Sudden Light

I HAVE been here before,

     But when or how I cannot tell:

I know the grass beyond the door,

     The sweet, keen smell,

The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.

You have been mine before,--

     How long ago I may not know:

But just when at the swallow's soar

     Your neck turned so,

Some veil did fall--I knew it all of yore.

Then, now,--perchance again!...

     O round mine eyes your tresses shake!

Shall we not lie as we have lain

     Thus for Love's sake,

And sleep, and wake, yet never break the chain?

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

The Blessed Damozel

THE blessed damozel leaned out

From the gold bar of heaven;

Her eyes were deeper than the depth

Of waters stilled at even;

She had three lilies in her hand,

And the stars in her hair were seven.

Her robe, ungirt from clasp to hem,

No wrought flowers did adorn,

But a white rose of Mary's gift,

For service meetly worn;

Her hair that lay along her back

Was yellow like ripe corn.

It seemed she scarce had been a day

One of God's choristers;

The wonder was not yet quite gone

From that still look of hers;

Albeit, to them she left, her day

Had counted as ten years.

(To one it is ten years of years.

. . . Yet now, and in this place,

Surely she leaned o'er me -- her hair

Fell all about my face . . .

Nothing: the autumn-fall of leaves.

The whole year sets apace.)

It was the rampart of God's house

That she was standing on;

By God built over the sheer depth

The which is Space begun;

So high, that looking downward thence

She scarce could see the sun.

It lies in heaven, across the flood

Of ether, as a bridge.

Beneath the tides of day and night

With flame and darkness ridge

The void, as low as where this earth

Spins like a fretful midge.

Around her, lovers, newly met

'Mid deathless love's acclaims,

Spoke evermore among themselves

Their heart-remembered names;

And the souls mounting up to God

Went by her like thin flames.

And still she bowed herself and stooped

Out of the circling charm;

Until her bosom must have made

The bar she leaned on warm,

And the lilies lay as if asleep

Along her bended arm.

From the fixed place of heaven she saw

Time like a pulse shake fierce

Through all the worlds. Her gaze still strove

Within the gulf to pierce

Its path; and now she spoke as when

The stars sang in their spheres.

The sun was gone now; the curled moon

Was like a little feather

Fluttering far down the gulf; and now

She spoke through the still weather.

Her voice was like the voice the stars

Had when they sang together.

(Ah, sweet! Even now, in that bird's song,

Strove not her accents there,

Fain to be harkened? When those bells

Possessed the midday air,

Strove not her steps to reach my side

Down all the echoing stair?)

"I wish that he were come to me,

For he will come," she said.

"Have I not prayed in heaven? -- on earth,

Lord, Lord, has he not prayed?

Are not two prayers a perfect strength?

And shall I feel afraid?

"When round his head the aureole clings,

And he is clothed in white,

I'll take his hand and go with him

To the deep wells of light;

As unto a stream we will step down,

And bathe there in God's sight.

"We two will stand beside that shrine,

Occult, withheld, untrod,

Whose lamps are stirred continually

With prayer sent up to God;

And see our old prayers, granted melt

Each like a little cloud.

"We two will lie i' the shadow of

That living mystic tree

Within those secret growth the Dove

Is sometimes felt to be,

While every leaf that His plumes touch

Saith His Name audibly.

"And I myself will teach to him,

I myself, lying so,

The songs I sing here; which his voice

Shall pause in, hushed and slow,

And find some knowledge at each pause,

Or some new thing to know."

(Alas! We two, we two, thou say'st!

Yea, one wast thou with me

That once of old. But shall God lift

To endless unity

The soul whose likeness with thy soul

Was but its love for thee?)

"We two," she said, "will seek the groves

Where the lady Mary is,

With her five handmaidens, whose names

Are five sweet symphonies,

Cecily, Gertrude, Magdalen,

Margaret, and Rosalys.

"Circlewise sit they, with bound locks

And foreheads garlanded;

Into the fine cloth white like flame

Weaving the golden thread,

To fashion the birth-robes for them

Who are just born, being dead.

"He shall fear, haply, and be dumb;

Then will I lay my cheek

To his, and tell about our love,

Not once abashed or weak;

And the dear Mother will approve

My pride, and let me speak.

