are now;
And thou and he may plague together
A beggar's eyes in some dusty weather
When none that is now knows sound or sight.
Crave thou no dower of earthly things
Unworthy Hope's imaginings.
To have brought true birth of Song to be
And to have won hearts to Poesy,
Or anywhere in the sun or rain
To have loved and been beloved again,
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Boulogne To Amiens And Paris (3 to 11 P.M.; 3rd Class)
Strong extreme speed, that the brain hurries with,
Further than trees, and hedges, and green grass
Whitened by distance,—further than small pools
Held among fields and gardens,—further than
Haystacks and windmill-sails and roofs and herds,—
The sea's last margin ceases at the sun.
The sea has left us, but the sun remains.
Sometimes the country spreads aloof in tracts
Smooth from the harvest; sometimes sky and land
Are shut from the square space the window leaves
By a dense crowd of trees, stem behind stem
Passing across each other as we pass:
Sometimes tall poplar-wands stand white, their heads
Outmeasuring the distant hills. Sometimes
The ground has a deep greenness; sometimes brown
In stubble; and sometimes no ground at all,
For the close strength of crops that stand unreaped.
The water-plots are sometimes all the sun's,—
Sometimes quite green through shadows filling them,
Or islanded with growths of reeds,—or else
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The Portrait
This is her picture as she was:
It seems a thing to wonder on,
As though mine image in the glass
Should tarry when myself am gone.
I gaze until she seems to stir,--
Until mine eyes almost aver
That now, even now, the sweet lips part
To breathe the words of the sweet heart:--
And yet the earth is over her.
Alas! even such the thin-drawn ray
That makes the prison-depths more rude,--
The drip of water night and day
Giving a tongue to solitude.
Yet only this, of love's whole prize,
Remains; save what in mournful guise
Takes counsel with my soul alone,--
Save what is secret and unknown,
Below the earth, above the skies.
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poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
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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 born to God,
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!
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,)
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
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poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
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Love's Nocturne
Master of the murmuring courts
Where the shapes of sleep convene!--
Lo! my spirit here exhorts
All the powers of thy demesne
For their aid to woo my queen.
What reports
Yield thy jealous courts unseen?
Vaporous, unaccountable,
Dreamland lies forlorn of light,
Hollow like a breathing shell.
Ah! that from all dreams I might
Choose one dream and guide its flight!
I know well
What her sleep should tell to-night.
There the dreams are multitudes:
Some that will not wait for sleep,
Deep within the August woods;
Some that hum while rest may steep
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poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
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