Or by what spell they have sped.
Still we say as we go,— "Strange to think by the way, Whatever there is to know,
That shall we know one day."
What of the heart of hate
That beats in thy breast, O Time?Red strife from the furthest prime, And anguish of fierce debate;
War that shatters her slain,
And peace that grinds them as grain, And eyes fixed ever in vain On the pitiless eyes of Fate.
Still we say as we go,- "Strange to think by the way, Whatever there is to know,
That shall we know one day."
What of the heart of love
That bleeds in thy breast, O Man? Thy kisses snatched 'neath the ban Of fangs that mock them above;
Thy bells prolonged unto knells, Thy hope that a breath dispels, Thy bitter forlorn farewells And the empty echoes thereof?
Still we say as we go,- "Strange to think by the way, Whatever there is to know,
That shall we know one day."
The sky leans dumb on the sea, Aweary with all its wings; And oh! the song the sea sings Is dark everlastingly.
Our past is clean forgot, Our present is and is not, Our future's a sealed seedplot, And what betwixt them are we?-
We who say as we go,- "Strange to think by the way, Whatever there is to know,
That shall we know one day."
FROM THE HOUSE OF LIFE* THE SONNET
A Sonnet is a moment's monument,- Memorial from the Soul's eternity
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 to Death. IV. LOVESIGHT
When do I see thee most, beloved one? When in the light the spirits of mine eyes Before thy face, their altar, solemnize The worship of that Love through thee made known?
Or when in the dusk hours, (we two alone,) Close-kissed and eloquent of still replies Thy twilight-hidden glimmering visage lies, And my soul only sees thy soul its own? O love, my love! if I no more should see Thyself, nor on the earth the shadow of thee, Nor image of thine eyes in any spring,- How then should sound upon Life's darkening slope
The ground-whirl of the perished leaves of
The wind of Death's imperishable wing?
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
To one dead deathless hour. Look that it be, This close-companioned inarticulate hour
Whether for lustral rite or dire portent,
The "house of life" was the first of the twelve divisions of the heavens made by old astrologers in casting the horoscope of a man's destiny. This series of a hundred and one sonnets is a faithful record, drawn from Ros
setti's own inward experience, "of the mysterious conjunctions and oppositions wrought by Love, Change, and Fate in the House of Life."-Eng. Lit.. p. 373.
When twofold silence was the song of love.
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.
And now Love sang: but his was such a song, So meshed with half-remembrance hard to free, As souls disused in death's sterility May sing when the new birthday tarries long. And I was made aware of a dumb throng That stood aloof, one form by every tree, All mournful forms, for each was I or she, The shades of those our days that had no tongue.
They looked on us, and knew us and were known;
While fast together, alive from the abyss, Clung the soul-wrung implacable close kiss; And pity of self through all made broken moan Which said, "For once, for once, for once alone!"'
And still Love sang, and what he sang was this:
"O ye, all ye that walk in Willowwood, That walk with hollow faces burning white; What fathom-depth of soul-struck widowhood, What long, what longer hours, one life-long night,
Ere ye again, who so in vain have wooed Your last hope lost, who so in vain invite Your lips to that their unforgotten food, Ere ye, ere ye again shall see the light! Alas! the bitter banks in Willowwood,
With tear-spurge wan, with blood-wort burning red:
Alas! if ever such a pillow could
The leaves drop loosened where the heart-stain glows,
So when the song died did the kiss unclose; And her face fell back drowned, and was as gray
As its gray eyes; and if it ever may Meet mine again I know not if Love knows. Only I know that I leaned low and drank A long draught from the water where she sank, Her breath and all her tears and all her soul: And as I leaned, I know I felt Love's face Pressed on my neck with moan of pity and grace,
Till both our heads were in his aureole.
LXV. KNOWN IN VAIN
As two whose love, first foolish, widening scope, Knows suddenly, to music high and soft, The Holy of holies; who because they scoff'd Are now amazed with shame, nor dare to cope With the whole truth aloud, lest heaven should
Yet, at their meetings, laugh not as they laugh'd
In speech; nor speak, at length; but sitting off Together, within hopeless sight of hope For hours are silent:-So it happeneth When Work and Will awake too late, to gaze After their life sailed by, and hold their breath. Ah! who shall dare to search through what sad
Thenceforth their incommunicable ways Follow the desultory feet of Death?
