by Dinah Roe
Should bring her back to herself and to the old
Familiar face of nature and the sun.
‘Jesus Wept’
Mary rose up, as one in sleep might rise,
And went to meet her brother’s Friend: and they
Who tarried with her said: ‘she goes to pray
And weep where her dead brother’s body lies.’
5 So, with their wringing of hands and with sighs,
They stood before Him in the public way.
‘Had’st Thou been with him, Lord, upon that day,
He had not died,’ she said, drooping her eyes.
Mary and Martha with bowed faces kept
10 Holding His garments, one on each side. – ‘Where
Have ye laid him?’ He asked. ‘Lord, come and see.’ –
The sound of grieving voices heavily
And universally was round Him there,
A sound that smote His spirit. Jesus wept.
The Evil Under the Sun
How long, oh Lord? – The voice is sounding still,
Not only heard beneath the altar stone,
Not heard of John Evangelist alone
In Patmos. It doth cry aloud and will
5 Between the earth’s end and earth’s end, until
The day of the great reckoning, bone for bone,
And blood for righteous blood, and groan for groan:
Then shall it cease on the air with a sudden thrill;
Not slowly growing fainter if the rod
10 Strikes one or two amid the evil throng,
Or one oppressor’s hand is stayed and numbs, –
Not till the vengeance that is coming comes:
For shall all hear the voice excepting God?
Or God not listen, hearing? – Lord, how long?
Dedication
(To the Memory of Dante Gabriel Rossetti)
Brother, my brother, in the churchyard mould
Where canopied by fame thou liest asleep
In that inscrutable unuttered deep
Which Death has channelled from the years of old,
5 While day and night, procession multifold,
Finite in infinite, their vigil keep,
And men, ere yet the sickle reaps them, reap
Harvest of grain and their own deeds untold:
Gabriel, accept what verse may dedicate –
10 A brother’s heart deep-dinted with the pang
Of one remembered mortal Easter-day.
Silent the lips which might have answered yea –
Lips out of which the laden spirit rang
Reverberant echoes – Love and Change and Fate.
Mary Shelley
Daughter of her who never quailing led
In the forlorn hope of the women’s cause;
Daughter of him who reasoned out the laws
Of Justice in the State’s firm balance weighed;
5 Heart-mate and wife of one who, burning red
With world-embracing love, for ever draws
Into his orbit the thrilled globe, and awes
With visioned poesy each highest head
Of song for aye; – White Mary, with the voice
10 The sweetest ever heard, rejoin him now,
In the long thirtieth year of severance.
With drowning Harriet’s and drowned Shelley’s brow,
Thine own has passed the gate of deathly trance:
He dies not, neither diest thou, his choice.
CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI
Dream Land
Where sunless rivers weep
Their waves into the deep,
She sleeps a charmèd sleep:
Awake her not.
5 Led by a single star,
She came from very far
To seek where shadows are
Her pleasant lot.
She left the rosy morn,
10 She left the fields of corn,
For twilight cold and lorn
And water springs.
Through sleep, as through a veil,
She sees the sky look pale,
15 And hears the nightingale
That sadly sings.
Rest, rest, a perfect rest
Shed over brow and breast;
Her face is toward the west,
20 The purple land.
She cannot see the grain
Ripening on hill and plain;
She cannot feel the rain
Upon her hand.
25 Rest, rest, for evermore
Upon a mossy shore;
Rest, rest at the heart’s core
Till time shall cease:
Sleep that no pain shall wake,
30 Night that no morn shall break
Till joy shall overtake
Her perfect peace.
An End
Love, strong as Death, is dead
Come, let us make his bed
Among the dying flowers:
A green turf at his head;
5 And a stone at his feet,
Whereon we may sit
In the quiet evening hours.
He was born in the Spring,
And died before the harvesting:
10 On the last warm summer day
He left us; he would not stay
For Autumn twilight cold and grey.
Sit we by his grave, and sing
He is gone away.
15 To few chords and sad and low
Sing we so:
Be our eyes fixed on the grass
Shadow-veiled as the years pass,
While we think of all that was
20 In the long ago.
A Pause of Thought
I looked for that which is not, nor can be,
And hope deferred made my heart sick in truth:
But years must pass before a hope of youth
Is resigned utterly.
5 I watched and waited with a steadfast will:
And though the object seemed to flee away
That I so longed for, ever day by day
I watched and waited still.
Sometimes I said: This thing shall be no more;
10 My expectation wearies and shall cease;
I will resign it now and be at peace:
Yet never gave it o’er.
