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Document Title: The Collected Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, vol. 1 (1886)
Author: Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Date of publication: 1886
Publisher: Ellis and Scrutton
Printer: Hazell, Watson, and Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury
Edition: 1

The full Rossetti Archive record for this transcribed document is available.

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Manuscript Addition: 2) litrs / γθX—
Editorial Description: Pencil note in upper left corner, in cursive script.
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Manuscript Addition: 2 vol s[et] / $
Editorial Description: Pencil note in upper right corner.
Manuscript Addition: Charles H. Forbes / from G. S. F.
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THE COLLECTED WORKS

OF

DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
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THE COLLECTED WORKS

OF

DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI





EDITED

WITH PREFACE AND NOTES

BY

WILLIAM M ROSSETTI



IN TWO VOLUMES



VOLUME I

POEMS

PROSE—TALES AND LITERARY PAPERS



ELLIS AND SCRUTTON

LONDON

1886

All rights reserved

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Printed by Hazell, Watson, & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury.
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DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI

DIED 9 APRIL 1882 AGED 53

FRANCES MARY LAVINIA ROSSETTI

DIED 8 APRIL 1886 AGED 85


TO

THE MOTHER'S SACRED MEMORY

THIS FIRST COLLECTED EDITION OF

THE SON'S WORKS

IS DEDICATED BY

THE SURVIVING SON AND BROTHER

W M R
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CONTENTS.
Note: The word PAGE is printed at the top of each column of numbers in the table of contents.
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PREFACE.
The most adequate mode of prefacing the Collected

Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, as of most

authors, would probably be to offer a broad general

view of his writings, and to analyse with some critical

precision his relation to other writers, contemporary or

otherwise, and the merits and defects of his performances.

In this case, as in how few others, one would also have

to consider in what degree his mind worked con-

sentaneously or diversely in two several arts—the art of

poetry and the art of painting. But the hand of a

brother is not the fittest to undertake any work of this

scope. My preface will not therefore deal with themes

such as these, but will be confined to minor matters,

which may nevertheless be relevant also within their

limits. And first may come a very brief outline of the

few events of an outwardly uneventful life.
Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti, who, at an early stage

of his professional career, modified his name into Dante

Gabriel Rossetti, was born on 12th May 1828, at No.

38 Charlotte Street, Portland Place, London. In blood

he was three-fourths Italian, and only one-fourth Eng-

lish; being on the father's side wholly Italian (Abruzzese),

and on the mother's side half Italian (Tuscan) and half

English. His father was Gabriele Rossetti, born in

1783 at Vasto, in the Abruzzi, Adriatic coast, in the then

kingdom of Naples. Gabriele Rossetti (died 1854) was
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a man of letters, a custodian of ancient bronzes in the

Museo Borbonico of Naples, and a poet; he distinguished

himself by patriotic lays which fostered the popular

movement resulting in the grant of a constitution by

Ferdinand I. of Naples in 1820. The King, after the

fashion of Bourbons and tyrants, revoked the constitution

in 1821, and persecuted the abettors of it, and Rossetti

had to escape for his freedom, or perhaps even for his

life. He settled in London towards 1824, married, and

became Professor of Italian in King's College, London,

publishing also various works of bold speculation in the

way of Dantesque commentary and exposition. His

wife was Frances Mary Lavinia Polidori (died 1886),

daughter of Gaetano Polidori (died 1853), a teacher of

Italian and literary man who had in early youth been

secretary to the poet Alfieri, and who published various

books, including a complete translation of Milton's

poems. Frances Polidori was English on the side of

her mother, whose maiden name was Pierce. The

family of Rossetti and his wife consisted of four

children, born in four successive years—Maria Fran-

cesca (died 1876), Dante Gabriel, William Michael, and

Christina Georgina, the two last-named being now the only

survivors. Few more affectionate husbands and fathers

have lived, and no better wife and mother, than Gabriele

and Frances Rossetti. The means of the family were

always strictly moderate, and became scanty towards

1843, when the father's health began to fail. In or about

that year Dante Gabriel left King's College School, where

he had learned Latin, French, and a beginning of Greek;

and he entered upon the study of the art of painting, to

which he had from earliest childhood exhibited a very

marked bent. After a while he was admitted to the
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school of the Royal Academy, but never proceeded be-

yond its antique section. In 1848 Rossetti co-operated

with two of his fellow-students in painting, John Everett

Millais and William Holman Hunt, and with the sculptor

Thomas Woolner, in forming the so-called Præraphaelite

Brotherhood. There were three other members of the

Brotherhood—James Collinson (succeeded after two or

three years by Walter Howell Deverell), Frederic

George Stephens, and the present writer. Ford Madox

Brown, the historical painter, was known to Rossetti

much about the same time when the Præraphaelite

scheme was started, and bore an important part both in

directing his studies and in upholding the movement,

but he did not think fit to join the Brotherhood in any

direct or complete sense. Through Deverell, Rossetti

came to know Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal, daughter of a

Sheffield cutler, herself a milliner's assistant, gifted with

some artistic and some poetic faculty; in the Spring of

1860, after a long engagement, they married. Their

wedded life was of short duration, as she died in

February 1862, having meanwhile given birth to a still-

born child. For several years up to this date Rossetti,

designing and painting many works, in oil-colour or as

yet more frequently in water-colour, had resided at

No. 14 Chatham Place, Blackfriars Bridge, a line of

street now demolished. In the autumn of 1862 he re-

moved to No. 16 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea. At first

certain apartments in the house were occupied by Mr.

George Meredith the novelist, Mr. Swinburne the poet,

and myself. This arrangement did not last long,

although I myself remained a partial inmate of the house

up to 1873. My brother continued domiciled in Cheyne

Walk until his death; but from about 1869 he was
Sig. b
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frequently away at Kelmscot manorhouse, in Oxford-

shire, not far from Lechlade, occupied jointly by himself,

and by the poet Mr. William Morris with his family.

From the autumn of 1872 till the summer of 1874 he

was wholly settled at Kelmscot, scarcely visiting London

at all. He then returned to London, and Kelmscot

passed out of his ken.
In the early months of 1850 the members of the

Præraphaelite Brotherhood, with the co-operation of

some friends, brought out a short-lived magazine named

The Germ (afterwards Art and Poetry); here appeared

the first verses and the first prose published by Rossetti,

including The Blessed Damozel and Hand and Soul .

In 1856 he contributed a little to The Oxford and

Cambridge Magazine , printing there The Burden of

Nineveh . In 1861, during his married life, he published

his volume of translations The Early Italian Poets , now

entitled Dante and his Circle . By the time therefore of

the death of his wife he had a certain restricted yet far

from inconsiderable reputation as a poet, along with his

recognized position as a painter—a non-exhibiting painter,

it may here be observed, for, after the first two

or three years of his professional course, he ad-

hered with practical uniformity to the plan of abstaining

from exhibition altogether. He had contemplated bring-

ing out in or about 1862 a volume of original poems;

but, in the grief and dismay which overwhelmed

him in losing his wife, he determined to sacri-

fice to her memory this long-cherished project, and he

buried in her coffin the manuscripts which would have

furnished forth the volume. With the lapse of years he

came to see that, as a final settlement of the matter,

this was neither obligatory nor desirable; so in 1869 the
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manuscripts were disinterred, and in 1870 his volume

named Poems was issued. For some considerable

while it was hailed with general and lofty praise,

chequered by only moderate stricture or demur; but

late in 1871 Mr. Robert Buchanan published under a

pseudonym, in the Contemporary Review , a very hostile

article named The Fleshly School of Poetry , attacking

the poems on literary and more especially on moral

grounds. The article, in an enlarged form, was after-

wards reissued as a pamphlet. The assault produced

on Rossetti an effect altogether disproportionate to its

intrinsic importance; indeed, it developed in his cha-

racter an excess of sensitiveness and of distempered

brooding which his nearest relatives and friends had

never before surmised,—for hitherto he had on the whole

had an ample sufficiency of high spirits, combined with

a certain underlying gloominess or abrupt moodiness of

nature and outlook. Unfortunately there was in him

already only too much of morbid material on which this

venom of detraction was to work. For some years the

state of his eyesight had given very grave cause for appre-

hension, he himself fancying from time to time that the

evil might end in absolute blindness, a fate with which

our father had been formidably threatened in his closing

years. From this or other causes insomnia had ensued,

coped with by far too free a use of chloral, which may

have begun towards the end of 1869. In the summer of

1872 he had a dangerous crisis of illness; and from that

time forward, but more especially from the middle of

1874, he became secluded in his habits of life, and often

depressed, fanciful, and gloomy. Not indeed that there

were no intervals of serenity, even of brightness; for in

fact he was often genial and pleasant, and a most agreeable
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companion, with as much bonhomie as acuteness for wiling

an evening away. He continued also to prosecute his

pictorial work with ardour and diligence, and at times he

added to his product as a poet. The second of his original

volumes, Ballads and Sonnets , was published in the

autumn of 1881. About the same time he sought change

of air and scene in the Vale of St. John, near Keswick,

Cumberland; but he returned to town more shattered in

health and in mental tone than he had ever been before.

