Stoop, Lord, as once before, now once anew
Stoop, Lord, and hearken, hearken, Lord, and do,
And take my will, and take my heart, and take me too.
O YE, WHO ARE NOT DEAD AND FIT
O ye, who are not dead and fit
Like blasted tree beside the pit
But for the axe that levels it,
Living show life of love, whereof
The force wields earth and heaven above:
Who knows not love begetteth love?
Love poises earth in space, Love rolls
Wide worlds rejoicing on their poles,
And girds them round with aureoles.
Love lights the sun, Love thro’ the dark
Lights the moon’s evanescent arc,
Lights up the star, lights up the spark.
O ye who taste that love is sweet,
Set waymarks for all doubtful feet
That stumble on in search of it.
Sing notes of love: that some who hear
Far off inert may lend an ear,
Rise up and wonder and draw near.
Lead life of love: that others who
Behold your life, may kindle too
With love, and cast their lot with you.
WHERE SHALL I FIND A WHITE ROSE BLOWING?
Where shall I find a white rose blowing? —
Out in the garden where all sweets be. —
But out in my garden the snow was snowing
And never a white rose opened for me.
Nought but snow and a wind were blowing
And snowing.
Where shall I find a blush rose blushing? —
On the garden wall or the garden bed. —
But out in my garden the rain was rushing
And never a blush rose raised its head.
Nothing glowing, flushing or blushing:
Rain rushing.
Where shall I find a red rose budding? —
Out in the garden where all things grow. —
But out in my garden a flood was flooding
And never a red rose began to blow.
Out in a flooding what should be budding?
All flooding!
Now is winter and now is sorrow,
No roses but only thorns today:
Thorns will put on roses tomorrow,
Winter and sorrow scudding away.
No more winter and no more sorrow
Tomorrow.
REDEEMING THE TIME
A life of hope deferred too often is
A life of wasted opportunities;
A life of perished hope too often is
A life of all-lost opportunities:
Yet hope is but the flower and not the root,
And hope is still the flower and not the fruit; —
Arise and sow and weed: a day shall come
When also thou shalt keep thy harvest home.
NOW THEY DESIRE A BETTER COUNTRY
Love said nay, while Hope kept saying
All his sweetest say,
Hope so keen to start a-maying! —
Love said nay.
Love was bent to watch and pray;
Long the watching, long the praying;
Hope grew drowsy, pale and grey.
Hope in dreams set off a-straying,
All his dream-world flushed by May;
While unslumbering, praying, weighing,
Love said nay.
A CASTLE-BUILDER’S WORLD
“The line of confusion, and the stones of emptiness.”
Unripe harvest there hath none to reap it
From the misty gusty place,
Unripe vineyard there hath none to keep it
In unprofitable space.
Living men and women are not found there,
Only masks in flocks and shoals;
Flesh-and-bloodless hazy masks surround there,
Ever wavering orbs and poles;
Flesh-and-bloodless vapid masks abound there,
Shades of bodies without souls.
THESE ALL WAIT UPON THEE
Innocent eyes not ours
Are made to look on flowers,
Eyes of small birds and insects small:
Morn after summer morn
The sweet rose on her thorn
Opens her bosom to them all.
The least and last of things
That soar on quivering wings,
Or crawl among the grass blades out of sight,
Have just as clear a right
To their appointed portion of delight
As Queens or Kings.
DOETH WELL … DOETH BETTER
My love whose heart is tender said to me,
“A moon lacks light except her sun befriend her.
Let us keep tryst in heaven, dear Friend,” said she,
My love whose heart is tender.
From such a loftiness no words could bend her:
Yet still she spoke of “us” and spoke as “we,”
Her hope substantial, while my hope grew slender.
Now keeps she tryst beyond earth’s utmost sea,
Wholly at rest, tho’ storms should toss and rend her;
And still she keeps my heart and keeps its key,
My love whose heart is tender.
OUR HEAVEN MUST BE WITHIN OURSELVES
Our heaven must be within ourselves,
Our home and heaven the work of faith
All thro’ this race of life which shelves
Downward to death.
So faith shall build the boundary wall,
And hope shall plant the secret bower,
That both may show magnifical
With gem and flower.
While over all a dome must spread,
And love shall be that dome above;
And deep foundations must be laid,
And these are love.