"Herself shall bring us, hand in hand,

To Him round whom all souls

Kneel, the clear-ranged unnumbered heads

Bowed with their aureoles;

And angels meeting us shall sing

To their citherns and citoles.

"There will I ask of Christ the Lord

Thus much for him and me --

Only to live as once on earth

With Love -- only to be,

As then awhile, forever now,

Together, I and he."

She gazed and listened and then said,

Less sad of speech than mild --

"All this is when he comes." She ceased.

The light thrilled toward her, filled

With angels in strong, level flight.

Her eyes prayed, and she smiled.

(I saw her smile.) But soon their path

Was vague in distant spheres;

And then she cast her arms along

The golden barriers,

And laid her face between her hands,

And wept. (I heard her tears.)

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

The Woodspurge

THE wind flapped loose, the wind was still,

Shaken out dead from tree and hill;

I had walked on at the wind's will --

I sat now, for the wind was still.

Between my knees my forehead was --

My lips, drawn in, said not Alas!

My hair was over in the grass,

My naked ears heard the day pass.

My eyes, wide open, had the run

Of some ten weeds to fix upon;

Among those few, out of the sun,

The woodspurge flowered, three cups in one.

From perfect grief there need not be

Wisdom or even memory;

One thing then learned remains to me --

The woodspurge has a cup of three.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

The Sonnet

A SONNET is a moment's monument, --

Memorial from the Soul's eternity

To one dead deathless hour. Look that it be,

Whether for lustral rite or dire portent,

Of its own arduous fulness reverent:

Carve it in ivory or in ebony,

As Day or Night may rule; and let Time see

Its flowering crest impearled and orient.

A Sonnet is a coin: its face reveals

The soul, -- its converse, to what Power 'tis due: --

Whether for tribute to the august appeals

Of Life, or dower in Love's high retinue,

It serve, or, 'mid the dark wharf's cavernous breath,

In Charon's palm it pay the toll of Death.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

The Kiss

WHAT smouldering senses in death's sick delay

Or seizure of malign vicissitude

Can rob this body of honour, or denude

This soul of wedding-raiment worn to-day?

For lo! even now my lady's lips did play

With these my lips such consonant interlude

As laurelled Orpheus longed for when he wooed

The half-drawn hungering face with that last lay.

I was a child beneath her touch, -- a man

When breast to breast we clung, even I and she, --

A spirit when her spirit looked through me, --

A god when all our life-breath met to fan

Our life-blood, till love's emulous ardours ran,

Fire within fire, desire in deity.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Silent Noon

YOUR hands lie open in the long fresh grass, --

The finger-points look through like rosy blooms:

Your eyes smile peace. The pasture gleams and glooms

'Neath billowing skies that scatter and amass.

All round our nest, far as the eye can pass,

Are golden kingcup-fields with silver edge

Where the cow-parsley skirts the hawthorn-hedge.

'Tis visible silence, still as the hour-glass.

Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragon-fly

Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky: --

So this wing'd hour is dropt to us from above.

Oh! clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower,

This close-companioned inarticulate hour

When twofold silence was the song of love.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Genius in Beauty

BEAUTY like hers is genius. Not the call

Of Homer's or of Dante's heart sublime, --

Not Michael's hand furrowing the zones of time, --

Is more with compassed mysteries musical;

Nay, not in Spring's Summer's sweet footfall

More gathered gifts exuberant Life bequeaths

Than doth this sovereign face, whose love-spell breathes

Even from its shadowed contour on the wall.

As many men are poets in their youth,

But for one sweet-strung soul the wires prolong

Even through all change the indomitable song;

So in likewise the envenomed years, whose tooth

Rends shallower grace with ruin void of truth,

Upon this beauty's power shall wreak no wrong.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

A Little While

A LITTLE while a little love

The hour yet bears for thee and me

Who have not drawn the veil to see

If still our heaven be lit above.

Thou merely, at the day's last sigh,

Hast felt thy soul prolong the tone;

And I have heard the night-wind cry

And deemed its speech mine own.

A little while a little love

The scattering autumn hoards for us

Whose bower is not yet ruinous

Nor quite unleaved our songless grove.

Only across the shaken boughs

We hear the flood-tides seek the sea,

And deep in both our hearts they rouse

One wail for thee and me.

A little while a little love

May yet be ours who have not said

The word it makes our eyes afraid

To know that each is thinking of.