In December a shock of a quasi-paralytic character struck

him down. He rallied sufficiently to remove to Birching-

ton-on-Sea, near Margate. The hand of death was then

upon him, and was to be relaxed no more. The last

stage of his maladies was uræmia. Tended by his

mother and his sister Christina, with the constant com-

panionship at Birchington of Mr. Hall Caine, and in the

presence likewise of Mr. Theodore Watts, Mr. Frederick

Shields, and myself, he died on Easter Sunday, April 9th

1882. His sister-in-law, the daughter of Madox Brown,

arrived immediately after his latest breath had been

drawn. He lies buried in the churchyard of Birchington.
Few brothers were more constantly together, or shared

one another's feelings and thoughts more intimately, in

childhood, boyhood, and well on into mature manhood,

than Dante Gabriel and myself. I have no idea of

limning his character here at any length, but will de-

fine a few of its leading traits. He was always and

essentially of a dominant turn, in intellect and in

temperament a leader. He was impetuous and vehe-

ment, and necessarily therefore impatient; easily

angered, easily appeased, although the embittered

feelings of his later years obscured this amiable quality

to some extent; constant and helpful as a friend where
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he perceived constancy to be reciprocated; free-handed

and heedless of expenditure, whether for himself or for

others; in family affection warm and equable, and (except

in relation to our mother, for whom he had a fondling

love) not demonstrative. Never on stilts in matters of

the intellect or of aspiration, but steeped in the sense

of beauty, and loving, if not always practising, the good;

keenly alive also (though many people seem to discredit

this now) to the laughable as well as the grave or solemn

side of things; superstitious in grain, and anti-scientific

to the marrow. Throughout his youth and early man-

hood I considered him to be markedly free from vanity,

though certainly well equipped in pride; the distinction

between these two tendencies was less definite in his

closing years. Extremely natural and therefore totally

unaffected in tone and manner, with the naturalism

characteristic of Italian blood; good-natured and hearty,

without being complaisant or accommodating; reserved

at times, yet not haughty; desultory enough in youth,

diligent and persistent in maturity; self-centred always,

and brushing aside whatever traversed his purpose or

his bent. He was very generally and very greatly liked

by persons of extremely diverse character; indeed, I

think it can be no exaggeration to say that no one ever

disliked him. Of course I do not here confound the

question of liking a man's personality with that of

approving his conduct out-and-out.
Of his manner I can perhaps convey but a vague

impression. I have said that it was natural; it was

likewise eminently easy, and even of the free-and-easy

kind. There was a certain British bluffness, streaking

the finely poised Italian suppleness and facility. As he

was thoroughly unconventional, caring not at all to
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fall in with the humours or prepossessions of any

particular class of society, or to conciliate or approxi-

mate the socially distinguished, there was little in him

of any veneer or varnish of elegance; none the less he

was courteous and well-bred, meeting all sorts of persons

upon equal terms— i.e., upon his own terms; and I am

satisfied that those who are most exacting in such

matters found in Rossetti nothing to derogate from the

standard of their requirements. In habit of body he was

indolent and lounging, disinclined to any prescribed

or trying exertion of any sort, and very difficult to stir

out of his ordinary groove, yet not wanting in active

promptitude whenever it suited his liking. He often

seemed totally unoccupied, especially of an evening;

no doubt the brain was busy enough.
The appearance of my brother was to my eye rather

Italian than English, though I have more than once

heard it said that there was nothing observable to

bespeak foreign blood. He was of rather low middle

stature, say five feet seven and a half, like our father;

and, as the years advanced, he resembled our father

not a little in a characteristic way, yet with highly

obvious divergences. Meagre in youth, he was at

times decidedly fat in mature age. The complexion,

clear and warm, was also dark, but not dusky or sombre.

The hair was dark and somewhat silky; the brow grandly

spacious and solid; the full-sized eyes blueish-grey;

the nose shapely, decided, and rather projecting, with an

aquiline tendency and large nostrils, and perhaps no

detail in the face was more noticeable at a first glance

than the very strong indentation at the spring of the

nose below the forehead; the mouth moderately well-

shaped, but with a rather thick and unmoulded under-
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lip; the chin unremarkable; the line of the jaw, after

youth was passed, full, rounded, and sweeping; the ears

well-formed and rather small than large. His hips were

wide, his hands and feet small; the hands very much

those of the artist or author type, white, delicate,

plump, and soft as a woman's. His gait was resolute

and rapid, his general aspect compact and deter-

mined, the prevailing expression of the face that

of a fiery and dictatorial mind concentrated into re-

pose. Some people regarded Rossetti as eminently

handsome; few, I think, would have refused him the

epithet of well-looking. It rather surprises me to

find from Mr. Caine's book of Recollections that that

gentleman, when he first saw Rossetti in 1880, con-

sidered him to look full ten years older than he really

was,—namely, to look as if sixty-two years old. To my

own eye nothing of the sort was apparent. He wore

moustaches from early youth, shaving his cheeks; from

1870 or thereabouts he grew whiskers and beard, mode-

rately full and auburn-tinted, as well as moustaches. His

voice was deep and harmonious; in the reading of poetry,

remarkably rich, with rolling swell and musical cadence.
My brother was very little of a traveller; he disliked

the interruption of his ordinary habits of life, and the

flurry or discomfort, involved in locomotion. In boy-

hood he knew Boulogne: he was in Paris three or four

times, and twice visited some principal cities of Belgium.

This was the whole extent of his foreign travelling.

He crossed the Scottish border more than once, and

knew various parts of England pretty well—Hastings,

Bath, Oxford, Matlock, Stratford-on-Avon, Newcastle-

on-Tyne, Bognor, Herne Bay; Kelmscot, Keswick, and

Birchington-on-Sea, have been already mentioned. From
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1878 or thereabouts he became, until he went to the

neighbourhood of Keswick, an absolute home-keeping

recluse, never even straying outside the large garden of

his own house, except to visit from time to time our

mother in the central part of London.
From an early period of life he had a large circle of

friends, and could always have commanded any amount

of intercourse with any number of ardent or kindly

well-wishers, had he but felt elasticity and cheerfulness

of mind enough for the purpose. I should do injustice

to my own feelings if I were not to mention here some

of his leading friends. First and foremost I name Mr.

Madox Brown, his chief intimate throughout life, on

the unexhausted resources of whose affection and con-

verse he drew incessantly for long years; they were at

last separated by the removal of Mr. Brown to Man-

chester, for the purpose of painting the Town Hall

frescoes. The Præraphaelites—Millais, Hunt, Woolner,

Stephens, Collinson, Deverell—were on terms of un-

bounded familiarity with him in youth; owing to death

or other causes, he lost sight eventually of all of them

except Mr. Stephens. Mr. William Bell Scott was, like

Mr. Brown, a close friend from a very early period until

the last; Scott being both poet and painter, there was

a strict bond of affinity between him and Rossetti.

Mr. Ruskin was extremely intimate with my brother

from 1854 till about 1865, and was of material help to

his professional career. As he rose towards celebrity,

Rossetti knew Burne Jones, and through him Morris

and Swinburne, all staunch and fervently sympathetic

friends. Mr. Shields was a rather later acquaintance,

who soon became an intimate, equally respected and

cherished. Then Mr. Hueffer the musical critic (now
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a close family connection, editor of the Tauchnitz edition

of Rossetti's works), and Dr. Hake the poet. Through

the latter my brother came to know Mr. Theodore

Watts, whose intellectual companionship and incessant

assiduity of friendship did more than anything else

towards assuaging the discomforts and depression of his

closing years. In the latest period the most intimate

among new acquaintances were Mr. William Sharp and

Mr. Hall Caine, both of them known to Rossettian readers

as his biographers. Nor should I omit to speak of the

extremely friendly relation in which my brother stood to

some of the principal purchasers of his pictures—Mr.

Leathart, Mr. Rae, Mr. Leyland, Mr. Graham, Mr. Valpy,

Mr. Turner, and his early associate Mr. Boyce. Other

names crowd upon me—James Hannay, John Tupper,

Patmore, Thomas and John Seddon, Mrs. Bodichon,

Browning, John Marshall, Tebbs, Mrs. Gilchrist, Miss

Boyd, Sandys, Whistler, Joseph Knight, Fairfax Murray,

Mr. and Mrs. Stillman, Treffry Dunn, Lord and Lady

Mount-Temple, Oliver Madox Brown, the Marstons,

father and son—but I forbear.
Before proceeding to some brief account of the

sequence, etc., of my brother's writings, it may be worth

while to speak of the poets who were particularly

influential in nurturing his mind and educing its own

poetic endowment. The first poet with whom he

became partially familiar was Shakespeare. Then fol-

lowed the usual boyish fancies for Walter Scott and

Byron. The Bible was deeply impressive to him,

perhaps above all Job, Ecclesiastes, and the Apocalypse.

Byron gave place to Shelley when my brother was about

sixteen years of age; and Mrs. Browning and the old

English or Scottish ballads rapidly ensued. It may have
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been towards this date, say 1845, that he first seriously

applied himself to Dante, and drank deep of that in-

exhaustible well-head of poesy and thought; for the

Florentine, though familiar to him as a name, and in

some sense as a pervading penetrative influence, from

earliest childhood, was not really assimilated until boy-

hood was practically past. Bailey's Festus was enor-

mously relished about the same time—read again and

yet again; also Faust, Victor Hugo, De Musset (and

along with them a swarm of French novelists), and

Keats, whom my brother for the most part, though not

without some compunctious visitings now and then,

truly preferred to Shelley. The only classical poet

whom he took to in any degree worth speaking of was

Homer, the Odyssey considerably more than the Iliad.

Tennyson reigned along with Keats, and Edgar Poe and

Coleridge along with Tennyson. In the long run he

perhaps enjoyed and revered Coleridge beyond any other

modern poet whatsoever; but Coleridge was not so

distinctly or separately in the ascendant, at any par-

ticular period of youth, as several of the others. Blake

likewise had his peculiar meed of homage, and Charles

Wells, the influence of whose prose style, in the Stories

after Nature , I trace to some extent in Rossetti's Hand

and Soul . Lastly came Browning, and for a time, like

the serpent-rod of Moses, swallowed up all the rest.

This was still at an early stage of life; for I think the

year 1847 cannot certainly have been passed before my

brother was deep in Browning. The readings or frag-

mentary recitations of Bells and Pomegranates, Para-

celsus , and above all Sordello, are something to remember

from a now distant past. My brother lighted upon

Pauline (published anonymously) in the British Museum,
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copied it out, recognized that it must be Browning's, and

wrote to the great poet at a venture to say so, receiving

a cordial response, followed by a genial and friendly inter-

course for several years. One prose-work of great

influence upon my brother's mind, and upon his product

as a painter, must not be left unspecified—Malory's

Mort d'Arthur, which engrossed him towards 1856.

The only poet whom I feel it needful to add to the

above is Chatterton. In the last two or three years of

his life my brother entertained an abnormal—I think

an exaggerated—admiration of Chatterton. It appears

to me that (to use a very hackneyed phrase) he “evolved

this from his inner consciousness” at that late period;

certainly in youth and early manhood he had no such

feeling. He then read the poems of Chatterton with

cursory glance and unexcited spirit, recognizing them

as very singular performances for their date in English

literature, and for the author's boyish years, but beyond

that laying no marked stress upon them.
The reader may perhaps be surprised to find some

names unmentioned in this list: I have stated the facts

as I remember and know them. Chaucer, Spenser,

the Elizabethan dramatists (other than Shakespeare),

Milton, Dryden, Pope, Wordsworth, are unnamed. It

should not be supposed that he read them not at all, or

cared not for any of them; but, if we except Chaucer in

a rather loose way and (at a late period of life) Marlowe

in some of his non-dramatic poems, they were compara-

tively neglected. Thomas Hood he valued highly; also

very highly Burns in mature years, but he was not

a constant reader of the Scottish lyrist. Of Italian poets

he earnestly loved none save Dante: Cavalcanti in his

degree, and also Poliziano and Michelangelo — not
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Petrarca, Boccaccio, Ariosto, Tasso, or Leopardi, though

in boyhood he delighted well enough in Ariosto. Of

French poets, none beyond Hugo and De Musset;

except Villon, and partially Dumas, whose novels ranked

among his favourite reading. In German poetry he

read nothing currently in the original, although (as our

pages bear witness) he had in earliest youth so far

mastered the language as to make some translations.