Sometimes I said: It is an empty name
I long for; to a name why should I give
15 The peace of all the days I have to live? –
Yet gave it all the same.
Alas, thou foolish one! alike unfit
For healthy joy and salutary pain:
Thou knowest the chase useless, and again
20 Turnest to follow it.
Sweet Death
The sweetest blossoms die.
And so it was that, going day by day
Unto the Church to praise and pray,
And crossing the green churchyard thoughtfully,
5 I saw how on the graves the flowers
Shed their fresh leaves in showers,
And how their perfume rose up to the sky
Before it passed away.
The youngest blossoms die.
10 They die and fall and nourish the rich earth
From which they lately had their birth;
Sweet life, but sweeter death that passeth by
And is as though it had not been: –
All colours turn to green;
15 The bright hues vanish and the odours fly,
The grass hath lasting worth.
And youth and beauty die.
So be it, O my God, Thou God of truth:
Better than beauty and than youth
20 Are Saints and Angels, a glad company;
And Thou, O Lord, our Rest and Ease,
Art better far than these.
Why should we shrink from our full harvest? why
Prefer to glean with Ruth?
Goblin Market
Morning and evening
Maids heard the
goblins cry:
‘Come buy our orchard fruits,
Come buy, come buy:
5 Apples and quinces,
Lemons and oranges,
Plump unpecked cherries,
Melons and raspberries,
Bloom-down-cheeked peaches,
10 Swart-headed mulberries,
Wild free-born cranberries,
Crab-apples, dewberries,
Pine-apples, blackberries,
Apricots, strawberries; –
15 All ripe together
In summer weather, –
Morns that pass by,
Fair eves that fly;
Come buy, come buy:
20 Our grapes fresh from the vine,
Pomegranates full and fine.
Dates and sharp bullaces,
Rare pears and greengages,
Damsons and bilberries,
25 Taste them and try:
Currants and gooseberries,
Bright-fire-like barberries,
Figs to fill your mouth,
Citrons from the South,
30 Sweet to tongue and sound to eye;
Come buy, come buy.’
Evening by evening
Among the brookside rushes,
Laura bowed her head to hear,
35 Lizzie veiled her blushes:
Crouching close together
In the cooling weather,
With clasping arms and cautioning lips,
With tingling cheeks and finger tips.
40 ‘Lie close,’ Laura said,
Pricking up her golden head:
‘We must not look at goblin men,
We must not buy their fruits:
Who knows upon what soil they fed
45 Their hungry thirsty roots?’
‘Come buy,’ call the goblins
Hobbling down the glen.
‘Oh,’ cried Lizzie, ‘Laura, Laura,
You should not peep at goblin men.’
50 Lizzie covered up her eyes,
Covered close lest they should look;
Laura reared her glossy head,
And whispered like the restless brook:
‘Look, Lizzie, look, Lizzie,
55 Down the glen tramp little men.
One hauls a basket,
One bears a plate,
One lugs a golden dish
Of many pounds weight.
60 How fair the vine must grow
Whose grapes are so luscious;
How warm the wind must blow
Through those fruit bushes.’
‘No,’ said Lizzie: ‘No, no, no;
65 Their offers should not charm us,
Their evil gifts would harm us.’
She thrust a dimpled finger
In each ear, shut eyes and ran:
Curious Laura chose to linger
70 Wondering at each merchant man.
One had a cat’s face,
One whisked a tail,
One tramped at a rat’s pace,
One crawled like a snail,
75 One like a wombat prowled obtuse and furry,
One like a ratel tumbled hurry skurry.
She heard a voice like voice of doves
Cooing all together:
They sounded kind and full of loves
80 In the pleasant weather.
Laura stretched her gleaming neck
Like a rush-imbedded swan,
Like a lily from the beck,
Like a moonlit poplar branch,
85 Like a vessel at the launch
When its last restraint is gone.
Backwards up the mossy glen
Turned and trooped the goblin men,
With their shrill repeated cry,
90 ‘Come buy, come buy.’
When they reached where Laura was
They stood stock still upon the moss,
Leering at each other,
Brother with queer brother;
95 Signalling each other,
Brother with sly brother.
One set his basket down,
One reared his plate;
One began to weave a crown
100 Of tendrils, leaves and rough nuts brown
(Men sell not such in any town);
One heaved the golden weight
Of dish and fruit to offer her:
‘Come buy, come buy,’ was still their cry.
