Shall soul not somehow pay for soul?
Fair shines the gilded aureole
In which our highest painters place
Some living woman’s simple face.
And the stilled features thus descried
As Jenny’s long throat droops aside, -
The shadows where the cheeks are thin,
And pure wide curve from ear to chin, -
With Raffael’s or Da Vinci’s hand
To show them to men’s souls, might stand,
Whole ages long, the whole world through,
For preachings of what God can do.
What has man done here? How atone,
Great God, for this which man has done?
And for the body and soul which by
Man’s pitiless doom must now comply
With lifelong hell, what lullaby
Of sweet forgetful second birth
Remains? All dark. No sign on earth
What measure of God’s rest endows
The many mansions of his house.
If but a woman’s heart might see
Such erring heart unerringly
For once! But that can never be.
Like a rose shut in a book
In which pure women may not look,
For its base pages claim control
To crush the flower within the soul;
Where through each dead rose-leaf that clings,
Pale as transparent psyche-wings,
To the vile text, are traced such things
As might make lady’s cheek indeed
More than a living rose to read;
So nought save foolish foulness may
Watch with hard eyes the sure decay;
And so the life-blood of this rose,
Puddled with shameful knowledge, flows
Through leaves no chaste hand may unclose:
Yet still it keeps such faded show
Of when ’twas gathered long ago,
That the crushed petals’ lovely grain,
The sweetness of the sanguine stain,
Seen of a woman’s eyes, must make
Her pitiful heart, so prone to ache,
Love roses better for its sake: -
Only that this can never be: -
Even so unto her sex is she. 275
Yet, Jenny, looking long at you,
The woman almost fades from view.
A cipher of man’s changeless sum
Of lust, past, present, and to come,
Is left. A riddle that one shrinks 280
To challenge from the scornful sphinx.
Like a toad within a stone
Seated while Time crumbles on;
Which sits there since the earth was curs’d
For Man’s transgression at the first; 285
Which, living through all centuries,
Not once has seen the sun arise;
Whose life, to its cold circle charmed,
The earth’s whole summers have not warmed;
Which always - whitherso the stone 290
Be flung - sits there, deaf, blind, alone; -
Aye, and shall not be driven out
Till that which shuts him round about
Break at the very Master’s stroke,
And the dust thereof vanish as smoke, 295
And the seed of Man vanish as dust: -
Even so within this world is Lust.
Come, come, what use in thoughts like this?
Poor little Jenny, good to kiss, -
You’d not believe by what strange roads 300
Thought travels, when your beauty goads
A man to-night to think of toads!
Jenny, wake up.... Why, there’s the dawn!
And there’s an early waggon drawn
To market, and some sheep that jog 305
Bleating before a barking dog;
And the old streets come peering through
Another night that London knew;
And all as ghostlike as the lamps.
So on the wings of day decamps 310
My last night’s frolic. Glooms begin
To shiver off as lights creep in
Past the gauze curtains half drawn-to,
And the lamp’s doubled shade grows blue, -
Your lamp, my Jenny, kept alight, 315
Like a wise virgin’s, all one night!
And in the alcove coolly spread
Glimmers with dawn your empty bed;
And yonder your fair face I see
Reflected lying on my knee, 320
Where teems with first foreshadowings
Your pier-glass scrawled with diamond rings.
And now without, as if some word
Had called upon them that they heard,
The London sparrows far and nigh 325
Clamour together suddenly;
And Jenny’s cage-bird grown awake
Here in their song his part must take,
Because here too the day doth break.
And somehow in myself the dawn 330
Among stirred clouds and veils withdrawn
Strikes greyly on her. Let her sleep.
But will it wake her if I heap
These cushions thus beneath her head
Where my knee was? No, - there’s your bed, 335
My Jenny, while you dream. And there
I lay among your golden hair
Perhaps the subject of your dreams,
These golden coins.
For still one deems
That Jenny’s flattering sleep confers 340
New magic on the magic purse, -
Grim web, how clogged with shrivelled flies!