Calderon, in Fitzgerald's version, he admired deeply;

but this was only at a late date. He had no liking for

the specialities of Scandinavian, nor indeed of Teutonic,

thought and work, and little or no curiosity about

Oriental—such as Indian, Persian, or Arabic—poetry.

Any writing about devils, spectres, or the supernatural

generally, whether in poetry or in prose, had always

a fascination for him; at one time, say 1844, his supreme

delight was the blood-curdling romance of Maturin,

Melmoth the Wanderer.
I now pass to a specification of my brother's own

writings. Of his merely childish or boyish performances

I need have said nothing, were it not that they have

been mentioned in other books regarding Rossetti. First

then there was The Slave , a “drama” which he

composed and wrote out in or about the sixth year of his

age. It is of course simple nonsense. “Slave” and

“traitor” were two words which he found passim in

Shakespeare; so he gave to his principal or only

characters the names of Slave and Traitor. If what

they do is meaningless, what they say (when they deviate

from prose) is probably unmetrical; but it is so long

since I read The Slave that I speak about this with

uncertainty. Towards his thirteenth year he began

a romantic prose-tale named Roderick and Rosalba . I
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hardly think that he composed anything else prior to

the ballad narrative Sir Hugh the Heron , founded on

a tale by Allan Cunningham. Our grandfather printed it

in 1843, which is probably the year of its composition.

It is correctly enough versified, but has no merit, and

little that could even be called promise. Soon afterwards a

prose-tale named Sorrentino , in which the devil played

a conspicuous part, was begun, and carried to some

length; it was of course boyish, but it must, I think, have

shown some considerable degree of cleverness. In 1844

or 1845 there was a translation of Bürger's Lenore ,

spirited and I suppose fairly efficient; and in November

1845 was begun a translation of the Nibelungenlied ,

almost deserving (if my memory serves me) to be con-

sidered good. Several hundred lines of it must certainly

have been written. My brother was by this time a

practised and competent versifier, at any rate, and his

mere prentice-work may count as finished.
Other original verse, not in any large quantity,

succeeded, along with the version of Der Arme Heinrich ,

and the beginning of his translations from the early

Italians. These must, I think, have been in full career

in the first half of 1847, if not in 1846. They show

a keen sensitiveness to whatsoever is poetic in the

originals, and a sinuous strength and ease in providing

English equivalents, with the command of a rich and

romantic vocabulary. In his nineteenth year, or before

12th May 1847, he wrote The Blessed Damozel .* As

that is universally recognized as one of his typical

Transcribed Footnote (page xxix):

* My brother said so, in a letter published by Mr. Caine. He

must presumably have been correct; otherwise I should have

thought that his twentieth year, or even his twenty-first, would

be nearer the mark.

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Note: Page is misnumbered as xx
or consummate productions, marking the high level of

his faculty whether inventive or executive, I may here

close this record of preliminaries; the poems, with such

slight elucidations as my notes supply, being left to

speak for themselves. I will only add that for some

while, more especially in the later part of 1848 and in

1849, my brother practised his pen to no small extent in

writing sonnets to bouts-rimés. He and I would sit

together in our bare little room at the top of No. 50

Charlotte Street, I giving him the rhymes for a sonnet,

and he me the rhymes for another; and we would write

off our emulous exercises with considerable speed, he

constantly the more rapid of the two. From five to eight

minutes may have been the average time for one of his

sonnets; not unfrequently more, and sometimes hardly

so much. In fact, the pen scribbled away at its fastest.

Many of his bouts-rimés sonnets still exist in my posses-

sion, a little touched up after the first draft. Two or

three seemed to me nearly good enough to appear in the

present collection, but on the whole I decided against

them all. Some have a faux air of intensity of meaning,

as well as of expression; but their real core of signifi-

cance is necessarily small, the only wonder being how

he could spin so deftly with so weak a thread. I may

be allowed to mention that most of my own sonnets (and

not sonnets alone) published in The Germ were bouts-

rimes experiments such as above described. In poetic

tone they are of course inferior to my brother's work of

like fashioning; in point of sequence or self-congruity of

meaning, the comparison might be less to my disadvantage.
Dante Rossetti's published works were as follows:

three volumes, chiefly of poetry. I shall transcribe the

title-pages verbatim.
Image of page xxxi page: xxxi
(1 a) The Early Italian Poets from Ciullo d'Alcamo to

Dante Alighieri (1100—1200—1300) in the Original

Metres. Together with Dante's Vita Nuova. Translated

by D. G. Rossetti. Part I. Poets chiefly before Dante.

Part II. Dante and his Circle. London: Smith, Elder

and Co., 65, Cornhill. 1861. The rights of translation

and reproduction, as regards all editorial parts of this

work, are reserved.
(1 b) Dante and his Circle , with the Italian Poets pre-

ceding him (1100—1200—1300). A Collection of Lyrics,

edited, and translated in the original metres, by Dante

Gabriel Rossetti. Revised and rearranged edition.

Part I. Dante's Vita Nuova, &c. Poets of Dante's

Circle. Part II. Poets chiefly before Dante. London:

Ellis and White, 29 New Bond Street. 1874.
(2 a) Poems by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. London:

F. S. Ellis, 33 King Street, Covent Garden. 1870.
(2 b) Poems by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. A new edition.

London: Ellis and White, 29 New Bond Street. 1881.
(3) Ballads and Sonnets by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

London: Ellis and White, 29, New Bond Street, W. 1881.
The reader will understand that 1 b is essentially the

same book as 1 a, but altered in arrangement, chiefly

by inverting the order in which the poems of Dante

and of the Dantesque epoch, and those of an earlier

period, are printed. In the present collection, I reprint

1 b, taking no further count of 1 a. The volume 2 b is to

a great extent the same as 2 a, yet by no means identical

with it. 2 a contained a section named Sonnets and

Songs, towards a work to be called “The House of Life.”

In 1881, when 2 b and 3 were published simultaneously,

The House of Life was completed, was made to consist

solely of sonnets, and was transferred to 3; while the
Image of page xxxii page: xxxii


gap thus left in 2 b was filled up by other poems. With

this essential modification of The House of Life it was

clearly my duty not to interfere.
It thus became impossible for me to reproduce 2 a:

but the question had to be considered whether I should

reprint 2 b and 3 exactly as they stood in 1881, adding

after them a section of poems not hitherto printed in

any one of my brother's volumes; or whether I should

recast, in point of arrangement, the entire contents of

2 b and 3, inserting here and there, in their most appro-

priate sequence, the poems hitherto unprinted. I have

chosen the latter alternative, as being in my own opinion

the only arrangement which is thoroughly befitting for

an edition of Collected Works. I am aware that some

readers would have preferred to see the old order— i.e.,

the order of 1881—retained, so that the two volumes of

that year could be perused as they then stood. Indeed,

one of my brother's friends, most worthy, whether as

friend or as critic, to be consulted on such a subject,

decidedly advocated that plan. On the other hand, I

found my own view confirmed by my sister Christina,

who, both as a member of the family and as a poetess,

deserved an attentive hearing. The reader who inspects

my table of contents will be readily able to follow the

method of arrangement which is here adopted. I have

divided the materials into Principal Poems, Miscellaneous

Poems, Translations, and some minor headings; and

have in each section arranged the poems—and the

same has been done with the prose-writings—in some

approximate order of date. This order of date is cer-

tainly not very far from correct; but I could not make it

absolute, having frequently no distinct information to go

by. The few translations which were printed in 2 b (as
Image of page xxxiii page: xxxiii
Sig. c
also in 2 a) have been removed to follow on after 1 b. I

shall give in a tabular form some particulars which will

enable the reader to follow out for himself, if he takes

an interest in such minutiæ, the original arrangement of

2 a, 2 b, and 3.
There are two poems by my brother, unpublished as

yet, which I am unable to include among his Collected

Works. One of these is a grotesque ballad about a

Dutchman, begun at a very early date, and finished in

his last illness. The other is a brace of sonnets, in-

teresting in subject, and as being the very last thing

that he wrote. These works were presented as a gift

of love and gratitude to a friend, with whom it remains

to publish them at his own discretion. I have also

advisedly omitted three poems; two of them sonnets,

the third a ballad of no great length. One of the

sonnets is that entitled Nuptial Sleep . It appeared in

the volume of Poems 1870 (2 a), but was objected

to by Mr. Buchanan, and I suppose by some other

censors, as being indelicate; and my brother excluded

it from The House of Life in his third volume. I con-

sider that there is nothing in the sonnet which need

imperatively banish it from his Collected Works; but

his own decision commands mine, and besides it could

not now be reintroduced into The House of Life ,

which he moulded into a complete whole without it,

and would be misplaced if isolated by itself—a point

as to which his opinion is very plainly set forth in

his prose-paper The Stealthy School of Criticism . The

second sonnet, named On the French Liberation of Italy,

was put into print by my brother while he was pre-

paring his volume of 1870, but he resolved to leave

it unpublished. Its title shows plainly enough that it
Image of page xxxiv page: xxxiv
relates to a matter in which sexual morals have no

part; but the subject is treated under the form of a

vigorous and perhaps repulsive metaphor, and here

again I follow his own lead. The ballad above referred

to, Dennis Shand , is a skilful and really very harmless

production; it was printed but not published, like the

sonnet last-mentioned, and no writer other than one

who took a grave view of questions of moral propriety

would have preferred to suppress it. My brother's

opinion is worded thus in a letter to Mr. Caine, which

that gentleman has published: “The ballad . . . deals

trivially with a base amour (it was written very early),

and is therefore really reprehensible to some extent.”

