by Dinah Roe
What can it mean? you ask. I answer not
50 For meaning, but myself must echo, What?
And tell it as I saw it on the spot.
The World
Sonnet
By day she wooes me, soft, exceeding fair:
But all night as the moon so changeth she;
Loathsome and foul with hideous leprosy
And subtle serpents gliding in her hair.
5 By day she wooes me to the outer air,
Ripe fruits, sweet flowers, and full satiety:
But through the night, a beast she grins at me,
A very monster void of love and prayer.
By day she stands a lie: by night she stands
10 In all the naked horror of the truth
With pushing horns and clawed and clutching hands.
Is this a friend indeed; that I should sell
My soul to her, give her my life and youth,
Till my feet, cloven too, take hold on hell?
From The Prince’s Progress
‘Too late for love, too late for joy,
Too late, too late!
You loitered on the road too long,
You trifled at the gate:
5 The enchanted dove upon her branch
Died without a mate;
The enchanted princess in her tower
Slept, died, behind the grate;
Her heart was starving all this while
10 You made it wait.
‘Ten years ago, five years ago,
One year ago,
Even then you had arrived in time,
Though somewhat slow;
15 Then you had known her living face
Which now you cannot know:
The frozen fountain would have leaped,
The buds gone on to blow,
The warm south wind would have awaked
20 To melt the snow.
Is she fair now as she lies?
Once she was fair;
Meet queen for any kingly king,
With gold-dust on her hair.
25 Now these are poppies in her locks,
White poppies she must wear;
Must wear a veil to shroud her face
And the want graven there:
Or is the hunger fed at length,
30 Cast off the care?
‘We never saw her with a smile
Or with a frown;
Her bed seemed never soft to her,
Though tossed of down;
35 She little heeded what she wore,
Kirtle, or wreath, or gown;
We think her white brows often ached
Beneath her crown,
Till silvery hairs showed in her locks
40 That used to be so brown.
‘We never heard her speak in haste:
Her tones were sweet,
And modulated just so much
As it was meet:
45 Her heart sat silent through the noise
And concourse of the street.
There was no hurry in her hands,
No hurry in her feet;
There was no bliss drew nigh to her,
50 That she might run to greet.
‘You should have wept her yesterday,
Wasting upon her bed:
But wherefore should you weep to-day
That she is dead?
55 Lo, we who love weep not to-day,
But crown her royal head.
Let be these poppies that we strew,
Your roses are too red:
Let be these poppies, not for you
60 Cut down and spread.’
The Queen of Hearts
How comes it, Flora, that, whenever we
Play cards together, you invariably,
However the pack parts,
Still hold the Queen of Hearts?
5 I’ve scanned you with a scrutinizing gaze,
Resolved to fathom these your secret ways:
But, sift them as I will,
Your ways are secret still.
I cut and shuffle; shuffle, cut, again;
10 But all my cutting, shuffling, proves in vain:
Vain hope, vain forethought too;
That Queen still falls to you.
I dropped her once, prepense; but, ere the deal
Was dealt, your instinct seemed her loss to feel:
15 ‘There should be one card more,’
You said, and searched the floor.
I cheated once; I made a private notch
In Heart-Queen’s back, and kept a lynx-eyed watch;
Yet such another back
20 Deceived me in the pack;
The Queen of Clubs assumed by arts unknown
An imitative dint that seemed my own;
This notch, not of my doing,
Misled me to my ruin.
25 It baffles me to puzzle out the clue,
Which must be skill, or craft, or luck in you:
Unless, indeed, it be
Natural affinity.
From Monna Innominata
A Sonnet of Sonnets
Beatrice, immortalized by ‘altissimo poeta … cotanto amante’; Laura, celebrated by a great though an inferior bard, – have alike paid the exceptional penalty of exceptional honour, and have come down to us resplendent with charms, but (at least, to my apprehension) scant of attractiveness.
These heroines of world-wide fame were preceded by a bevy of unnamed ladies ‘donne innominate’ sung by a school of less conspicuous poets; and in that land and that period which gave simultaneous birth to Catholics, to Albigenses, and to Troubadours, one can imagine many a lady as sharing her lover’s poetic aptitude, while the barrier between them might be one held sacred by both, yet not such as to render mutual love incompatible with mutual honour.
Had such a lady spoken for herself, the portrait left us might have appeared more tender, if less dignified, than any drawn even by a devoted friend. Or had the Great Poetess of our own day and nation only been unhappy instead of happy, her circumstances would have invited her to bequeath to us, in lieu of the ‘Portuguese Sonnets,’ an inimitable ‘donna innominata’ drawn not from fancy but from feeling, and worthy to occupy a niche beside Beatrice and Laura.