Between the threads fine fumes arise
And shape their pictures in the brain.
There roll no streets in glare and rain, 345
Nor flagrant man-swine whets his tusk;
But delicately sighs in musk
The homage of the dim boudoir;
Or like a palpitating star
Thrilled into song, the opera-night 350
Breathes faint in the quick pulse of light;
Or at the carriage-window shine
Rich wares for choice; or, free to dine,
Whirls through its hour of health (divine
For her) the concourse of the Park. 355
And though in the discounted dark
Her functions there and here are one,
Beneath the lamps and in the sun
There reigns at least the acknowledged belle
Apparelled beyond parallel. 360
Ah Jenny, yes, we know your dreams.
For even the Paphian Venus seems
A goddess o’er the realms of love,
When silver-shrined in shadowy grove:
Aye, or let offerings nicely placed 365
But hide Priapus to the waist,
And whoso looks on him shall see
An eligible deity.
Why, Jenny, waking here alone
May help you to remember one, 370
Though all the memory’s long outworn
Of many a double-pillowed morn.
I think I see you when you wake,
And rub your eyes for me, and shake
My gold, in rising, from your hair, 375
A Danaë for a moment there.
Jenny, my love rang true! for still
Love at first sight is vague, until
That tinkling makes him audible.
And must I mock you to the last, 380
Ashamed of my own shame, - aghast
Because some thoughts not born amiss
Rose at a poor fair face like this?
Well, of such thoughts so much I know:
In my life, as in hers, they show, 385
By a far gleam which I may near,
A dark path I can strive to clear.
Only one kiss. Good-bye, my dear.
EVEN SO
So it is, my dear.
All such things touch secret
strings
For heavy hearts to hear.
So it is, my dear.
Very like indeed: 5
Sea and sky, afar, on high,
Sand and strewn seaweed, -
Very like indeed.
But the sea stands spread
As one wall with the flat skies, 10
Where the lean black craft like flies
Seem well-nigh stagnated,
Soon to drop off dead.
Seemed it so to us
When I was thine and thou wast mine, 15
And all these things were thus,
But all our world in us?
Could we be so now?
Not if all beneath heaven’s pall
Lay dead but I and thou, 20
Could we be so now!
A NEW YEAR’S BURDEN
Along the grass sweet airs are blown
Our way this day in Spring.
Of all the songs that we have known
Now which one shall we sing?
Not that, my love, ah no! - 5
Not this, my love? why, so! -
Yet both were ours, but hours will come and go.
The grove is all a pale frail mist,
The new year sucks the sun.
Of all the kisses that we kissed 10
Now which shall be the one?
Not that, my love, ah no! -
Not this, my love? - heigh-ho
For all the sweets that all the winds can blow!
The branches cross above our eyes, 15
The skies are in a net:
And what’s the thing beneath the skies
We two would most forget?
Not birth, my love, no, no - 20
Not death, my love, no, no, -
The love once ours, but ours long hours ago.
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, 5
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 10
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 15
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. 20
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.
AN OLD SONG ENDED
‘How should I your true love know
From another one?’
‘By his cockle-hat and staff
And his sandal-shoon.’
‘And what signs have told you now 5
That he hastens home?’
‘Lo! the spring is nearly gone,
He is nearly come.’
‘For a token is there nought,
Say, that he should bring? 10
‘He will bear a ring I gave
And another ring.’
‘How may I, when he shall ask,
Tell him who lies there?’
‘Nay, but leave my face unveiled 15
And unbound my hair.’
‘Can you say to me some word
I shall say to him?’
‘Say I’m looking in his eyes
Though my eyes are dim.’ 20
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, 5
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? 10
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, 15
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. 20
Kindled with love-breath, (the sun’s kiss is colder!)
Thy sweetness all near me, so distant to-day;
My hand round thy neck and thy hand on my shoulder,
My mouth to thy mouth as the world melts away.
What is it keeps me afar from thy bower, - 25
My spirit, my body, so fain to be there?
Waters engulfing or fires that devour? -
Earth heaped against me or death in the air?