I will not be less jealously scrupulous for him than he

was for himself.
Dante Rossetti was a very fastidious writer, and, I

might add, a very fastidious painter. He did not indeed

“cudgel his brains” for the idea of a poem or the

structure or diction of a stanza. He wrote out of a

large fund or reserve of thought and consideration,

which would culminate in a clear impulse or (as we

say) an inspiration. In the execution he was always

heedful and reflective from the first, and he spared no

after-pains in clarifying and perfecting. He abhorred

anything straggling, slipshod, profuse, or uncondensed.

He often recurred to his old poems, and was reluctant to

leave them merely as they were. A natural concomitant

of this state of mind was a great repugnance to the

notion of publishing, or of having published after his

death, whatever he regarded as juvenile, petty, or

inadequate. As editor of his Collected Works, I have

had to regulate myself by these feelings of his, whether

my own entirely correspond with them or not. The
Image of page xxxv page: xxxv
amount of unpublished work which he left behind him

was by no means large; out of the moderate bulk I

have been careful to select only such examples as I

suppose that he would himself have approved for the

purpose, or would, at any rate, not gravely have objected

to. A list of the new items is given at page xli, and a

few details regarding them will be found among my

notes. Some projects or arguments of poems which he

never executed are also printed among his prose-writings.

These particular projects had, I think, been practically

abandoned by him in all the later years of his life; but

there was one subject which he had seriously at heart,

and for which he had collected some materials, and he

would perhaps have put it into shape had he lived a

year or two longer—a ballad on the subject of Joan Darc,

to match The White Ship and The King's Tragedy .
I have not unfrequently heard my brother say that

he considered himself more essentially a poet than a

painter. To vary the form of expression, he thought that

he had mastered the means of embodying poetical concep-

tions in the verbal and rhythmical vehicle more thoroughly

than in form and design, perhaps more thoroughly than

in colour.
I may take this opportunity of observing that I hope

to publish at an early date a substantial selection from

the family-letters written by my brother, to be pre-

ceded by a Memoir drawn up by Mr. Theodore Watts,

who will be able to express more freely and more im-

partially than myself some of the things most apposite

to be said about Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
William M. Rossetti.

London, June 1886.
Image of page xxxvi page: xxxvi
Note: The table indexes poems by “Position in present edition”, and includes references to “VOL. PAGE”
    LIST OF THE POEMS PUBLISHED BY DANTE

    GABRIEL ROSSETTI DURING HIS LIFETIME.
    • 2a.—Contents of Poems, 1870.
      • Poems:
      • The Blessed Damozel . . . . . . i. . 232
      • Love's Nocturn . . . . . . . i. . 288
      • Troy Town . . . . . . . . i. . 305
      • The Burden of Nineveh . . . . . i. . 266
      • Eden Bower . . . . . . . . i. . 308
      • Ave . . . . . . . . . i. . 244
      • The Staff and Scrip . . . . . . i. . 75
      • A Last Confession . . . . . . i. . 18
      • Dante at Verona . . . . . . . i. . 1
      • Jenny . . . . . . . . i. . 83
      • The Portrait . . . . . . . . i. . 240
      • Sister Helen . . . . . . . . i. . 66
      • Stratton Water . . . . . . . i. . 274
      • The Stream's Secret . . . . . . i. . 95
      • The Card-dealer . . . . . . . i. . 248
      • My Sister's Sleep . . . . . . . i. . 229
      • A New Year's Burden . . . . . . i. . 296
      • Even So . . . . . . . . i. . 297
      • An Old Song Ended . . . . . . i. . 300
      • Aspecta Medusa . . . . . . . i. . 357
      • Three Translations from Villon . . . . ii.461,etc.
      • John of Tours . . . . . . . ii. . 465
      • My Father's Close . . . . . . ii. . 467
      • One Girl ( now named Beauty) . . . . ii. . 469
    • Sonnets and Songs towards a Work to be entitled “The

      House of Life.”
    • Fifty Sonnets . . . . . . i. 177, etc.
    • [For the titles of them see vol. i., p. 517.]
      • Image of page xxxvii page: xxxvii
      • Songs:
      • Love-lily . . . . . . . . i. . 315
      • First Love Remembered . . . . . i. . 293
      • Plighted Promise . . . . . . . i. . 294
      • Sudden Light . . . . . . . i. . 295
      • A Little While . . . . . . . i. . 304
      • The Song of the Bower . . . . . . i. . 301
      • Penumbra . . . . . . . . i. . 283
      • The Woodspurge . . . . . . . i. . 298
      • The Honeysuckle . . . . . . . i. . 298
      • A Young Fir-wood . . . . . . i. . 273
      • The Sea Limits . . . . . . . i. . 254
      • [Here ended the “House of Life” Series.]
      • Sonnets for Pictures, and other Sonnets:
      • For Our Lady of the Rocks, by Leonardo da
      • Vinci . . . . . . . . i. . 344
      • For a Venetian Pastoral, by Giorgione . . . i. . 345
      • For an Allegorical Dance of Women, by Man-
      • tegna . . . . . . . . i. . 346
      • For Ruggiero and Angelica, by Ingres . . . i. . 347
      • For the Wine of Circe, by Burne Jones . . i. . 350
      • Mary's Girlhood . . . . . . . i. . 353
      • The Passover in the Holy Family . . . . i. . 355
      • Mary Magdalene at the Door of Simon the
      • Pharisee . . . . . . . . i. . 356
      • St. Luke the Painter . . . . . . i. . 214
      • Lilith . . . . . . . . . i. . 216
      • Sibylla Palmifera . . . . . . . i. . 215
      • Venus . . . . . . . . . i. . 360
      • Cassandra . . . . . . . . i. . 358
      • Pandora . . . . . . . . . i. . 360
      • On Refusal of Aid between Nations . . . i. . 252
      • On the Vita Nuova of Dante . . . . . i. . 252
      • Dantis Tenebræ . . . . . . . i. . 299
      • Beauty and the Bird . . . . . . i. . 286
      • A Match with the Moon . . . . . i. . 287
      • Image of page xxxviii page: xxxviii
      • Sonnets for Pictures, and other Sonnets, continued:
      • Autumn Idleness . . . . . . . i. . 211
      • Farewell to the Glen . . . . . . i. . 219
      • The Monochord . . . . . . . i. . 216
    • 2b.—Contents of Poems, 1881.
      • Poems:

      • [This section contains the same compositions as the section Poems

        in the volume of 1870, but in a different sequence, and also the fol-

        lowing]

      • Down Stream . . . . . . . i. . 319
      • Wellington's Funeral . . . . . . i. . 281
      • World's Worth . . . . . . . i. . 250
      • The Bride's Prelude . . . . . . i. . 35

      • [But the following are removed to a section headed]

      • Lyrics:
      • A New Year's Burden . . . . . . i. . 296
      • Even So . . . . . . . . . i. . 297

      • [In other respects the section Lyrics consists of the Songs which used

        to form part of “The House of Life.”]

      • Sonnets:

      • [Contains the various compositions which appeared in the volume

        of 1870 under the heading Sonnets for Pictures, and other Sonnets,

        except St. Luke the Painter, Lilith, Sibylla Palmifera, Autumn Idleness,

        Farewell to the Glen, and The Monochord; these six sonnets were

        transferred to The House of Life in the Ballads and Sonnets (3),

        the Lilith and Sibylla Palmifera being renamed Body's Beauty and

        Soul's Beauty.]

      • Translations:

      • [Contains the six translations which in the volume of 1870 appeared

        under the heading “Poems,” the title One Girl being now superseded by

        the title Beauty (Sappho); also the following]

      • Youth and Lordship (Italian Street-song) . . i. . 366
      • The Leaf (Leopardi) . . . . . . ii. . 409
      • Francesca da Rimini (Dante) . . . . ii. . 405
    • Image of page xxxix page: xxxix
    • 3.—Contents of Ballads and Sonnets.
      • Ballads:
      • Rose Mary . . . . . . . . i. . 103
      • The White Ship . . . . . . . i. . 137
      • The King's Tragedy . . . . . . i. . 148
      • The House of Life— A Sonnet Sequence. . . i. . 176
      • Lyrics &c:
      • Soothsay . . . . . . . . i. . 334
      • Chimes . . . . . . . . . i. . 330
      • Parted Presence . . . . . . . i. . 324
      • A Death-parting . . . . . . . i. . 322
      • Spheral Change . . . . . . . i. . 326
      • Sunset Wings . . . . . . . i. . 316
      • Song and Music . . . . . . . i. . 253
      • Three Shadows . . . . . . . i. . 321
      • Alas so long! . . . . . . . . i. . 327
      • Adieu . . . . . . . . . i. . 333
      • Insomnia . . . . . . . . i. . 328
      • Possession . . . . . . . . i. . 329
      • The Cloud Confines . . . . . . i. . 317
      • Sonnets:
      • For the Holy Family, by Michelangelo . . . i. . 351
      • For Spring, by Sandro Botticelli . . . . i. . 352
      • Five English Poets . . . . . . i. . 337
      • Tiber, Nile, and Thames . . . . . i. . 340
      • The Last Three from Trafalgar . . . . i. . 342
      • Czar Alexander II. . . . . . . i. . 342
      • Words on the Window-pane . . . . i. . 299
      • Winter . . . . . . . . . i. . 341
      • Spring . . . . . . . . . i. . 323
      • The Church Porch . . . . . . . i. . 272
      • Untimely Lost (Oliver Madox Brown) . . . i. . 323
      • Image of page xl page: xl
      Note: Broken type: In the seventh line, the dot of the "i" for the page number is missing.
      • Sonnets, continued:
      • Place de la Bastille, Paris . . . . . i. . 261
      • “Found” (for a Picture) . . . . . i. . 363
      • A Sea-spell . . . . . . . . i. . 361
      • Fiammetta . . . . . . . . i. . 362
      • The Day-dream . . . . . . . i. . 364
      • Astarte Syriaca . . . . . . . i. . 361
      • Proserpina (Italian and English) . . . . i. . 370
      • La Bella Mano ” . . . . i. . 372
I add here the dedications to Rossetti's volumes 1a,

2a, 2b, and 3. The dedication to 1b appears in its

proper place.
  • 1a.— The Early Italian Poets:

    Whatever is mine in this book is inscribed to my Wife.—

    D.G.R. 1861.
  • 2a.— Poems, 1870:

    To William Michael Rossetti, these Poems, to so many

    of which, so many years back, he gave the first brotherly

    hearing, are now at last dedicated.
  • 2b.— Poems, 1881:

    Same dedication, adding the dates “1870—1881.”
  • 3.— Ballads and Sonnets:

    To Theodore Watts, the Friend whom my verse won for

    me, these few more pages are affectionately inscribed.
Image of page xli page: xli
In the Poems, 1881, appeared the ensuing “Adver-

tisement”:

“‘Many poems in this volume were written between 1847

and 1853. Others are of recent date, and a few belong to

the intervening period. It has been thought unnecessary

to specify the earlier work, as nothing is included which

the author believes to be immature.’