1
‘Lo dì che han detto a’ dolci amici addio’– Dante
‘Amor, con quanto sforzo oggi mi vinci!’ – Petrarca
Come back to me, who wait and watch for you: –
Or come not yet, for it is over then,
And long it is before you come again,
So far between my pleasures are and few.
5 While, when you come not, what I do I do
Thinking ‘Now when he comes,’ my sweetest ‘when:’
For one man is my world of all the men
This wide world holds; O love, my world is you.
Howbeit, to meet you grows almost a pang
10 Because the pang of parting comes so soon;
My hope hangs waning, waxing, like a moon
Between the heavenly days on which we meet:
Ah me, but where are now the songs I sang
When life was sweet because you called them sweet?
4
‘Poca favilla gran fiamma seconda’ – Dante
‘Ogni altra cosa, ogni pensier va fore,
E sol ivi con voi rimansi amore’ – Petrarca
I loved you first: but afterwards your love
Outsoaring mine, sang such a loftier song
As drowned the friendly cooings of my dove.
Which owes the other most? my love was long,
5 And yours one moment seemed to wax more strong;
I loved and guessed at you, you construed me
And loved me for what might or might not be –
Nay, weights and measures do us both a wrong.
For verily love knows not ‘mine’ or ‘thine;’
10 With separate ‘I’ and ‘thou’ free love has done,
For one is b
oth and both are one in love:
Rich love knows nought of ‘thine that is not mine;’
Both have the strength and both the length thereof,
Both of us, of the love which makes us one.
7
‘Qui primavera sempre ed ogni frutto’ – Dante
‘Ragionando con meco ed io con lui’ – Petrarca
‘Love me, for I love you’ – and answer me,
‘Love me, for I love you’ – so shall we stand
As happy equals in the flowering land
Of love, that knows not a dividing sea.
5 Love builds the house on rock and not on sand,
Love laughs what while the winds rave desperately;
And who hath found love’s citadel unmanned?
And who hath held in bonds love’s liberty?
My heart’s a coward though my words are brave –
10 We meet so seldom, yet we surely part
So often; there’s a problem for your art!
Still I find comfort in his Book, who saith,
Though jealousy be cruel as the grave,
And death be strong, yet love is strong as death.
8
‘Come dicesse a Dio: D’altro non calme’ – Dante
‘Spero trovar pietà non che perdono’ – Petrarca
‘I, if I perish, perish’ – Esther spake:
And bride of life or death she made her fair
In all the lustre of her perfumed hair
And smiles that kindle longing but to slake.
5 She put on pomp of loveliness, to take
Her husband through his eyes at unaware;
She spread abroad her beauty for a snare,
Harmless as doves and subtle as a snake.
She trapped him with one mesh of silken hair,
10 She vanquished him by wisdom of her wit,
And built her people’s house that it should
stand: –
If I might take my life so in my hand,
And for my love to Love put up my prayer,
And for love’s sake by Love be granted it!
11
‘Vien dietro a me e lascia dir le genti’ – Dante
‘Contando i casi della vita nostra’ – Petrarca
Many in aftertimes will say of you
‘He loved her’ – while of me what will they say?
Not that I loved you more than just in play,
For fashion’s sake as idle women do.
5 Even let them prate; who know not what we knew
Of love and parting in exceeding pain,
Of parting hopeless here to meet again,
Hopeless on earth, and heaven is out of view.
But by my heart of love laid bare to you,
10 My love that you can make not void nor vain,
Love that foregoes you but to claim anew
Beyond this passage of the gate of death,
I charge you at the Judgment make it plain
My love of you was life and not a breath.
14
‘E la Sua Volontade è nostra pace’ – Dante
‘Sol con questi pensier, con altre chiome’ – Petrarca
Youth gone, and beauty gone if ever there
Dwelt beauty in so poor a face as this;
Youth gone and beauty, what remains of bliss?
I will not bind fresh roses in my hair,
5 To shame a cheek at best but little fair, –
Leave youth his roses, who can bear a thorn, –
I will not seek for blossoms anywhere,
Except such common flowers as blow with corn.
Youth gone and beauty gone, what doth remain?
10 The longing of a heart pent up forlorn,
A silent heart whose silence loves and longs;
The silence of a heart which sang its songs
While youth and beauty made a summer morn,
Silence of love that cannot sing again.
Babylon the Great
Foul is she and ill-favoured, set askew:
Gaze not upon her till thou dream her fair,
Lest she should mesh thee in her wanton hair,
Adept in arts grown old yet ever new.