Nay, but in day-dreams, for terror, for pity,
The trees wave their heads with an omen to tell; 30
Nay, but in night-dreams, throughout the dark city,
The hours, clashed together, lose count in the bell.
Shall I not one day remember thy bower,
One day when all days are one day to me? -
Thinking, ‘I stirred not, and yet had the power,’- 35
Yearning, ‘Ah God, if again it might be!’
Peace, peace! such a small lamp illumes, on this highway,
So dimly so few steps in front of my feet, -
Yet shows me that her way is parted from my way....
Out of sight, beyond light, at what goal may we meet? 40
MY FATHER’S CLOSE
Old French
Inside my father’s close,
(Fly away O my heart away!)
Sweet apple-blossom blows
So sweet.
Three kings’ daughters fair,
(Fly away O my heart away!)
They lie below it there
So sweet.
‘Ah!’ says the eldest one,
(Fly away O my heart away!)
‘I think the day’s begun
So sweet.’
‘Ah!’ says the second one,
(Fly away O my heart away!)
‘Far off I hear the drum
So sweet.
‘Ah!’ says the youngest one,
(Fly away O my heart away!)
‘It’s my true love, my own,
So sweet.
‘Oh! if he fight and win,’
(Fly away O my heart away!)
‘I keep my love for him,
So sweet:
Oh! let him lose or win,
He hath it still complete.’
JOHN OF TOURS
Old French
John of Tours is back with peace,
But he comes home ill at ease.
‘Good-morrow, mother.’
‘Good-morrow, son;
Your wife has borne you a little one.’
‘Go now, mother, go before, 5
Make me a bed upon the floor;
‘Very low your foot must fall,
That my wife hear not at all.’
As it neared the midnight toll,
John of Tours gave up his soul. 10
‘Tell me now, my mother my dear,
What’s the crying that I hear?’
‘Dau
ghter, it’s the children wake
Crying with their teeth that ache.’
‘Tell me though, my mother my dear, 15
What’s the knocking that I hear?’
‘Daughter, it’s the carpenter
Mending planks upon the stair.’
‘Tell me too, my mother my dear,
What’s the singing that I hear?’ 20
‘Daughter, it’s the priests in rows
Going round about our house.’
‘Tell me then, my mother my dear,
What’s the dress that I should wear?’
‘Daughter, any reds or blues, 25
But the black is most in use.’
‘Nay, but say, my mother my dear,
Why do you fall weeping here?’
Oh! the truth must be said, -
It’s that John of Tours is dead.’ 30
‘Mother, let the sexton know
That the grave must be for two;
‘Aye, and still have room to spare,
For you must shut the baby there.’
DANTIS TENEBRÆ
IN MEMORY OF MY FATHER
And didst thou know indeed, when at the font
Together with thy name thou gav’st me his,
That also on thy son must Beatrice
Decline her eyes according to her wont,
Accepting me to be of those that haunt 5
The vale of magical dark mysteries
Where to the hills her poet’s foot-track lies
And wisdom’s living fountain to his chaunt
Trembles in music? This is that steep land
Where he that holds his journey stands at gaze 10
Tow’rd sunset, when the clouds like a new height
Seem piled to climb. These things I understand:
For here, where day still soothes my lifted face,
On thy bowed head, my father, fell the night.
ASPECTA MEDUSA
Andromeda, by Perseus saved and wed,
Hankered each day to see the Gorgon’s head:
Till o’er a fount he held it, bade her lean,
And mirrored in the wave was safely seen
That death she lived by.
Let not thine eyes know 5
Any forbidden thing itself, although
It once should save as well as kill: but be
Its shadow upon life enough for thee.
PLIGHTED PROMISE
In a soft-complexioned sky,
Fleeting rose and kindling grey,
Have you seen Aurora fly
At the break of day?
So my maiden, so my plighted may
Blushing cheek and gleaming eye
Lifts to look my way.
Where the inmost leaf is stirred
With the heart-beat of the grove,
Complete Poetical Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti Page 12