“The above brief note was prefixed to these poems when

first published in 1870. They have now been for some time

out of print.

“The fifty sonnets of the House of Life, which first appeared

here, are now embodied with the full series in the volume

entitled Ballads and Sonnets.

“The fragment of The Bride's Prelude, now first printed,

was written very early, and is here associated with other

work of the same date; though its publication in an un-

finished form needs some indulgence.”

On comparing the list which I have now given of

the “Poems published by Rossetti during his Lifetime”

with the contents of the present Collected Works,

section Poems, it will be found that the following

compositions are new. I put an asterisk against the

titles of the few which had been printed by my

brother in some outlying form, but not in his volumes.

For any further particulars the reader may be referred

to my notes.
  • At the Sun-rise in 1848 . . . . . . . 237
  • *Autumn Song . . . . . . . . 237
  • The Lady's Lament . . . . . . . . 238
  • A Trip to Paris and Belgium . . . . . . 255
  • The Staircase of Notre Dame, Paris . . . . 261
  • Near Brussels—A Half-way Pause . . . . . 262
  • *Antwerp and Bruges . . . . . . . 263
    • Image of page xlii page: xlii
  • On Leaving Bruges . . . . . . . . 264
  • Vox Ecclesiæ, Vox Christi . . . . . . 265
  • The Mirror . . . . . . . . . 272
  • During Music . . . . . . . . . 273
  • *On the Site of a Mulberry-tree, etc. . . . . 285
  • *On certain Elizabethan Revivals . . . . . 285
  • English May . . . . . . . . . 286
  • Dawn on the Night-journey . . . . . . 303
  • To Philip Bourke Marston . . . . . . 340
  • *Raleigh's Cell in the Tower . . . . . . 341
  • For an Annunciation . . . . . . . 343
  • *For a Virgin and Child by Memmelinck . . . 348
  • *For a Marriage of St. Catherine, by the same . . 349
  • *Mary's Girlhood, No. 2 . . . . . . . 354
  • Michael Scott's Wooing . . . . . . . 357
  • Mnemosyne . . . . . . . . . 362
  • La Ricordanza (Memory) . . . . . 370-1
  • Con manto d'oro, etc. (With golden mantle, etc.) . 372-3
  • Robe d'or, etc. (A golden robe, etc.) . . . 372-3
  • Barcarola . . . . . . . . . . 374
  • Barcarola . . . . . . . . . . 375
  • Bambino Fasciato . . . . . . . . 375
  • Thomæ Fides . . . . . . . . . 376
  • Versicles and Fragments . . . . . 377-80
Image of page [xliii] page: [xliii]
more about Poems
POEMS.
Image of page [xliv] page: [xliv]
Note: blank page
Image of page [1] page: [1]
I.—PRINCIPAL POEMS.
more about Dante at Verona
DANTE AT VERONA.
  • Yea, thou shalt learn how salt his food who fares
  • Upon another's bread,—how steep his path
  • Who treadeth up and down another's stairs.
( Div. Com. Parad. xvii.)
  • Behold, even I, even I am Beatrice.
( Div. Com. Purg. xxx.)
  • Of Florence and of Beatrice
  • Servant and singer from of old,
  • O'er Dante's heart in youth had toll'd
  • The knell that gave his Lady peace;
  • And now in manhood flew the dart
  • Wherewith his City pierced his heart.
  • Yet if his Lady's home above
  • Was Heaven, on earth she filled his soul;
  • And if his City held control
  • 10 To cast the body forth to rove,
  • The soul could soar from earth's vain throng,
  • And Heaven and Hell fulfil the song.
  • Follow his feet's appointed way;—
  • But little light we find that clears
  • The darkness of the exiled years.
  • Follow his spirit's journey:—nay,
  • What fires are blent, what winds are blown
  • On paths his feet may tread alone?
Sig. 1
Image of page 2 page: 2
  • Yet of the twofold life he led
  • 20 In chainless thought and fettered will
  • Some glimpses reach us,—somewhat still
  • Of the steep stairs and bitter bread,—
  • Of the soul's quest whose stern avow
  • For years had made him haggard now.
  • Alas! the Sacred Song whereto
  • Both heaven and earth had set their hand
  • Not only at Fame's gate did stand
  • Knocking to claim the passage through,
  • But toiled to ope that heavier door
  • 30 Which Florence shut for evermore.
  • Shall not his birth's baptismal Town
  • One last high presage yet fulfil,
  • And at that font in Florence still
  • His forehead take the laurel-crown?
  • O God! or shall dead souls deny
  • The undying soul its prophecy?
  • Aye, 'tis their hour. Not yet forgot
  • The bitter words he spoke that day
  • When for some great charge far away
  • 40 Her rulers his acceptance sought.
  • “And if I go, who stays?”—so rose
  • His scorn:—“and if I stay, who goes?”
  • “Lo! thou art gone now, and we stay”:
  • (The curled lips mutter): “and no star
  • Is from thy mortal path so far
  • As streets where childhood knew the way.
  • To Heaven and Hell thy feet may win,
  • But thine own house they come not in.”
  • Therefore, the loftier rose the song
  • 50 To touch the secret things of God,
  • The deeper pierced the hate that trod
    • Image of page 3 page: 3
  • On base men's track who wrought the wrong;
  • Till the soul's effluence came to be
  • Its own exceeding agony.
  • Arriving only to depart,
  • From court to court, from land to land,
  • Like flame within the naked hand
  • His body bore his burning heart
  • That still on Florence strove to bring
  • 60 God's fire for a burnt offering.
  • Even such was Dante's mood, when now,
  • Mocked for long years with Fortune's sport,
  • He dwelt at yet another court,
  • There where Verona's knee did bow
  • And her voice hailed with all acclaim
  • Can Grande della Scala's name.
  • As that lord's kingly guest awhile
  • His life we follow; through the days
  • Which walked in exile's barren ways,—
  • 70 The nights which still beneath one smile
  • Heard through all spheres one song increase,—
  • “Even I, even I am Beatrice.”
  • At Can La Scala's court, no doubt,
  • Due reverence did his steps attend;
  • The ushers on his path would ben
  • At ingoing as at going out;
  • The penmen waited on his call
  • At council-board, the grooms in hall.
  • And pages hushed their laughter down,
  • 80 And gay squires stilled the merry stir,
  • When he passed up the dais-chamber
  • With set brows lordlier than a frown;
  • And tire-maids hidden among these
  • Drew close their loosened bodices.
Image of page 4 page: 4
Note: The first l in “wall” is missing in line 107.
  • Perhaps the priests, (exact to span
  • All God's circumference,) if at whiles
  • They found him wandering in their aisles,
  • Grudged ghostly greeting to the man
  • By whom, though not of ghostly guild,
  • 90 With Heaven and Hell men's hearts were fill'd.
  • And the court-poets (he, forsooth,
  • A whole world's poet strayed to court!)
  • Had for his scorn their hate's retort.
  • He'd meet them flushed with easy youth,
  • Hot on their errands. Like noon-flies
  • They vexed him in the ears and eyes.
  • But at this court, peace still must wrench
  • Her chaplet from the teeth of war:
  • By day they held high watch afar,
  • 100 At night they cried across the trench;
  • And still, in Dante's path, the fierce
  • Gaunt soldiers wrangled o'er their spears.
  • But vain seemed all the strength to him,
  • As golden convoys sunk at sea
  • Whose wealth might root out penury:
  • Because it was not, limb with limb,
  • Knit like his heart-strings round the wa l
  • Of Florence, that ill pride might fall.
  • Yet in the tiltyard, when the dust
  • 110 Cleared from the sundered press of knights
  • Ere yet again it swoops and smites,
  • He almost deemed his longing must
  • Find force to yield that multitude
  • And hurl that strength the way he would.
  • How should he move them,—fame and gain
  • On all hands calling them at strife?
  • He still might find but his one life
    • Image of page 5 page: 5
  • To give, by Florence counted vain:
  • One heart the false hearts made her doubt,
  • 120 One voice she heard once and cast out.
  • Oh! if his Florence could but come,
  • A lily-sceptred damsel fair,
  • As her own Giotto painted her
  • On many shields and gates at home,—
  • A lady crowned, at a soft pace
  • Riding the lists round to the dais:
  • Till where Can Grande rules the lists,
  • As young as Truth, as calm as Force,
  • She draws her rein now, while her horse
  • 130 Bows at the turn of the white wrists;
  • And when each knight within his stall
  • Gives ear, she speaks and tells them all:
  • All the foul tale,—truth sworn untrue
  • And falsehood's triumph. All the tale?
  • Great God! and must she not prevail
  • To fire them ere they heard it through,—
  • And hand achieve ere heart could rest
  • That high adventure of her quest?
  • How would his Florence lead them forth,
  • 140 Her bridle ringing as she went;
  • And at the last within her tent,
  • 'Neath golden lilies worship-worth,
  • How queenly would she bend the while
  • And thank the victors with her smile!
  • Also her lips should turn his way
  • And murmur: “O thou tried and true,
  • With whom I wept the long years through!
  • What shall it profit if I say,
  • Thee I remember? Nay, through thee
  • 150 All ages shall remember me.”
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  • Peace, Dante, peace! The task is long,
  • The time wears short to compass it.
  • Within thine heart such hopes may flit
  • And find a voice in deathless song:
  • But lo! as children of man's earth,
  • Those hopes are dead before their birth.
  • Fame tells us that Verona's court
  • Was a fair place. The feet might still
  • Wander for ever at their will
  • 160 In many ways of sweet resort;
  • And still in many a heart around
  • The Poet's name due honour found.
  • Watch we his steps. He comes upon
  • The women at their palm-playing.
  • The conduits round the gardens sing
  • And meet in scoops of milk-white stone,
  • Where wearied damsels rest and hold
  • Their hands in the wet spurt of gold.
  • One of whom, knowing well that he,
  • 170 By some found stern, was mild with them,
  • Would run and pluck his garment's hem,
  • Saying, “Messer Dante, pardon me,”—
  • Praying that they might hear the song
  • Which first of all he made, when young.
  • “Donne che avete”* . . . Thereunto
  • Thus would he murmur, having first
  • Drawn near the fountain, while she nurs'd
  • His hand against her side: a few
  • Sweet words, and scarcely those, half said:
  • 180 Then turned, and changed, and bowed his head.
Transcribed Footnote (page 6):

* Donne che avete intelletto d'amore:—the first canzone of

the Vita Nuova.