5 Her heart lusts not for love, but thro’ and thro’
For blood, as spotted panther lusts in lair;
No wine is in her cup, but filth is there
Unutterable, with plagues hid out of view.
Gaze not upon her; for her dancing whirl
10 Turns giddy the fixed gazer presently:
Gaze not upon her, lest thou be as she
When at the far end of her long desire
Her scarlet vest and gold and gem and pearl
And she amid her pomp are set on fire.
On Keats
A garden in a garden: a green spot
Where all is green: most fitting slumber-place
For the strong man grown weary of a race
Soon over. Unto him a goodly lot
5 Hath fallen in fertile ground; there thorns are not,
But his own daisies; silence, full of grace,
Surely hath shed a quiet on his face;
His earth is but sweet leaves that fall and rot.
What was his record of himself, ere he
10 Went from us? ‘Here lies one whose name
was writ
In water.’ While the chilly shadows flit
Of sweet St Agnes’ Eve, while basil springs –
His name, in every humble heart that sings,
Shall be a fountain of love, verily.
Portraits
An easy lazy length of limb,
Dark eyes and features from the South,
A short-legged meditative pipe
Set in a supercilious mouth:
5 Ink and a pen and papers laid
Down on a table for the night,
Beside a semi-dozing man
Who wakes to go to bed by light.
A pair of brothers brotherly,
10 Unlike and yet how much the same
In heart and high-toned intellect,
In face and bearing, hope and aim:
Friends of the selfsame treasured friends
And of one home the dear delight,
Beloved of many a loving heart,
And cherished both in mine, Good-night.
In an Artist’s Studio
One face looks out from all his canvases,
One selfsame figure sits or walks or leans:
We found her hidden just behind those screens,
That mirror gave back all her loveliness.
5 A queen in opal or in ruby dress,
A nameless girl in freshest summer-greens,
A saint, an angel – every canvas means
The same one meaning, neither more nor less.
He feeds upon her face by day and night,
10 And she with true kind eyes looks back on
him,
Fair as the moon and joyful as the light:
Not wan with waiting, not with sorrow dim;
Not as she is, but was when hope shone bright;
Not as she is, but as she fills his dream.
The P.R.B.
The P.R.B. is in its decadence:
For Woolner in Australia cooks his chops,
And Hunt is yearning for the land of Cheops;
D. G. Rossetti shuns the vulgar optic;
5 While William M. Rossetti merely lops
His B’s in English disesteemed as Coptic;
Calm Stephens in the twilight smokes his pipe,
But long the dawning of his public day;
And he at last the champion great Millais,
10 Attaining academic opulence,
Winds up his signature with A.R.A.
So rivers merge in the perpetual sea;
So luscious fruit must fall when over-ripe;
And so the consummated P.R.B.
ARTHUR HUGHES
To a Chil
d
On a Dot
My beloved is taller than I,
But yet I’m above him;
He’s not all himself without me,
And therefore I love him;
5 He is I, while I am not he,
But a part if he lets me;
Yet I am but a speck in his eye,
And he often forgets me.
In a Letter to William Bell Scott at Penkill
Scotus never sends a line,
Perhaps poor Scotus has no ink,
Or reads in some wise book I think,
He should not cast his pearls to swine.
5 This was my thought the other day,
When sick and sore from Fortune’s bumps –
And, fool-like, nursing doleful dumps,
A silly state that does not pay.
But now his letter comes along –
10 To me in Cornwall, weather-bound,
Wild storm and wind and rain all round –
Clear Penkill sunshine cleaves the throng.
And all my swine run down to sea,
And drown themselves by Michael’s Mount,
15 It does not matter, does not count
One penny, tho’ so fat they be.
WILLIAM MORRIS
The Chapel in Lyoness
Sir Ozana le Cure Hardy. Sir Galahad.
Sir Bors de Ganys.
SIR OZANA
All day long and every day,
From Christmas-Eve to Whit-Sunday,
Within that Chapel-aisle I lay,
And no man came a-near.
5 Naked to the waist was I,
And deep within my breast did lie,
Though no man any blood could spy,
The truncheon of a spear.
No meat did ever pass my lips.
10 Those days – (Alas! the sunlight slips
From off the gilded parclose, dips,
And night comes on apace.)
My arms lay back behind my head;
Over my raised-up knees was spread
15 A samite cloth of white and red;
A rose lay on my face.
Many a time I tried to shout;
But as in dream of battle-rout,
My frozen speech would not well out;