Not yet the end: be our lips dumb

In smiles a little season yet:

I'll tell thee, when the end is come,

How we may best forget.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Love Lily

BETWEEN the hands, between the brows,

Between the lips of Love-lily,

A spirit is born whose birth endows

My blood with fire to burn through me;

Who breathes upon my gazing eyes,

Who laughs and murmurs in mine ear,

At whose least touch my color flies,

And whom my life grows faint to hear.

Within the voice, within the heart,

Within the mind of Love-Lily,

A spirit is born who lifts apart

His tremulous wings and looks at me;

Who on my mouth his finger lays,

And shows, while whispering lutes confer,

That Eden of Love's watered ways

Whose winds and spirits worship her.

Brows, hands, and lips, heart, mind, and voice,

Kisses and words of Love-Lily,--

Oh! bid me with your joy rejoice

Til riotous longing rest in me!

Ah! let not hope be still distraught,

But find in her its gracious goal,

Whose speech Truth knows not from her thought

Nor Love her body from her soul.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Spring

SOFT-LITTERED is the new-year's lambing fold,

And in the hollowed haystack at its side

The shepherd lies o' night now, wakeful-eyed

At the ewes' travailing call through the dark cold.

The young rooks cheep 'mid the thick caw o' the old:

And near unpeopled stream-sides, on the ground,

By her Spring cry the moorhen's nest is found,

Where the drained flood-lands flaunt their marigold.

Chill are the gusts to which the pastures cower,

And chill the current where the young reeds stand

As green and close as the young wheat on land

Yet here the cuckoo and cuckoo-flower

Plight to the heart Spring's perfect imminent hour

Whose breath shall soothe you like your dear one's hand.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

The Sea Limits

CONSIDER the sea's listless chime:

Time's self it is, made audible,--

The murmur of the earth's own shell.

Secret continuance sublime

Is the sea's end: our sight may pass

No furlong further. Since time was,

This sound hath told the lapse of time.

No quiet, which is death's,--it hath

The mournfulness of ancient life,

Enduring always at dull strife.

As the world's heart of rest and wrath,

Its painful pulse is in the sands.

Last utterly, the whole sky stands,

Gray and not known, along its path.

Listen alone beside the sea,

Listen alone among the woods;

Those voices of twin solitudes

Shall have one sound alike to thee:

Hark where the murmurs of thronged men

Surge and sink back and surge again,--

Still the one voice of wave and tree.

Gather a shell from the strown beach

And listen at its lips: they sigh

The same desire and mystery,

The echo of the whole sea's speech.

And all mankind is thus at heart

Not anything but what thou art:

And Earth, Sea, Man, are all in each.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Song and Music

O LEAVE your hand where it lies cool

Upon the eyes whose lids are hot:

Its rosy shade is bountiful

Of silence, and assuages thought.

O lay your lips against your hand

And let me feel your breath through it,

While through the sense your song shall fit

   The soul to understand.

The music lives upon my brain

Between your hands within mine eyes;

It stirs your lifted throat like pain,

An aching pulse of melodies.

Lean nearer, let the music pause:

The soul may better understand

Your music, shadowed in your hand

   Now while the song withdraws.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

The Ballad of Dead Ladies

    From the French of FRANCOIS VILLON

Tell me now in what hidden way is

Lady Flora the lovely Roman?

Where's Hipparchia, and where is Thais,

Neither of them the fairer woman?

Where is Echo, beheld of no man,

Only heard on river and mere--

She whose beauty was more than human?--

But where are the snows of yester-year?

Where's Heloise, the learned nun,

For whose sake Abeillard, I ween,

Lost manhood and put priesthood on?

(From Love he won such dule and teen!)

And where, I pray you, is the Queen

Who willed that Buridan should steer

Sewed in a sack's mouth down the Seine?--

But where are the snows of yester-year?

White Queen Blanche, like a queen of lilies,

With a voice like any mermaiden--

Bertha Broadfoot, Beatrice, Alice,

And Ermengarde the lady of Maine--

And that good Joan whom Englishmen

At Rouen doomed and burned her there--

Mother of God, where are they then?--

But where are the snows of yester-year?

Nay, never ask this week, fair lord,

Where they are gone, nor yet this year,

Except with this for an overword--

But where are the snows of yester-year?

Dante Gabriel Rossetti