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  • For then the voice said in his heart,
  • “Even I, even I am Beatrice;”
  • And his whole life would yearn to cease:
  • Till having reached his room, apart
  • Beyond vast lengths of palace-floor,
  • He drew the arras round his door.
  • At such times, Dante, thou hast set
  • Thy forehead to the painted pane
  • Full oft, I know; and if the rain
  • 190 Smote it outside, her fingers met
  • Thy brow; and if the sun fell there,
  • Her breath was on thy face and hair.
  • Then, weeping, I think certainly
  • Thou hast beheld, past sight of eyne,—
  • Within another room of thine
  • Where now thy body may not be
  • But where in thought thou still remain'st,—
  • A window often wept against:
  • The window thou, a youth, hast sought,
  • 200 Flushed in the limpid eventime,
  • Ending with daylight the day's rhyme
  • Of her; where oftenwhiles her thought
  • Held thee—the lamp untrimmed to write—
  • In joy through the blue lapse of night.
  • At Can La Scala's court, no doubt,
  • Guests seldom wept. It was brave sport,
  • No doubt, at Can La Scala's court,
  • Within the palace and without;
  • Where music, set to madrigals,
  • 210 Loitered all day through groves and halls.
  • Because Can Grande of his life
  • Had not had six-and-twenty years
  • As yet. And when the chroniclers
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  • Tell you of that Vicenza strife
  • And of strifes elsewhere,—you must not
  • Conceive for church-sooth he had got
  • Just nothing in his wits but war:
  • Though doubtless 'twas the young man's joy
  • (Grown with his growth from a mere boy,)
  • 220To mark his “Viva Cane!” scare
  • The foe's shut front, till it would reel
  • All blind with shaken points of steel.
  • But there were places—held too sweet
  • For eyes that had not the due veil
  • Of lashes and clear lids—as well
  • In favour as his saddle-seat:
  • Breath of low speech he scorned not there
  • Nor light cool fingers in his hair.
  • Yet if the child whom the sire's plan
  • 230 Made free of a deep treasure-chest
  • Scoffed it with ill-conditioned jest,—
  • We may be sure too that the man
  • Was not mere thews, nor all content
  • With lewdness swathed in sentiment.
  • So you may read and marvel not
  • That such a man as Dante—one
  • Who, while Can Grande's deeds were done,
  • Had drawn his robe round him and thought—
  • Now at the same guest-table far'd
  • 240 Where keen Uguccio wiped his beard.*
  • Through leaves and trellis-work the sun
  • Left the wine cool within the glass,—
  • They feasting where no sun could pass:
    • Transcribed Footnote (page 8):

    * Uguccione della Faggiuola, Dante's former protector, was

    now his fellow-guest at Verona.

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  • And when the women, all as one,
  • Rose up with brightened cheeks to go,
  • It was a comely thing, we know.
  • But Dante recked not of the wine;
  • Whether the women stayed or went,
  • His visage held one stern intent:
  • 250 And when the music had its sign
  • To breathe upon them for more ease,
  • Sometimes he turned and bade it cease.
  • And as he spared not to rebuke
  • The mirth, so oft in council he
  • To bitter truth bore testimony:
  • And when the crafty balance shook
  • Well poised to make the wrong prevail,
  • Then Dante's hand would turn the scale.
  • And if some envoy from afar
  • 260 Sailed to Verona's sovereign port
  • For aid or peace, and all the court
  • Fawned on its lord, “the Mars of war,
  • Sole arbiter of life and death,”—
  • Be sure that Dante saved his breath.
  • And Can La Scala marked askance
  • These things, accepting them for shame
  • And scorn, till Dante's guestship came
  • To be a peevish sufferance:
  • His host sought ways to make his days
  • 270 Hateful; and such have many ways.
  • There was a Jester, a foul lout
  • Whom the court loved for graceless arts;
  • Sworn scholiast of the bestial parts
  • Of speech; a ribald mouth to shout
  • In Folly's horny tympanum
  • Such things as make the wise man dumb.
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  • Much loved, him Dante loathed. And so,
  • One day when Dante felt perplex'd
  • If any day that could come next
  • 280 Were worth the waiting for or no,
  • And mute he sat amid their din,—
  • Can Grande called the Jester in.
  • Rank words, with such, are wit's best wealth.
  • Lords mouthed approval; ladies kept
  • Twittering with clustered heads, except
  • Some few that took their trains by stealth
  • And went. Can Grande shook his hair
  • And smote his thighs and laughed i' the air.
  • Then, facing on his guest, he cried,—
  • 290 “Say, Messer Dante, how it is
  • I get out of a clown like this
  • More than your wisdom can provide.”
  • And Dante: “'Tis man's ancient whim
  • That still his like seems good to him.”
  • Also a tale is told, how once,
  • At clearing tables after meat,
  • Piled for a jest at Dante's feet
  • Were found the dinner's well-picked bones;
  • So laid, to please the banquet's lord,
  • 300 By one who crouched beneath the board.
  • Then smiled Can Grande to the rest:—
  • “Our Dante's tuneful mouth indeed
  • Lacks not the gift on flesh to feed!”
  • “Fair host of mine,” replied the guest,
  • “So many bones you'd not descry
  • If so it chanced the dog were I.”*
Transcribed Footnote (page 10):

* “ Messere, voi non vedreste tant 'ossa se cane io fossi .” The

point of the reproach is difficult to render, depending as it does on

the literal meaning of the name Cane.

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  • But wherefore should we turn the grout
  • In a drained cup, or be at strife
  • From the worn garment of a life
  • 310 To rip the twisted ravel out?
  • Good needs expounding; but of ill
  • Each hath enough to guess his fill.
  • They named him Justicer-at-Law:
  • Each month to bear the tale in mind
  • Of hues a wench might wear unfin'd
  • And of the load an ox might draw;
  • To cavil in the weight of bread
  • And to see purse-thieves gibbeted.
  • And when his spirit wove the spell
  • 320 (From under even to over-noon
  • In converse with itself alone,)
  • As high as Heaven, as low as Hell,—
  • He would be summoned and must go:
  • For had not Gian stabbed Giacomo?
  • Therefore the bread he had to eat
  • Seemed brackish, less like corn than tares;
  • And the rush-strown accustomed stairs
  • Each day were steeper to his feet;
  • And when the night-vigil was done,
  • 330 His brows would ache to feel the sun.
  • Nevertheless, when from his kin
  • There came the tidings how at last
  • In Florence a decree was pass'd
  • Whereby all banished folk might win
  • Free pardon, so a fine were paid
  • And act of public penance made,—
  • This Dante writ in answer thus,
  • Words such as these: “That clearly they
  • In Florence must not have to say,—
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  • 340The man abode aloof from us
  • Nigh fifteen years, yet lastly skulk'd
  • Hither to candleshrift and mulct.
  • “That he was one the Heavens forbid
  • To traffic in God's justice sold
  • By market-weight of earthly gold,
  • Or to bow down over the lid
  • Of steaming censers, and so be
  • Made clean of manhood's obloquy.
  • “That since no gate led, by God's will,
  • 350 To Florence, but the one whereat
  • The priests and money-changers sat,
  • He still would wander; for that still,
  • Even through the body's prison-bars,
  • His soul possessed the sun and stars.”
  • Such were his words. It is indeed
  • For ever well our singers should
  • Utter good words and know them good
  • Not through song only; with close heed
  • Lest, having spent for the work's sake
  • 360 Six days, the man be left to make.
  • Months o'er Verona, till the feast
  • Was come for Florence the Free Town:
  • And at the shrine of Baptist John
  • The exiles, girt with many a priest
  • And carrying candles as they went,
  • Were held to mercy of the saint.
  • On the high seats in sober state,—
  • Gold neck-chains range o'er range below
  • Gold screen-work where the lilies grow,—
  • 370 The Heads of the Republic sate,
  • Marking the humbled face go by
  • Each one of his house-enemy.
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  • And as each proscript rose and stood
  • From kneeling in the ashen dust
  • On the shrine-steps, some magnate thrust
  • A beard into the velvet hood
  • Of his front colleague's gown, to see
  • The cinders stuck in his bare knee.
  • Tosinghi passed, Manelli passed,
  • 380 Rinucci passed, each in his place;
  • But not an Alighieri's face
  • Went by that day from first to last
  • In the Republic's triumph; nor
  • A foot came home to Dante's door.
  • (Respublica—a public thing:
  • A shameful shameless prostitute,
  • Whose lust with one lord may not suit,
  • So takes by turn its revelling
  • A night with each, till each at morn
  • 390 Is stripped and beaten forth forlorn,
  • And leaves her, cursing her. If she,
  • Indeed, have not some spice-draught, hid
  • In scent under a silver lid,
  • To drench his open throat with—he
  • Once hard asleep; and thrust him not
  • At dawn beneath the stairs to rot.
  • Such this Republic!—not the Maid
  • He yearned for; she who yet should stand
  • With Heaven's accepted hand in hand,
  • 400 Invulnerable and unbetray'd:
  • To whom, even as to God, should be
  • Obeisance one with Liberty.)
  • Years filled out their twelve moons, and ceased
  • One in another; and alway
  • There were the whole twelve hours each day
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  • And each night as the years increased;
  • And rising moon and setting sun
  • Beheld that Dante's work was done.
  • What of his work for Florence? Well
  • 410 It was, he knew, and well must be.
  • Yet evermore her hate's decree
  • Dwelt in his thought intolerable:—
  • His body to be burned,*—his soul
  • To beat its wings at hope's vain goal.
  • What of his work for Beatrice?
  • Now well-nigh was the third song writ,—
  • The stars a third time sealing it
  • With sudden music of pure peace:
  • For echoing thrice the threefold song,
  • 420 The unnumbered stars the tone prolong.†
  • Each hour, as then the Vision pass'd,
  • He heard the utter harmony
  • Of the nine trembling spheres, till she
  • Bowed her eyes towards him in the last,
  • So that all ended with her eyes,
  • Hell, Purgatory, Paradise.
  • “It is my trust, as the years fall,
  • To write more worthily of her
  • Who now, being made God's minister,
  • 430 Looks on His visage and knows all.”
  • Such was the hope that love dar'd blend
  • With grief's slow fires, to make an end
Transcribed Footnote (page 14):

* Such was the last sentence passed by Florence against Dante,

as a recalcitrant exile.

