Complete Poetical Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Page 26
And how she dealt for her dear Lord's sake
Dire vengeance manifold.
'T was in the Charterhouse of Perth,
In the fair-lit Death-chapelle,
That the slain King's corpse on bier was laid
With chaunt and requiem-knell.
And all with royal wealth of balm
Was the body purified;
And none could trace on the brow and lips
The death that he had died.
In his robes of state he lay asleep
With orb and sceptre in hand;
And by the crown he wore on his throne
Was his kingly forehead spann'd.
And, girls, 't was a sweet sad thing to see
How the curling golden hair,
As in the day of the poet's youth,
From the King's crown clustered there.
And if all had come to pass in the brain
That throbbed beneath those curls,
Then Scots had said in the days to come
That this their soil was a different home
And a different Scotland, girls!
And the Queen sat by him night and days
And oft she knelt in prayer,
All wan and pale in the widow's veil
That shrouded her shining hair.
And I had got good help of my hurt:
And only to me some sign
She made; and save the priests that were there
No face would she see but mine.
And the month of March wore on apace;
And now fresh couriers fared
Still from the country of the Wild Scots
With news of the traitors snared.
And still, as I told her day by day,
Her pallor changed to sight,
And the frost grew to a furnace-flame
That burnt her visage white.
And evermore as I brought her word,
She bent to her dead King James,
And in the cold ear with fire-drawn breath
She spoke the traitors' names.
But when the name of Sir Robert Græme
Was the one she had to give,
I ran to hold her up from the floor;
For the froth was on her lips, and sore
I feared that she could not live.
And the month of March wore nigh to its end,
And still was the death-pall spread;
For she would not bury her slaughtered lord
Till his slayers all were dead.
And now of their dooms dread tidings came,
And of torments fierce and dire;
And naught she spake--she had ceased to speak--
But her eyes were a soul on fire.
But when I told her the bitter end
Of the stern and just award,
She leaned o'er the bier, and thrice three times
She kissed the lips of her lord.
And then she said, "My King, they are dead!"
And she knelt on the chapel floor,
And whispered low with a strange proud smile,
"James, James, they suffered more!"
Last she stood up to her queenly height,
But she shook like an autumn leaf,
As though the fire wherein she burned
Then left her body, and all were turned
To winter of life-long grief.
And "O James!" she said, "My James!" she said,
"Alas for the woeful thing,
That a poet true and a friend of man,
In desperate days of bale and ban,
Should needs be born a King!"
POSSESSION
There is a cloud above the sunset hill,
That wends and makes no stay,
For its goal lies beyond the fiery west;
A lingering breath no calm can chase away,
The onward labour of the wind’s last will; 5
A flying foam that overleaps the crest
Of the top wave: and in possession still
A further reach of longing; though at rest
From all the yearning years,
Together in the bosom of that day 10
Ye cling, and with your kisses drink your tears.
SPHERAL CHANGE
In this new shade of Death, the show
Passes me still of form and face;
Some bent, some gazing as they go,
Some swiftly, some at a dull pace,
Not one that speaks in any case. 5
If only one might speak! - the one
Who never waits till I come near;
But always seated all alone
As listening to the sunken air,
Is gone before I come to her. 10
O dearest! while we lived and died
A living death in every day,
Some hours we still were side by side,
When where I was you too might stay
And rest and need not go away. 15
O nearest, furthest! Can there be
At length some hard-earned heart-won home,
Where, - exile changed for sanctuary, -
Our lot may fill indeed its sum,
And you may wait and I may come? 20
ON CERTAIN ELIZABETHAN REVIVALS
O ruff-embastioned vast Elizabeth,
Bush to these bushel-bellied casks of wine,
Home-growth, ’tis true, but rank as turpentine-
What would we with such skittle-plays at death?
Say, must we watch these brawlers’ brandished lathe, 5
Or to their reeking wit our ears incline,
Because all Castaly flowed crystalline
In gentle Shakspeare’s modulated breath?
What! must our drama with the rat-pie vie,
Nor the scene close while one is left to kill? 10
Shall this be poetry? And thou - thou man
Of blood, thou cannibalic Caliban,
What shall be said of thee? A poet? - Fie!
‘An honourable murderer, if you will.’
RALEIGH’S CELL IN THE TOWER
Here writ was the World’s History by his hand
Whose steps knew all the earth; albeit his world
In these few piteous paces then was furl’d.