VANITY OF VANITIES
Of all the downfalls in the world,
The flutter of an Autumn leaf
Grows grievous by suggesting grief:
Who thought, when Spring was first unfurled,
Of this? The wide world lay empearled;
Who thought of frost that nips the world?
Sigh on, my ditty.
There lurk a hundred subtle stings
To prick us in our daily walk:
An apple cankered on its stalk,
A robin snared for all his wings,
A voice that sang but never sings;
Yea, sight or sound or silence stings.
Kind Lord, show pity.
THE HILLS ARE TIPPED WITH SUNSHINE, WHILE I WALK
The hills are tipped with sunshine, while I walk
In shadows dim and cold:
The unawakened rose sleeps on her stalk
In a bud’s fold,
Until the sun flood all the world with gold.
The hills are crowned with glory, and the glow
Flows widening down apace:
Unto the sunny hill-tops I, set low,
Lift a tired face, —
Ah, happy rose, content to wait for grace!
How tired a face, how tired a brain, how tired
A heart I lift, who long
For something never felt but still desired;
Sunshine and song,
Song where the choirs of sunny heaven stand choired.
SCARCE TOLERABLE LIFE, WHICH ALL LIFE LONG
Scarce tolerable life, which all life long
Is dominated by one dread of death;
Is such life, life? if so, who pondereth
May call salt sweetness or call discord song.
Ah me, this solitude where swarms a throng!
Life slowly grows and dwindles breath by breath:
Death slowly grows on us; no word it saith,
Its cords all lengthened and its pillars strong.
Life dies apace, a life that but deceives:
Death reigns as tho’ it lived, and yet i
s dead:
Where is the life that dies not but that lives?
The sweet long life, immortal, ever young,
True life that woes us with a silver tongue
Of hope, much said and much more left unsaid.
ALL HEAVEN IS BLAZING YET
All heaven is blazing yet
With the meridian sun:
Make haste, unshadowing sun, make haste to set;
O lifeless life, have done.
I choose what once I chose;
What once I willed, I will:
Only the heart its own bereavement knows;
O clamorous heart, lie still.
That which I chose, I choose;
That which I willed, I will;
That which I once refused, I still refuse:
O hope deferred, be still.
That which I chose and choose
And will is Jesus’ Will:
He hath not lost his life who seems to lose:
O hope deferred, hope still.
BALM IN GILEAD
Heartsease I found, where Love-lies-bleeding
Empurpled all the ground:
Whatever flowers I missed unheeding,
Heartsease I found.
Yet still my garden mound
Stood sore in need of watering, weeding,
And binding growths unbound.
Ah, when shades fell to light succeeding
I scarcely dared look round:
“Love-lies-bleeding” was all my pleading,
Heartsease I found.
IN THE DAY OF HIS ESPOUSALS
That Song of Songs which is Solomon’s
Sinks and rises, and loves and longs,
Thro’ temperate zones and torrid zones,
That Song of Songs.
Fair its floating moon with her prongs:
Love is laid for its paving stones:
Right it sings without thought of wrongs.
Doves it hath with music of moans,
Queens in throngs and damsels in throngs,
High tones and mysterious undertones,
That Song of Songs.
SHE CAME FROM THE UTTERMOST PART OF THE EARTH
“The half was not told me,” said Sheba’s Queen,
Weighing that wealth of wisdom and of gold:
“Thy fame falls short of this that I have seen:
The half was not told.
“Happy thy servants who stand to behold,
Stand to drink in thy gracious speech and mien;
Happy, thrice happy, the flock of thy fold.
“As the darkened moon while a shadow between
Her face and her kindling sun is rolled,
I depart; but my heart keeps memory green:
The half was not told.”
ALLELUIA! OR ALAS! MY HEART IS CRYING
Alleluia! or Alas! my heart is crying:
So yours is sighing;
Or replying with content undying,
Alleluia!
Alas! grieves overmuch for pain that is ending,
Hurt that is mending,
Life descending soon to be ascending,
Alleluia!
THE PASSION FLOWER HATH SPRUNG UP TALL
The Passion Flower hath sprung up tall,
Hath east and west its arms outspread;
The heliotrope shoots up its head
To clear the shadow of the wall:
Down looks the Passion Flower,
The heliotrope looks upward still,
Hour by hour
On the heavenward hill.
