The Pre-Raphaelites- From Rossetti to Ruskin

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The Pre-Raphaelites- From Rossetti to Ruskin Page 11

by Dinah Roe


  You know not what a book you seem,

  Half-read by lightning in a dream!

  How should you know, my Jenny? Nay,

  And I should be ashamed to say: –

  55 Poor beauty, so well worth a kiss!

  But while my thought runs on like this

  With wasteful whims more than enough,

  I wonder what you’re thinking of.

  If of myself you think at all,

  60 What is the thought? – conjectural

  On sorry matters best unsolved? –

  Or inly is each grace revolved

  To fit me with a lure? – or (sad

  To think!) perhaps you’re merely glad

  65 That I’m not drunk or ruffianly

  And let you rest upon my knee.

  For sometimes, were the truth confess’d,

  You’re thankful for a little rest, –

  Glad from the crush to rest within,

  70 From the heart-sickness and the din

  Where envy’s voice at virtue’s pitch

  Mocks you because your gown is rich;

  And from the pale girl’s dumb rebuke,

  Whose ill-clad grace and toil-worn look

  75 Proclaim the strength that keeps her weak

  And other nights than yours bespeak;

  And from the wise unchildish elf,

  To schoolmate lesser than himself

  Pointing you out, what thing you are: –

  80 Yes, from the daily jeer and jar,

  From shame and shame’s outbraving too,

  Is rest not sometimes sweet to you? –

  But most from the hatefulness of man

  Who spares not to end what he began,

  85 Whose acts are ill and his speech ill,

  Who, having used you at his will,

  Thrusts you aside, as when I dine

  I serve the dishes and the wine.

  Well, handsome Jenny mine, sit up,

  90 I’ve filled our glasses, let us sup,

  And do not let me think of you,

  Lest shame of yours suffice for two.

  What, still so tired? Well, well then, keep

  Your head there, so you do not sleep;

  95 But that the weariness may pass

  And leave you merry, take this glass.

  Ah! lazy lily hand, more bless’d

  If ne’er in rings it had been dress’d

  Nor ever by a glove conceal’d!

  100 Behold the lilies of the field,

  They toil not neither do they spin;

  (So doth the ancient text begin, –

  Not of such rest as one of these

  Can share.) Another rest and ease

  105 Along each summer-sated path

  From its new lord the garden hath,

  Than that whose spring in blessings ran

  Which praised the bounteous husbandman,

  Ere yet, in days of hankering breath,

  110 The lilies sickened unto death.

  What, Jenny, are your lilies dead?

  Aye, and the snow-white leaves are spread

  Like winter on the garden-bed.

  But you had roses left in May, –

  115 They were not gone too. Jenny, nay,

  But must your roses die, and those

  Their purfled buds that should unclose?

  Even so; the leaves are curled apart,

  Still red as from the broken heart,

  120 And here’s the naked stem of thorns.

  Nay, nay, mere words. Here nothing warns

  As yet of winter. Sickness here

  Or want alone could waken fear, –

  Nothing but passion wrings a tear.

  125 Except when there may rise unsought

  Haply at times a passing thought

  Of the old days which seem to be

  Much older than any history

  That is written in any book;

  130 When she would lie in fields and look

  Along the ground through the blown grass,

  And wonder where the city was,

  Far out of sight, whose broil and bale

  They told her then for a child’s tale.

  135 Jenny, you know the city now.

  A child can tell the tale there, how

  Some things which are not yet enroll’d

  In market-lists are bought and sold

  Even till the early Sunday light,

  140 When Saturday night is market-night

  Everywhere, be it dry or wet,

  And market-night in the Haymarket.

  Our learned London children know,

  Poor Jenny, all your pride and woe;

  145 Have seen your lifted silken skirt

  Advertise dainties through the dirt;

  Have seen your coach-wheels splash rebuke

  On virtue; and have learned your look

  When, wealth and health slipped past, you stare

  150 Along the streets alone, and there,

  Round the long park, across the bridge,

  The cold lamps at the pavement’s edge

  Wind on together and apart,

  A fiery serpent for your heart.

  155 Let the thoughts pass, an empty cloud!

  Suppose I were to think aloud, –

  What if to her all this were said?

  Why, as a volume seldom read

  Being opened halfway shuts again,

  160 So might the pages of her brain

  Be parted at such words, and thence

  Close back upon the dusty sense.

  For is there hue or shape defin’d

  In Jenny’s desecrated mind,

  165 Where all contagious currents meet,

  A Lethe of the middle street?

  Nay, it reflects not any face,

  Nor sound is in its sluggish pace,

  But as they coil those eddies clot,

  170 And night and day remember not.

  Why, Jenny, you’re asleep at last! –

  Asleep, poor Jenny, hard and fast, –

  So young and soft and tired; so fair,

  With chin thus nestled in your hair,

  175 Mouth quiet, eyelids almost blue

  As if some sky of dreams shone through!

  Just as another woman sleeps!