Here daily, hourly, have his proud feet spann’d
This smaller speck than the receding land 5
Had ever shown his ships; what time he hurl’d
Abroad o’er new-found regions spiced and pearl’d
His country’s high dominion and command.
Here dwelt two spheres. The vast terrestrial zone
His spirit traversed; and that spirit was 10
Itself the zone celestial, round whose birth
The planets played within the zodiac’s girth;
Till hence, through unjust death unfeared, did pass
His spirit to the only land unknown.
MNEMOSYNE
(FOR A PICTURE)
Thou fill’st from the winged chalice of the soul
Thy lamp, O Memory! fire-winged to its goal.
TO PHILIP BOURKE MARSTON, INCITING ME TO POETIC WORK
Sweet Poet, thou of whom these years that roll
Must one day yet the burdened birthright learn,
And by the darkness of thine eyes discern
How piercing was the sight within thy soul; -
Gifted apart, thou goest to the great goal, 5
A cloud-bound radiant spirit, strong to earn,
Light-reft, that prize for which fond myriads yearn
Vainly light-blest, - the Seër’s aureole.
And doth thine ear, divinely dowered to catch
All spheral sounds in thy song blent so well, 10
Still hearken for my voice’s slumbering spell
With wistful love? Ah! let the Muse now snatch
My wreath for thy young brows, and bend to watch
Thy veiled transfiguring sense’s miracle.
FOR ‘AN ANNUNCIATION EARLY GER
MAN’
The lilies stand before her like a screen
Through which, upon this warm and solemn day,
God surely hears. For there she kneels to pray
Who wafts our prayers to God - Mary the Queen.
She was Faith’s Present, parting what had been 5
From what began with her, and is for aye.
On either hand, God’s twofold system lay:
With meek bowed face a Virgin prayed between.
So prays she, and the Dove flies in to her,
And she has turned. At the low porch is one 10
Who looks as though deep awe made him to smile.
Heavy with heat, the plants yield shadow there;
The loud flies cross each other in the sun;
And the aisled pillars meet the poplar-aisle.
AT THE SUN-RISE IN 1848
God said, Let there be light; and there was light.
Then heard we sounds as though the Earth did sing
And the Earth’s angels cried upon the wing:
We saw priests fall together and turn white:
And covered in the dust from the sun’s sight, 5
A king was spied, and yet another king.
We said: ‘The round world keeps its balancing;
On this globe, they and we are opposite, -
If it is day with us, with them ’tis night.’
Still, Man, in thy just pride, remember this: - 10
Thou hadst not made that thy sons’ sons shall ask
What the word king may mean in their day’s task,
But for the light that led: and if light is,
It is because God said, Let there be light.
AUTUMN SONG
Know’st thou not at the fall of the leaf
How the heart feels a languid grief
Laid on it for a covering,
And how sleep seems a goodly thing
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf? 5
And how the swift beat of the brain
Falters because it is in vain,
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf
Knowest thou not? and how the chief
Of joys seems - not to suffer pain? 10
Know’st thou not at the fall of the leaf
How the soul feels like a dried sheaf
Bound up at length for harvesting,
And how death seems a comely thing
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf? 15
THE LADY’S LAMENT
Never happy any more!
Aye, turn the saying o’er and o’er,
It says but what it said before,
And heart and life are just as sore.
The wet leaves blow aslant the floor 5
In the rain through the open door.
No, no more.
Never happy any more!
The eyes are weary and give o’er,
But still the soul weeps as before. 10
And always must each one deplore
Each once, nor bear what others bore?
This is now as it was of yore.
No, no more.
Never happy any more! 15
Is it not a sorry lore
That says, ‘Take strength, the worst is o’er’?
Shall the stars seem as heretofore?
The day wears on more and more -
While I was weeping the day wore. 20
No, no more.
Never happy any more!
In the cold behind the door
That was the dial striking four:
One for joy the past hours bore, 25
Two for hope and will cast o’er,
One for the naked dark before.
No, no more.
Never happy any more!
Put the light out, shut the door, 30
Sweep the wet leaves from the floor.
Even thus Fate’s hand has swept her floor,
Even thus Love’s hand has shut the door
Through which his warm feet passed of yore.
Shall it be opened any more? 35
No, no, no more.
VOX ECCLESIAE, VOX CHRISTI
I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held; and they cried with a loud voice, saying How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost Thou not judge and avenge blood on them that dwell on the earth? - REV. vi. 9, 10.
Not ‘neath the altar only, - yet, in sooth,
There more than elsewhere, - yet is the cry ‘How long?’