The Passion Flower blooms red or white,
A shadowed white, a cloudless red;
Caressingly it droops its head,
Its leaves, its tendrils, from the light:
Because that lowlier flower
Looks up, but mounts not half so high,
Hour by hour
Tending toward the sky.
GOD’S ACRE
Hail, garden of confident hope!
Where sweet seeds are quickening in darkness and cold;
For how sweet and how young will they be
When they pierce thro’ the mould.
Balm, myrtle, and heliotrope
There watch and there wait out of sight for their Sun:
While the Sun, which they see not, doth see
Each and all one by one.
THE FLOWERS APPEAR ON THE EARTH
Young girls wear flowers,
Young brides a flowery wreath,
But next we plant them
In garden plots of death.
Whose lot is best:
The maiden’s curtained rest,
Or bride’s whose hoped-for sweet
May yet outstrip her feet?
Ah! what are such as these
To death’s sufficing ease?
He sleeps indeed who sleeps in peace
Where night and morning meet.
Dear are the blossoms
For bride’s or maiden’s head,
But dearer planted
Around our blessed dead.
Those mind us of decay
And joys that fade away,
These preach to us perfection,
Long love and resurrection.
We make our graveyards fair,
For spirit-like birds of air,
For Angels may be finding there
Lost Eden’s own delection.
THOU KNEWEST … THOU OUGHTEST THEREFORE
Behold in heaven a floating dazzling cloud,
So dazzling that I could but cry Alas!
Alas, because I felt how low I was;
Alas, within my spirit if not aloud,
Foreviewing my last breathless bed and shroud:
Thus pondering, I glanced downward on the grass;
And the grass bowed when airs of heaven would pass,
Lifting itself again when it had bowed.
That grass spake comfort; weak it was and low,
Yet strong enough and high enough to bend
In homage at a message from the sky:
As the grass did and prospered, so will I;
Tho’ knowing little, doing what I know,
And strong in patient weakness till the end.
GO IN PEACE
Can peach renew lost bloom,
Or violet lost perfume,
Or sullied snow turn white as overnight?
Man cannot compass it, yet never fear:
The leper Naaman
Shows what God will and can;
God Who worked there is working here;
Wherefore let shame, not gloom, betinge thy brow,
God Who worked then is working now.
HALF DEAD
O Christ the Life, look on me where I lie
Ready to die:
O Good Samaritan, nay, pass not by.
O Christ, my Life, pour in Thine oil and wine
To keep me Thine;
Me ever Thine, and Thee for ever mine.
Watch by Thy saints and sinners, watch by all
Thy great and small:
Once Thou didst call us all, — O Lord, recall.
Think how Thy saints love sinners, how they pray
And hope alway,
And thereby grow more like Thee day by day.
O Saint of saints, if those with prayer and vow
Succour us now… .
It was not they died for us, it was Thou.
ONE OF THE SOLDIERS WITH A SPEAR PIERCED HIS SIDE
Ah, Lord, we all have pierced Thee: wilt Thou be
Wroth with us all to slay us all?
Nay, Lord, be this thing far from Thee and me:
By whom should we arise, for we are small,
By whom if not by Thee?
Lord, if of us who pierced Thee Thou spare one,
Spare yet one more to love Thy Face,
And yet another of poor souls undone,
Another, and another — God of grace,
Let mercy overrun.
WHERE LOVE IS, THERE COMES SORROW
Where love is, there comes sorrow
Today or else tomorrow:
Endure the mood,
Love only means our good.
Where love is, there comes pleasure
With or withouten measure,
Early or late
Cheering the sorriest state.
Where love is, all perfection
Is stored for heart’s delection;
For where love is
Dwells every sort of bliss.
Who would not choose a sorrow
Love’s self will cheer tomorrow?
One day of sorrow,
Then such a long tomorrow!
BURY HOPE OUT OF SIGHT
Bury Hope out of sight,
No book for it and no bell;
It never could bear the light
Even while growing and well:
Think if now it could bear
The light on its face of care
And grey scattered hair.
No grave for Hope in the earth,
But deep in that silent soul
Which rang no bell for its birth
And rings no funeral toll.
Cover its once bright head;
Nor odours nor tears be shed:
It lived once, it is dead.
Brief was the day of its power,
The day of its grace how brief:
As the fading of a flower,
Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Christina Rossetti Page 46