LXVI. THE HEART OF THE NIGHT From child to youth; from youth to arduous
From lethargy to fever of the heart; From faithful life to dream-dowered days
From trust to doubt; from doubt to brink of
Thus much of change in one swift cycle ran Till now. Alas, the soul!-how soon must she Accept her primal immortality,—
The flesh resume its dust whence it began?
Steep deep the soul in sleep till she were O Lord of work and peace! O Lord of life!
Whose wave, low down, I did not stoop to CHRISTINA ROSSETTI (1830-1894) drink,
But sat and flung the pebbles from its brink In sport to send its imaged skies pell-mell, (And mine own image, had I noted well!)— Was that my point of turning?—I had thought The stations of my course should rise unsought, As altar-stone or ensigned citadel,
But lo! the path is missed, I must go back, And thirst to drink when next I reach the spring
Which once I stained, which since may have grown black.
Yet though no light be left nor bird now sing As here I turn, I'll thank God, hastening, That the same goal is still on the same track.
LXX. THE HILL SUMMIT
This feast-day of the sun, his altar there In the broad west has blazed for vesper-song; And I have loitered in the vale too long And gaze now a belated worshipper. Yet may I not forget that I was 'ware, So journeying, of his face at intervals Transfigured where the fringed horizon falls,- A fiery bush with coruscating hair.
And now that I have climbed and won this height,
I must tread downward through the sloping shade
And travel the bewildered tracks till night. Yet for this hour I still may here be stayed And see the gold air and the silver fade And the last bird fly into the last light.
LXXIX. THE MONOCHORD*
Is it this sky's vast vault or ocean's sound That is Life's self and draws my life from me, And by instinct ineffable decree
Holds my breath quailing on the bitter bound? Nay, is it Life or Death, thus thunder-crowned, That 'mid the tide of all emergency Now notes my separate wave, and to what sea Its difficult eddies labour in the ground? Oh! what is this that knows the road I came, The flame turned cloud, the cloud returned to
The lifted shifted steeps and all the way?That draws round me at last this wind-warm space,
And in regenerate rapture turns my face Upon the devious coverts of dismay?
*A musical instrument of one string, hence, unity, harmony here apparently used to symbolize the ultimate merging of separate lives into one Life.
Morning and evening
Maids heard the goblins cry: Come buy our orchard fruits, Come buy, come buy: Apples and quinces, Lemons and oranges, Plump unpecked cherries, Melons and raspberries, Bloom-down-cheeked peaches, Swart-headed mulberries, Wild free-born cranberries, Crab-apples, dewberries, Pine-apples, blackberries, Apricots, strawberries;- All ripe together
In summer weather,- Fair eves that fly; Morns that pass by, Come buy, come buy:
Our grapes fresh from the vine, Pomegranates full and fine, Dates and sharp bullaces, Rare pears and greengages, Damsons and bilberries, Taste them and try: Currants and gooseberries, Bright-fire-like barberries, Figs to fill your mouth, Citrons from the South,
Sweet to tongue and sound to eye; Come buy, come buy.'
Evening by evening
Among the brookside rushes, Laura bowed her head to hear, Lizzie veiled her blushes: Crouching close together In the cooling weather,
With clasping arms and cautioning lips, With tingling cheeks and finger tips. 'Lie close,' Laura said, Pricking up her golden head:
Of this poem. William M. Rossetti. Christina's brother, writes: "I have more than once heard Christina say that she did not mean anything profound by this fairy tale-it is not a moral apologue consistently carried out in detail. Still the incidents are suggestive, and different minds may be likely to read different messages into them." remarks further that the central point of the story, read merely as a story, is often missed. Lizzie's service to her sister lies in procuring for her a second taste of the goblin fruits, such as those who have once tasted them ever afterward long for. and pine away with longing, but which the goblins themselves will not voluntarily accord.
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