Transcribed Footnote (page 14):

† E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle.— Inferno.

Puro e disposto a salire alle stelle.— Purgatorio.

L'amor che muove il sole e l'altre stelle.— Paradiso.

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  • Of the “New Life,” his youth's dear book:
  • Adding thereunto: “In such trust
  • I labour, and believe I must
  • Accomplish this which my soul took
  • In charge, if God, my Lord and hers,
  • Leave my life with me a few years.”
  • The trust which he had borne in youth
  • 440 Was all at length accomplished. He
  • At length had written worthily—
  • Yea even of her; no rhymes uncouth
  • 'Twixt tongue and tongue; but by God's aid
  • The first words Italy had said.
  • Ah! haply now the heavenly guide
  • Was not the last form seen by him:
  • But there that Beatrice stood slim
  • And bowed in passing at his side,
  • For whom in youth his heart made moan
  • 450 Then when the city sat alone.*
  • Clearly herself: the same whom he
  • Met, not past girlhood, in the street,
  • Low-bosomed and with hidden feet;
  • And then as woman perfectly,
  • In years that followed, many an once,—
  • And now at last among the suns
  • In that high vision. But indeed
  • It may be memory might recall
  • Last to him then the first of all,—
  • 460 The child his boyhood bore in heed
  • Nine years. At length the voice brought peace,—
  • “Even I, even I am Beatrice.”
Transcribed Footnote (page 15):

* Quomodo sedet sola civitas!—The words quoted by Dante

in the Vita Nuova when he speaks of the death of Beatrice.

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  • All this, being there, we had not seen.
  • Seen only was the shadow wrought
  • On the strong features bound in thought;
  • The vagueness gaining gait and mien;
  • The white streaks gathering clear to view
  • In the burnt beard the women knew.
  • For a tale tells that on his track,
  • 470 As through Verona's streets he went,
  • This saying certain women sent:—
  • “Lo, he that strolls to Hell and back
  • At will! Behold him, how Hell's reek
  • Has crisped his beard and singed his cheek.”
  • “Whereat” (Boccaccio's words) “he smil'd
  • For pride in fame.” It might be so:
  • Nevertheless we cannot know
  • If haply he were not beguil'd
  • To bitterer mirth, who scarce could tell
  • 480 If he indeed were back from Hell.
  • So the day came, after a space,
  • When Dante felt assured that there
  • The sunshine must lie sicklier
  • Even than in any other place,
  • Save only Florence. When that day
  • Had come, he rose and went his way.
  • He went and turned out. From his shoes
  • It may be that he shook the dust,
  • As every righteous dealer must
  • 490 Once and again ere life can close:
  • And unaccomplished destiny
  • Struck cold his forehead, it may be.
  • No book keeps record how the Prince
  • Sunned himself out of Dante's reach,
  • Nor how the Jester stank in speech:
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  • While courtiers, used to cringe and wince,
  • Poets and harlots, all the throng,
  • Let loose their scandal and their song.
  • No book keeps record if the seat
  • 500 Which Dante held at his host's board
  • Were sat in next by clerk or lord,—
  • If leman lolled with dainty feet
  • At ease, or hostage brooded there,
  • Or priest lacked silence for his prayer.
  • Eat and wash hands, Can Grande;—scarce
  • We know their deeds now: hands which fed
  • Our Dante with that bitter bread;
  • And thou the watch-dog of those stairs
  • Which, of all paths his feet knew well,
  • 510 Were steeper found than Heaven or Hell.
Sig. 2
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more about A Last Confession.
A LAST CONFESSION.