  Enough to throw one’s thoughts in heaps

  Of doubt and horror, – what to say

  180 Or think, – this awful secret sway,

  The potter’s power over the clay!

  Of the same lump (it has been said)

  For honour and dishonour made,

  Two sister vessels. Here is one.

  185 My cousin Nell is fond of fun,

  And fond of dress, and change, and praise,

  So mere a woman in her ways:

  And if her sweet eyes rich in youth

  Are like her lips that tell the truth,

  190 My cousin Nell is fond of love.

  And she’s the girl I’m proudest of.

  Who does not prize her, guard her well?

  The love of change, in cousin Nell,

  Shall find the best and hold it dear:

  195 The unconquered mirth turn quieter

  Not through her own, through others’ woe:

  The conscious pride of beauty glow

  Beside another’s pride in her,

  One little part of all they share.

  200 For Love himself shall ripen these

  In a kind soil to just increase

  Through years of fertilizing peace.

  Of the same lump (as it is said)

  For honour and dishonour made,

  205 Two sister vessels. Here is one.

  It makes a goblin of the sun.

  So pure, – so fall’n! How dare to think

  Of the first common kindred link?

  Yet, Jenny, till the world shall burn

  210 It seems that all things take their turn;

  And who shall say but this fair tree

  May nee
d, in changes that may be,

  Your children’s children’s charity?

  Scorned then, no doubt, as you are scorn’d!

  215 Shall no man hold his pride forewarn’d

  Till in the end, the Day of Days,

  At Judgment, one of his own race,

  As frail and lost as you, shall rise, –

  His daughter, with his mother’s eyes?

  220 How Jenny’s clock ticks on the shelf!

  Might not the dial scorn itself

  That has such hours to register?

  Yet as to me, even so to her

  Are golden sun and silver moon,

  225 In daily largesse of earth’s boon,

  Counted for life-coins to one tune.

  And if, as blindfold fates are toss’d,

  Through some one man this life be lost,

  Shall soul not somehow pay for soul?

  230 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, –

  235 The shadows where the cheeks are thin,

  And pure wide curve from ear to chin, –

  With Raffael’s, Leonardo’s hand

  To show them to men’s souls, might stand,

  Whole ages long, the whole world through,

  240 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

  245 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.

  250 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,

  255 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

  260 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,

  265 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,

  270 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: –

  275 Even so unto her sex is she.

  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,

  280 Is left. A riddle that one shrinks

  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

  285 For Man’s transgression at the first;

  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;

  290 Which always – whitherso the stone

  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,

  295 And the dust thereof vanish as smoke,

  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, –

  300 You’d not believe by what strange roads

  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 wagon drawn

  305 To market, and some sheep that jog

  Bleating before a barking dog;

  And the old streets come peering through

  Another night that London knew;

  And all as ghostlike as the lamps.

  310 So on the wings of day decamps

  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, –

  315 Your lamp, my Jenny, kept alight,

  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

  320 Reflected lying on my knee,

  Where teems with first foreshadowings

  Your pier-glass scrawled with diamond rings:

  And on your bosom all night worn

  Yesterday’s rose now droops forlorn

  325 But dies not yet this summer morn.

  And now without, as if some word

  Had called upon them that they heard,

  The London sparrows far and nigh

  Clamour together suddenly;

  330 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

  Among stirred clouds and veils withdrawn

  335 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,

  My Jenny, while you dream. And there

  340 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

  345 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,

  350 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

  355 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.

  360 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.

  365 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 plac’d

  370 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,

  375 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,

  380 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,

  385 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,

  390 By a far gleam which I may near,

  A dark path I can strive to clear.

  Only one kiss. Goodbye, my dear.

  The Portrait

  This is her picture as she was:

  It seems a thing to wonder on,

  As though mine image in the glass

  Should tarry when myself am gone

  5 I gaze until she seems to stir, –

  Until mine eyes almost aver

  That now, even now, the sweet lips part

  To breathe the words of the sweet heart: –

  And yet the earth is over her.

  10 Alas! even such the thin-drawn ray

  That makes the prison-depths more rude, –

  The drip of water night and day

  Giving a tongue to solitude.

  Yet only this, of love’s whole prize,

  15 Remains; save what in mournful guise

  Takes counsel with my soul alone, –

  Save what is secret and unknown,

  Below the earth, above the skies.

  In painting her I shrined her face

  20 Mid mystic trees, where light falls in

  Hardly at all; a covert place

  Where you might think to find a din

  Of doubtful talk, and a live flame

  Wandering, and many a shape whose name

  25 Not itself knoweth, and old dew,

  And your own footsteps meeting you,

  And all things going as they came.

  A deep dim wood; and there she stands

  As in that wood that day: for so

  30 Was the still movement of her hands

  And such the pure line’s gracious flow.

  And passing fair the type must seem,

  Unknown the presence and the dream.

  ’Tis she: though of herself, alas!

  35 Less than her shadow on the grass

  Or than her image in the stream.

  That day we met there, I and she

  One with the other all alone;

 

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