Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Christina Rossetti

by Christina Rossetti

  Maude smiled as paragraph after paragraph enlarged on the same topic. At last she said: “Agnes, if you could not be yourself, but must become one of us three: I do n’t mean as to goodness, of course, but merely as regards circumstances, — would you change with Sister Magdalen, with Mary, or with me?”

  “Not with Mary, certainly. Neither should I have courage to change with you; I never should bear pain so well: nor yet with Sister Magdalen, for I want her fervour of devotion. So at present I’ fear you must even put up with me as I am. Will that do?”

  There was a pause. A fresh wind had sprung up and the sun was setting.

  At length Maude resumed: “Do you recollect last Christmas Eve when I was so wretched, what shocking things I said? How I rejoice that my next Communion was not, indeed, delayed till sickness had stripped me of temptation and sin together.”

  “Did I say that? It was very harsh.”

  “Not harsh: it was just and right as far as it went, only something more was required. But I never told you what altered me. The truth is, for a time I avoided as much as possible frequenting our parish church, for fear of remark. Mamma, knowing how I love St. Andrew’s, let me go there very often by myself, because the walk is too long for her. I wanted resolution to do right, yet believe me I was very miserable: how I could say my prayers at that period is a mystery. So matters went on; till one day as I was returning from a shop, I met Mr, Paulson. He enquired immediately whether I had been staying in the country? Of course I answered, No. Had I been ill? again, No. Then gradually the whole story came out. I never shall forget the shame of my admissions, each word seemed forced from me, yet at last all was told. I will not repeat all we said then, and on a subsequent occasion when he saw me at church, the end was that I partook of the Holy Communion on Easter Sunday. That was indeed a feast. I felt as if I never could do wrong again, and yet — well, after my next impatient fit, I wrote this.” Here she took a paper from the table: “Do you care to see it? I will rest a little, for talking is almost too much for me.”

  I watched a rosebud very long

  Brought on by dew and sun and shower,

  Waiting to see the perfect flower:

  Then when I thought it should be strong,

  It opened at the matin hour

  And fell at evensong.

  I watched a nest from day to day,

  A green nest, full of pleasant shade,

  Wherein three little eggs were laid:

  But when they should have hatched in May,

  The two old birds had grown afraid,

  Or tired, and flew away.

  Then in my wrath I broke the bough

  That I had tended with such care,

  Hoping its scent should fill the air:

  I crushed the eggs, not heeding how

  Their ancient promise had been fair: —

  I would have vengeance now.

  But the dead branch spoke from the sod,

  And the eggs answered me again:

  Because we failed dost thou complain?

  Is thy wrath just? And what if God,

  Who waiteth for thy fruits in vain,

  Should also take the rod?

  “You can keep it if you like,” continued Maude, when her cousin had finished reading: “Only don’t let any one else know why it was written. And, Agnes, it would only pain mamma to look over everything if I die; will you examine the verses, and destroy what I evidently never intended to be seen. They might all be thrown away together, only mamma is so fond of them. What will she do?” and the poor girl hid her face in the pillows.

  “But is there no hope, then?”

  “Not the slightest, if you mean of recovery; and she does not know it. Do n’t go away when all’s over, but do what you can to comfort her. I have been her misery from my birth, till now there is no time to do better. But you must leave me, please; for I feel completely exhausted. Or stay one moment: I saw Mr. Paulson again this morning, and he promised to come to-morrow to administer the Blessed Sacrament to me; so I count on you and mamma receiving with me, for the last time perhaps: will you?”

  “Yes, dear Maude. But you are so young, do n’t give up hope. And now would you like me to remain here during the night? I can establish myself quite comfortably on your sofa.”

  “Thank you, but it could only make me restless. Good-night, my own dear Agnes.”

  “Good-night, dear Maude. I trust to rise early to-morrow, that I may be with you all the sooner.” So they parted.

  Agnes proceeded to perform the task imposed upon her, with scrupulous anxiety to carry out her friend’s wishes. The locked book she never opened, but had it placed on Maude’s coffin, with all its records of folly, sin, vanity, and, she humbly trusted, of true penitence also. She next collected the scraps of paper found in her cousin’s desk and portfolio, or lying loose upon the table, and proceeded to examine them. Many of these were mere fragments, many half-effaced pencil scrawls, and some written on torn backs of letters, and some full of incomprehensible abbreviations. Agnes was astonished at the variety of Maude’s compositions. Piece after piece she committed to the flames, fearful lest any should be preserved which were not intended for general perusal: but it cost her a pang to do so; and to see how small a number remained for Mrs. Foster. Of three only she took copies for herself. The first was dated ten days after Maude’s accident:

  Sleep, let me sleep, for I am sick of care;

  Sleep, let me sleep, for my pain wearies me.

  Shut out the light; thicken the heavy air

  With drowsy incense; let a distant stream

  Of music lull me, languid as a dream

  Soft as the whisper of a Summer sea.

