The Pre-Raphaelites- From Rossetti to Ruskin
Page 11
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;