The right sown there hath still borne fruit in wrong -
The wrong waxed fourfold. Thence (in hate of truth)
O’er weapons blessed for carnage, to fierce youth 5
From evil age, the word hath hissed along: -
‘Ye are the Lord’s: go forth, destroy, be strong:
Christ’s Church absolves ye from Christ’s law of ruth.’
Therefore the wine-cup at the altar is
As Christ’s own blood indeed, and as the blood 10
Of Christ’s elect, at divers seasons spilt
On the altar-stone, that to man’s church, for this,
Shall prove a stone of stumbling, - whence it stood
To be rent up ere the true Church be built.
MEMORY
Is Memory most of miseries miserable,
Or the one flower of ease in bitterest hell?
THE STAIRCASE OF NOTRE DAME, PARIS
As one who, groping in a narrow stair,
Hath a strong sound of bells upon his ears,
Which, being at a distance off, appears
Quite close to him because of the pent air:
So with this France. She stumbles file and square 5
Darkling and without space for breath: each one
Who hears the thunder says: ‘It shall anon
Be in among her ranks to scatter her.’
This may be; and it may be that the storm
Is spent in rain upon the unscathed seas, 10
Or wasteth other countries ere it die:
Till she, - having climbed always through the swarm
Of darkness and of hurtling sound, - from these
Shall step forth on the light in a still sky.
NEAR BRUSSELS - A HALF-WAY PAUSE
The turn of noontide has begun.
In the weak breeze the sunshine yields.
There is a bell upon the fields.
On the long hedgerow’s tangled run
A low white cottage intervenes: 5
Against the wall a blind man leans,
And sways his face to have the sun.
Our horses’ hoofs stir in the road,
Quiet and sharp. Light hath a song
Whose silence, being heard, seems long. 10
The point of noon maketh abode,
And will not be at once gone through.
The sky’s deep colour saddens you,
And the heat weighs a dreamy load.
THE MIRROR
She knew it not: - most perfect pain
To learn: this too she knew not. Strife
For me, calm hers, as from the first.
’Twas but another bubble burst
Upon the curdling draught of life, - 5
My silent patience mine again.
As who, of forms that crowd unknown
Within a distant mirror’s shade,
Deems such an one himself, and makes
Some sign; but when the image shakes 10
No whit, he finds his thought betray’d,
And must seek elsewhere for his own.
DURING MUSIC
O cool unto the sense of pain
That last night’s sleep could not destroy;
O warm unto the sense of joy,
That dreams its life within the brain.
What though I lean o’er thee to scan 5
The written music cramped and stiff;-
’Tis dark to me, as hieroglyph
On those weird bulks
Egyptian.
But as from those, dumb now and strange,
A glory wanders on the earth, 10
Even so thy tones can call a birth
From these, to shake my soul with change.
O swift, as in melodious haste
Float o’er the keys thy fingers small;
O soft, as is the rise and fall 15
Which stirs that shade within thy breast.
ENGLISH MAY
Would God your health were as this month of May
Should be, were this not England, - and your face
Abroad, to give the gracious sunshine grace
And laugh beneath the budding hawthorn-spray.
But here the hedgerows pine from green to grey 5
While yet May’s lyre is tuning, and her song
Is weak in shade that should in sun be strong;
And your pulse springs not to so faint a lay.
If in my life be breath of Italy,
Would God that I might yield it all to you! 10
So, when such grafted warmth had burgeoned through
The languor of your Maytime’s hawthorn-tree,
My spirit at rest should walk unseen and see
The garland of your beauty bloom anew.
DAWN ON THE NIGHT-JOURNEY
Till dawn the wind drove round me. It is past
And still, and leaves the air to lisp of bird,
And to the quiet that is almost heard
Of the new-risen day, as yet bound fast
In the first warmth of sunrise. When the last 5
Of the sun’s hours to-day shall be fulfilled,
There shall another breath of time be stilled
For me, which now is to my senses cast
As much beyond me as eternity,
Unknown, kept secret. On the newborn air 10
The moth quivers in silence. It is vast,
Yea, even beyond the hills upon the sea,
The day whose end shall give this hour as sheer
As chaos to the irrevocable Past.
TO THOMAS WOOLNER: FIRST SNOW 9 FEBRUARY 1853
Woolner, to-night it snows for the first time.
Our feet knew well the path, where in this snow
Mine leave one track: how all the ways we know
Are hoary in the long-unwonted rime!
Grey as the ghosts which now in your new clime 5