  Pluck me no rose that groweth on a thorn,

  No myrtle white and cold as snow in June,

  Fit for a virgin on her marriage morn:

  But bring me poppies brimmed with sleepy death,

  And ivy choking what it garlandeth,

  And primroses that open to the moon.

  Listen, the music swells into a song,

  A simple song I loved in days of yore;

  The echoes take it up and up along

  The hills, and the wind blows it back again: —

  Peace, peace, there is a memory in that strain

  Of happy days that shall return no more.

  Oh peace, your music wakeneth old thought,

  But not old hope that made my life so sweet,

  Only the longing that must end in naught.

  Have patience with me, friends, a little while:

  For soon where you shall dance and sing and smile,

  My quickened dust may blossom at your feet.

  Sweet thought that I may yet live and grow green,

  That leaves may yet spring from the withered root,

  And birds and flowers and berries half unseen;

  Then if you haply muse upon the past,

  Say this: Poor child, she hath her wish at last;

  Barren through life, but in death bearing fruit.

  The second, though written on the same paper, was evidently composed at a subsequent period:

  Fade, tender lily,

  Fade, Oh crimson rose,

  Fade every flower,

  Sweetest flower that blows.

  Go, chilly Autumn,

  Come, Oh Winter cold;

  Let the green stalks die away

  Into common mould.

  Birth follows hard on death,

  Life on withering.

  Hasten, we shall come the sooner

  Back to pleasant Spring.

  The last was a sonnet, dated the morning before her death:

  What is it Jesus saith unto the soul? —

  “Take up the Cross and come, and follow Me.

  “This word he saith to all; no man may be

  Without the Cross, wishing to win the goal.

  Then take it bravely up, setting thy whole

  Body to bear; it will not weigh on thee

  B
eyond thy utmost strength: take it, for He

  Knoweth when thou art weak, and will control

  The powers of darkness that thou needst not fear.

  He will be with thee, helping, strengthening,

  Until it is enough: for lo, the day

  Cometh when He shall call thee: thou shall hear

  His voice that says:” Winter is past, and Spring

  Is come; arise, My Love, and come away.”

  Agnes cut one long tress from Maude’s head; and on her return home laid it in the same paper with the lock of Magdalen’s hair. These she treasured greatly, and, gazing on them, would long and pray for the hastening of that eternal morning, which shall reunite in God those who in Him, or for His Sake, have parted here.

  Amen for us all.

  THE END.

  The Biography

  Rossetti, 1877

  CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI by Theodore Watts-Dunton

  Theodore Watts-Dunton (1832-1914) was a critic and poet, who is most remembered as being the friend that rescued the poet Algernon Charles Swinburne from alcoholism. He was originally educated as a naturalist, which he gave up for the law, when he qualified as a solicitor. Watts-Dunton went to London, where he practised for some years, giving his spare time to his chosen pursuit of literature and one of his clients was Swinburne, whom he befriended in 1872.

  Watts-Dunton contributed regularly to The Examiner from 1874 and to The Athenaeum from 1875 until 1898, being for more than twenty years the principal critic of poetry in The Athenaeum. He wrote widely for other publications and contributed several articles to the Encyclopædia Britannica, of which the most significant was on Poetry in the ninth edition.

  Watts-Dunton had considerable influence as the friend of many of the leading men of letters of his time and he especially enjoyed the confidence of Tennyson. In later years, Dante Gabriel Rossetti was his most intimate friend and Rossetti made a portrait of Watts in pastel in 1874. In 1916 Watts-Dunton published the biographical book Old Familiar Faces, which details many reminiscences of the pre-Raphaelite circle, including the following chapter on the life and poetry of Christina Rossetti.

  Theodore Watts-Dunton

  CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI. 1830–1894.

  I.

  Although the noble poet and high-souled woman we have just lost had been ill and suffering from grievous pain for a long time, Death came at last with a soft hand which could but make him welcome. Since early in August, when she took to her bed, she was so extremely weak and otherwise ill that one scarcely expected her (at any time) to live more than a month or so, and for the last six weeks or thereabouts — say from the 15th of November — one expected her to die almost from day to day. My dear friend William Rossetti, who used to go to Torrington Square every afternoon, saw her on the afternoon of December 28th . He did not, he told me, much expect to find her alive in the afternoon of the 29th, and intended, therefore, to make his next call earlier. She died at half-past seven in the morning of the 29th, in the presence only of her faithful nurse Mrs. Read. It was through her sudden collapse that she missed at her side, when she passed away, that brother whose whole life has been one of devotion to his family, and whose tireless affection for the last of them was one of the few links that bound Christina’s sympathy to the earth.