105 Laura stared but did not stir,
Longed but had no money:
The whisk-tailed merchant bade her taste
In tones as smooth as honey,
The cat-faced purr’d,
110 The rat-paced spoke a word
Of welcome, and the snail-paced even was heard;
One parrot-voiced and jolly
Cried ‘Pretty Goblin’ still for ‘Pretty Polly;’ –
One whistled like a bird.
115 But sweet-tooth Laura spoke in haste:
‘Good folk, I have no coin;
To take were to purloin:
I have no copper in my purse,
I have no silver either,
120 And all my gold is on the furze
That shakes in windy weather
Above the rusty heather.’
‘You have much gold upon your head,’
They answered all together:
125 ‘Buy from us with a golden curl.’
She clipped a precious golden lock,
She dropped a tear more rare than pearl,
Then sucked their fruit globes fair or red:
Sweeter than honey from the rock,
130 Stronger than man-rejoicing wine,
Clearer than water flowed that juice;
She never tasted such before,
How should it cloy with length of use?
She sucked and sucked and sucked the more
135 Fruits which that unknown orchard bore;
She sucked until her lips were sore;
Then flung the emptied rinds away
But gathered up one kernel-stone,
And knew not was it night or day
140 As she turned home alone.
Lizzie met her at the gate
Full of wise upbraidings:
‘Dear, you should not stay so late,
Twilight is not good for maidens;
145 Should not loiter in the glen
In the haunts of goblin men.
Do you not remember Jeanie,
How she met them in the moonlight,
Took their gifts both choice and many,
150 Ate their fruits and wore their flowers
Plucked from bowers
Where summer ripens at all hours?
But ever in the noonlight
She pined and pined away;
155 Sought them by night and day,
Found them no more but dwindled and grew grey;
Then fell with the first snow,
While to this day no grass will grow
Where she lies low:
160 I planted daisies there a year ago
That never blow.
You should not loiter so.’
‘Nay, hush,’ said Laura:
‘Nay, hush, my sister:
165 I ate and ate my fill,
Yet my mouth waters still;
To-morrow night I will
Buy more:’ and kissed her:
‘Have done with sorrow;
170 I’ll bring you plums to-morrow
Fresh on their mother twigs,
Cherries worth getting;
You cannot think what figs
My teeth have met in,
175 What melons icy-cold
Piled on a dish of gold
Too huge for me to hold,
What peaches with a velvet nap,
Pellucid grapes without one seed:
180 Odorous indeed must be the mead
Whereon they grow, and pure the wave they drink
With lilies at the brink,
And sugar-sweet their sa
p.’
Golden head by golden head,
185 Like two pigeons in one nest
Folded in each other’s wings,
They lay down in their curtained bed:
Like two blossoms on one stem,
Like two flakes of new-fall’n snow,
190 Like two wands of ivory
Tipped with gold for awful kings.
Moon and stars gazed in at them,
Wind sang to them lullaby,
Lumbering owls forbore to fly,
195 Not a bat flapped to and fro
Round their rest:
Cheek to cheek and breast to breast
Locked together in one nest.
Early in the morning
200 When the first cock crowed his warning,
Neat like bees, as sweet and busy,
Laura rose with Lizzie:
Fetched in honey, milked the cows,
Aired and set to rights the house,
205 Kneaded cakes of whitest wheat,
Cakes for dainty mouths to eat,
Next churned butter, whipped up cream,
Fed their poultry, sat and sewed;
Talked as modest maidens should:
210 Lizzie with an open heart,
Laura in an absent dream,
One content, one sick in part;
One warbling for the mere bright day’s delight,
One longing for the night.
215 At length slow evening came:
They went with pitchers to the reedy brook;
Lizzie most placid in her look,
Laura most like a leaping flame.
They drew the gurgling water from its deep;
220 Lizzie plucked purple and rich golden flags,
Then turning homewards said: ‘The sunset flushes
Those furthest loftiest crags;
Come, Laura, not another maiden lags,
No wilful squirrel wags,
225 The beasts and birds are fast asleep.’
But Laura loitered still among the rushes
And said the bank was steep.
And said the hour was early still,
The dew not fall’n, the wind not chill:
230 Listening ever, but not catching
The customary cry,
‘Come buy, come buy,’
With its iterated jingle
Of sugar-baited words:
235 Not for all her watching
Once discerning even one goblin
Racing, whisking, tumbling, hobbling;
Let alone the herds
That used to tramp along the glen,
240 In groups or single,