  Her illness was of a most complicated kind: two years and a half ago she was operated on for cancer: functional malady of the heart, accompanied by dropsy in the left arm and hand, followed. Although on Friday the serious symptoms of her case became, as I have said, accentuated, she was throughout the day and night entirely conscious; and so peaceful and apparently so free from pain was she that neither the medical man nor the nurse supposed the end to be quite so near as it was. During all this time, up to the moment of actual dissolution, her lips seemed to be moving in prayer, but, of course, this with her was no uncommon sign: duty and prayer ordered her life. Her sufferings, I say, had been great, but they had been encountered by a fortitude that was greater still. Throughout all her life, indeed, she was the most notable example that our time has produced of the masterful power of man’s spiritual nature when at its highest to conquer in its warfare with earthly conditions, as her brother Gabriel’s life was the most notable example of the struggle of the spiritual nature with the bodily when the two are equally equipped. It is the conviction of one whose high privilege it was to know her in many a passage of sorrow and trial that of all the poets who have lived and died within our time, Christina Rossetti must have had the noblest soul.

  A certain irritability of temper, which was, perhaps, natural to her, had, when I first became acquainted with her family (about 1872), been overcome, or at least greatly chastened, by religion (which with her was a passion) and by a large acquaintance with grief, resulting in a long meditation over the mystery of pain. In wordly matters her generosity may be described as boundless; but perhaps it is not difficult for a poet to be generous in a worldly sense — to be free in parting with that which can be precious only to commonplace souls. What, however, is not so easy is for one holding such strong religious convictions as Christina Rossetti held to cherish such generous thoughts and feelings as were hers about those to whom her shibboleths meant nothing. This was what made her life so beautiful and such a blessing to all. The indurating effects of a selfish religiosity never withered her soul nor narrowed it. With her, indeed, religion was very love —

  A largess universal like the sun.

  It is always futile to make guesses as to what might have been the development of a poet’s genius and character had the education of circumstances been different from what it was, and perhaps it is specially futile to guess what would have been the development under other circumstances of her, the poet of whom her friends used to speak with affection and reverence as “Christina.”

  On the death of her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti (or as his friends used to call him Gabriel) in 1882, I gave that sketch of the family story which has formed the basis of most of the biographical notices of him and his family; it would, therefore, be superfluous to reiterate what I said and what is now matter of familiar knowledge. It may, however, be as well to remind the reader that, owing to the peculiar position in London of the father Gabriele Rossetti, the family were during childhood and partly during youth as much isolated from the outer English world as were the family between whom and themselves there were many points of resemblance — the Brontës. The two among them who were not in youth of a retiring disposition were he who afterwards became the most retiring of all, Gabriel, and Maria, the latter of whom was in one sense retiring, and in another expansive. In her dark brown, or, as some called them, black eyes, there would suddenly come up and shine an enthusiasm, a capacity of poetic and romantic fire, to the quelling of which there must have gone an immensity of religious force. As to Gabriel, during a large portion of his splendid youth he exhibited a genial breadth of front that affined him to Shakespeare and Walter Scott. The English strain in the family found expression in him, and in him alone. There was a something in the hearty ring of his voice that drew Englishmen to him as by a magnet.

  While it was but little that the others drew from the rich soil of merry England, he drew from it half at least of his radiant personality — half at least of his incomparable genius. Though he was in every way part and parcel of that marvellous little family circle of children of genius in Charlotte Street, he had also the power of looking at it from the outside. It would be strange, indeed, if this or any other power should be found lacking in him. I have often heard Rossetti — by the red flicker of the studio fire, when the gas was turned down to save his eyesight — give the most graphic and fascinating descriptions of the little group and the way in which they grew up to be what they were under the tuition of a father whose career can only be called romantic, and a mother whose intellectual gifts were so remarkable that, had they not been in some great degree stifled by the exercise of an entire self-abnegation on behalf of her family, she, too, mus
t have become an important figure in literature.

  The father died in 1854, many years before I knew the family; but Gabriel’s description of him; his conversations with his brother-refugees and others who visited the house — conversations in which the dreamy and the matter-of-fact were oddly blent; his striking skill as an improvisatore of Italian poetry, and also as a master of pen-and-ink drawing; his great musical gift — a gift which none of his family seemed to have inherited; his fine tenor voice; his unflinching courage and independence of character (qualities which made him refuse, in a Protestant country, to make open abjuration of the creed in which the Rossettis had been reared, though he detested the Pope and all his works, and was, if not an actual freethinker, thoroughly latitudinarian) — Gabriel’s pictures of this poet and father of poets were so vivid — so amazingly and incredibly vivid — that I find it difficult to think I never met the father in the flesh: not unfrequently I find myself talking of him as if I had known him. What higher tribute than this can be made to a narrator’s dramatic power? Those who have seen the elder Rossetti’s pen-and-ink drawings (the work of a child) will agree with me that Gabriel did not over-estimate them in the least degree. All the Rossettis inherited from their father voices so musical that they could be recognized among other voices in any gathering, and no doubt that clear-cut method of syllabification which was so marked a characteristic of Christina’s conversation, but which gave it a sort of foreign tone, was inherited from the father. Her affinity to the other two members of the family was seen in that intense sense of duty of which Gabriel, with all his generosity, had but little. There was no martyrdom she would not have undertaken if she thought that duty called upon her to undertake it, and this may be said of the other two.