( Regno Lombardo-Veneto , 1848.)
  • Our Lombard country-girls along the coast
  • Wear daggers in their garters: for they know
  • That they might hate another girl to death
  • Or meet a German lover. Such a knife
  • I bought her, with a hilt of horn and pearl.
  • Father, you cannot know of all my thoughts
  • That day in going to meet her,—that last day
  • For the last time, she said;—of all the love
  • And all the hopeless hope that she might change
  • 10 And go back with me. Ah! and everywhere,
  • At places we both knew along the road,
  • Some fresh shape of herself as once she was
  • Grew present at my side; until it seemed—
  • So close they gathered round me—they would all
  • Be with me when I reached the spot at last,
  • To plead my cause with her against herself
  • So changed. O Father, if you knew all this
  • You cannot know, then you would know too, Father,
  • And only then, if God can pardon me.
  • 20 What can be told I'll tell, if you will hear.
  • I passed a village-fair upon my road,
  • And thought, being empty-handed, I would take
  • Some little present: such might prove, I said,
  • Either a pledge between us, or (God help me!)
  • A parting gift. And there it was I bought
  • The knife I spoke of, such as women wear.
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  • That day, some three hours afterwards, I found
  • For certain, it must be a parting gift.
  • And, standing silent now at last, I looked
  • 30 Into her scornful face; and heard the sea
  • Still trying hard to din into my ears
  • Some speech it knew which still might change her heart,
  • If only it could make me understand.
  • One moment thus. Another, and her face
  • Seemed further off than the last line of sea,
  • So that I thought, if now she were to speak
  • I could not hear her. Then again I knew
  • All, as we stood together on the sand
  • At Iglio, in the first thin shade o' the hills.
  • 40 “Take it,” I said, and held it out to her,
  • While the hilt glanced within my trembling hold;
  • “Take it and keep it for my sake,” I said.
  • Her neck unbent not, neither did her eyes
  • Move, nor her foot left beating of the sand;
  • Only she put it by from her and laughed.
  • Father, you hear my speech and not her laugh;
  • But God heard that. Will God remember all?
  • It was another laugh than the sweet sound
  • Which rose from her sweet childish heart, that day
  • 50 Eleven years before, when first I found her
  • Alone upon the hill-side; and her curls
  • Shook down in the warm grass as she looked up
  • Out of her curls in my eyes bent to hers.
  • She might have served a painter to pourtray
  • That heavenly child which in the latter days
  • Shall walk between the lion and the lamb.
  • I had been for nights in hiding, worn and sick
  • And hardly fed; and so her words at first
  • Seemed fiftul like the talking of the trees
  • 60 And voices in the air that knew my name.
  • And I remember that I sat me down
  • Upon the slope with her, and thought the world
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  • Must be all over or had never been,
  • We seemed there so alone. And soon she told me
  • Her parents both were gone away from her.
  • I thought perhaps she meant that they had died;
  • But when I asked her this, she looked again
  • Into my face and said that yestereve
  • They kissed her long, and wept and made her weep,
  • 70 And gave her all the bread they had with them,
  • And then had gone together up the hill
  • Where we were sitting now, and had walked on
  • Into the great red light; “and so,” she said,
  • “I have come up here too; and when this evening
  • They step out of the light as they stepped in,
  • I shall be here to kiss them.” And she laughed.
  • Then I bethought me suddenly of the famine;
  • And how the church-steps throughout all the town,
  • When last I had been there a month ago,
  • 80 Swarmed with starved folk; and how the bread was
  • weighed
  • By Austrians armed; and women that I knew
  • For wives and mothers walked the public street,
  • Saying aloud that if their husbands feared
  • To snatch the children's food, themselves would stay
  • Till they had earned it there. So then this child
  • Was piteous to me; for all told me then
  • Her parents must have left her to God's chance,
  • To man's or to the Church's charity,
  • Because of the great famine, rather than
  • 90 To watch her growing thin between their knees.
  • With that, God took my mother's voice and spoke,
  • And sights and sounds came back and things long since,
  • And all my childhood found me on the hills;
  • And so I took her with me.
  • I was young.
  • Scarce man then, Father: but the cause which gave
  • The wounds I die of now had brought me then
  • Some wounds already; and I lived alone,
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  • As any hiding hunted man must live.
  • It was no easy thing to keep a child
  • 100 In safety; for herself it was not safe,
  • And doubled my own danger: but I knew
  • That God would help me.
  • Yet a little while
  • Pardon me, Father, if I pause. I think
  • I have been speaking to you of some matters
  • There was no need to speak of, have I not?
  • You do not know how clearly those things stood
  • Within my mind, which I have spoken of,
  • Nor how they strove for utterance. Life all past
  • Is like the sky when the sun sets in it,
  • 110 Clearest where furthest off.
  • I told you how
  • She scorned my parting gift and laughed. And yet
  • A woman's laugh's another thing sometimes:
  • I think they laugh in Heaven. I know last night
  • I dreamed I saw into the garden of God,
  • Where women walked whose painted images
  • I have seen with candles round them in the church.
  • They bent this way and that, one to another,
  • Playing: and over the long golden hair
  • Of each there floated like a ring of fire
  • 120 Which when she stooped stooped with her, and when she
  • rose
  • Rose with her. Then a breeze flew in among them,
  • As if a window had been opened in heaven
  • For God to give His blessing from, before
  • This world of ours should set; (for in my dream
  • I thought our world was setting, and the sun
  • Flared, a spent taper;) and beneath that gust
  • The rings of light quivered like forest-leaves.
  • Then all the blessed maidens who were there
  • Stood up together, as it were a voice
  • 130 That called them; and they threw their tresses back,
  • And smote their palms, and all laughed up at once,
  • For the strong heavenly joy they had in them
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  • To hear God bless the world. Wherewith I woke:
  • And looking round, I saw as usual
  • That she was standing there with her long locks
  • Pressed to her side; and her laugh ended theirs.
  • For always when I see her now, she laughs.
  • And yet her childish laughter haunts me too,
  • The life of this dead terror; as in days
  • 140 When she, a child, dwelt with me. I must tell
  • Something of those days yet before the end.
  • I brought her from the city—one such day
  • When she was still a merry loving child,—
  • The earliest gift I mind my giving her;
  • A little image of a flying Love
  • Made of our coloured glass-ware, in his hands
  • A dart of gilded metal and a torch.
  • And him she kissed and me, and fain would know
  • Why were his poor eyes blindfold, why the wings
  • 150 And why the arrow. What I knew I told
  • Of Venus and of Cupid,—strange old tales.
  • And when she heard that he could rule the loves
  • Of men and women, still she shook her head
  • And wondered; and, “Nay, nay,” she murmured still,
  • “So strong, and he a younger child than I!”
  • And then she'd have me fix him on the wall
  • Fronting her little bed; and then again
  • She needs must fix him there herself, because
  • I gave him to her and she loved him so,
  • 160 And he should make her love me better yet,
  • If women loved the more, the more they grew.
  • But the fit place upon the wall was high
  • For her, and so I held her in my arms:
  • And each time that the heavy pruning-hook
  • I gave her for a hammer slipped away
  • As it would often, still she laughed and laughed
  • And kissed and kissed me. But amid her mirth,
  • Just as she hung the image on the nail,
    • Image of page 23 page: 23
  • It slipped and all its fragments strewed the ground:
  • 170 And as it fell she screamed, for in her hand
  • The dart had entered deeply and drawn blood.
  • And so her laughter turned to tears: and “Oh!”
  • I said, the while I bandaged the small hand,—
  • “That I should be the first to make you bleed,
  • Who love and love and love you!”—kissing still
  • The fingers till I got her safe to bed.
  • And still she sobbed,—“not for the pain at all,”
  • She said, “but for the Love, the poor good Love
  • You gave me.” So she cried herself to sleep.
  • 180 Another later thing comes back to me.
  • 'Twas in those hardest foulest days of all,
  • When still from his shut palace, sitting clean
  • Above the splash of blood, old Metternich
  • (May his soul die, and never-dying worms
  • Feast on its pain for ever!) used to thin
  • His year's doomed hundreds daintily, each month
  • Thirties and fifties. This time, as I think,
  • Was when his thrift forbad the poor to take
  • That evil brackish salt which the dry rocks
  • 190 Keep all through winter when the sea draws in.
  • The first I heard of it was a chance shot
  • In the street here and there, and on the stones
  • A stumbling clatter as of horse hemmed round.
  • Then, when she saw me hurry out of doors,
  • My gun slung at my shoulder and my knife
  • Stuck in my girdle, she smoothed down my hair
  • And laughed to see me look so brave, and leaped
  • Up to my neck and kissed me. She was still
  • A child; and yet that kiss was on my lips
  • 200 So hot all day where the smoke shut us in.
  • For now, being always with her, the first love
  • I had—the father's, brother's love—was changed,
  • I think, in somewise; like a holy thought
  • Which is a prayer before one knows of it.
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  • The first time I perceived this, I remember,
  • Was once when after hunting I came home
  • Weary, and she brought food and fruit for me,
  • And sat down at my feet upon the floor
  • Leaning against my side. But when I felt
  • 210 Her sweet head reach from that low seat of hers
  • So high as to be laid upon my heart,
  • I turned and looked upon my darling there
  • And marked for the first time how tall she was;
  • And my heart beat with so much violence
  • Under her cheek, I thought she could not choose
  • But wonder at it soon and ask me why;
  • And so I bade her rise and eat with me.
  • And when, remembering all and counting back
  • The time, I made out fourteen years for her
  • 220 And told her so, she gazed at me with eyes
  • As of the sky and sea on a grey day,
  • And drew her long hands through her hair, and
  • asked me
  • If she was not a woman; and then laughed:
  • And as she stooped in laughing, I could see
  • Beneath the growing throat the breasts half-globed
  • Like folded lilies deepset in the stream.
  • Yes, let me think of her as then; for so
  • Her image, Father, is not like the sights
  • Which come when you are gone. She had a mouth
  • 230 Made to bring death to life,—the underlip
  • Sucked in, as if it strove to kiss itself.
  • Her face was pearly pale, as when one stoops
  • Over wan water; and the dark crisped hair
  • And the hair's shadow made it paler still:—
  • Deep-serried locks, the dimness of the cloud
  • Where the moon's gaze is set in eddying gloom.
  • Her body bore her neck as the tree's stem
  • Bears the top branch; and as the branch sustains
  • The flower of the year's pride, her high neck bore
  • 240 That face made wonderful with night and day.
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  • Her voice was swift, yet ever the last words
  • Fell lingeringly; and rounded finger-tips
  • She had, that clung a little where they touched
  • And then were gone o' the instant. Her great eyes,
  • That sometimes turned half dizzily beneath
  • The passionate lids, as faint, when she would speak,
  • Had also in them hidden springs of mirth,
  • Which under the dark lashes evermore
  • Shook to her laugh, as when a bird flies low
  • 250 Between the water and the willow-leaves,
  • And the shade quivers till he wins the light.
  • I was a moody comrade to her then,
  • For all the love I bore her. Italy,
  • The weeping desolate mother, long has claimed
  • Her sons' strong arms to lean on, and their hands
  • To lop the poisonous thicket from her path,
  • Cleaving her way to light. And from her need
  • Had grown the fashion of my whole poor life
  • Which I was proud to yield her, as my father
  • 260 Had yielded his. And this had come to be
  • A game to play, a love to clasp, a hate
  • To wreak, all things together that a man
  • Needs for his blood to ripen; till at times
  • All else seemed shadows, and I wondered still
  • To see such life pass muster and be deemed
  • Time's bodily substance. In those hours, no doubt,
  • To the young girl my eyes were like my soul,—
  • Dark wells of death-in-life that yearned for day.
  • And though she ruled me always, I remember
  • 270 That once when I was thus and she still kept
  • Leaping about the place and laughing, I
  • Did almost chide her; whereupon she knelt
  • And putting her two hands into my breast
  • Sang me a song. Are these tears in my eyes?
  • 'Tis long since I have wept for anything.
  • I thought that song forgotten out of mind;
  • And now, just as I spoke of it, it came
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  • All back. It is but a rude thing, ill rhymed,
  • Such as a blind man chaunts and his dog hears
  • 280 Holding the platter, when the children run
  • To merrier sport and leave him. Thus it goes:—
more about Madonna
  • La bella donna*
  • Piangendo disse:
  • “Come son fisse
  • Le stelle in cielo!
  • Quel fiato anelo
  • Dello stanco sole,
  • Quanto m' assonna!
more about She wept, sweet lady
Transcribed Footnote (page 26):
Note: The English poem is printed in two columns, divided by a vertical line.
  • *She wept, sweet lady,
  • And said in weeping:
  • “What spell is keeping
  • The stars so steady?
  • Why does the power
  • Of the sun's noon-hour
  • To sleep so move me?
  • And the moon in heaven,
  • Stained where she passes
  • 10 As a worn-out glass is,—
  • Wearily driven,
  • Why walks she above me?
  • “Stars, moon, and sun too,
  • I'm tired of either
  • And all together!
  • Whom speak they unto
  • That I should listen?
  • For very surely,
  • Though my arms and shoulders
  • 20 Dazzle beholders,
  • And my eyes glisten,
  • All's nothing purely!
  • What are words said for
  • At all about them,
  • If he they are made for
  • Can do without them?”
  • She laughed, sweet lady,
  • And said in laughing:
  • “His hand clings half in
  • 30 My own already!
  • Oh! do you love me?
  • Oh! speak of passion
  • In no new fashion,
  • No loud inveighings,
  • But the old sayings
  • You once said of me.
  • “You said: ‘As summer,
  • Through boughs grown brittle,
  • Comes back a little
  • 40 Ere frosts benumb her,—
  • So bring'st thou to me
  • All leaves and flowers,
  • Though autumn's gloomy
  • To-day in the bowers.’
  • “Oh! does he love me,
  • When my voice teaches
  • The very speeches
  • He then spoke of me?
  • Alas! what flavour
  • 50 Still with me lingers?”
  • (But she laughed as my kisses
  • Glowed in her fingers
  • With love's old blisses.)
  • “Oh! what one favour
  • Remains to woo him,
  • Whose whole poor savour
  • Belongs not to him?”
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  • E la luna, macchiata
  • 290Come uno specchio
  • Logoro e vecchio,—
  • Faccia affannata,
  • Che cosa vuole?
  • “Chè stelle, luna, e sole,
  • Ciascun m' annoja
  • E m' annojano insieme;
  • Non me ne preme
  • Nè ci prendo gioja.
  • E veramente,
  • 300 Che le spalle sien franche
  • E le braccia bianche
  • E il seno caldo e tondo,
  • Non mi fa niente.
  • Che cosa al mondo
  • Posso più far di questi
  • Se non piacciono a te, come dicesti?”
  • La donna rise
  • E riprese ridendo:—
  • “Questa mano che prendo
  • 310 È dunque mia?
  • Tu m' ami dunque?
  • Dimmelo ancora,
  • Non in modo qualunque,
  • Ma le parole
  • Belle e precise
  • Che dicesti pria.
  • ‘ Siccome suole
  • La state talora
  • (Dicesti) un qualche istante
  • 320 Tornare innanzi inverno,
  • Così tu fai ch' io scerno
  • Le foglie tutte quante,
  • Ben ch' io certo tenessi
  • Per passato l' autunno .’
  • “Eccolo il mio alunno!
  • Io debbo insegnargli
  • Quei cari detti istessi
  • Ch' ei mi disse una volta!
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  • Oimè! Che cosa dargli,”
  • 330(Ma ridea piano piano
  • Dei baci in sulla mano,)
  • “Ch' ei non m'abbia da lungo tempo tolta?”
  • That I should sing upon this bed!—with you
  • To listen, and such words still left to say!
  • Yet was it I that sang? The voice seemed hers,
  • As on the very day she sang to me;
  • When, having done, she took out of my hand
  • Something that I had played with all the while
  • And laid it down beyond my reach; and so
  • 340 Turning my face round till it fronted hers,—
  • “Weeping or laughing, which was best?” she said.
  • But these are foolish tales. How should I show
  • The heart that glowed then with love's heat, each day
  • More and more brightly?—when for long years now
  • The very flame that flew about the heart,
  • And gave it fiery wings, has come to be
  • The lapping blaze of hell's environment
  • Whose tongues all bid the molten heart despair.
  • Yet one more thing comes back on me to-night
  • 350 Which I may tell you: for it bore my soul
  • Dread firstlings of the brood that rend it now.
  • It chanced that in our last year's wanderings
  • We dwelt at Monza, far away from home,
  • If home we had: and in the Duomo there
  • I sometimes entered with her when she prayed.
  • An image of Our Lady stands there, wrought
  • In marble by some great Italian hand
  • In the great days when she and Italy
  • Sat on one throne together: and to her
  • 360 And to none else my loved one told her heart.
  • She was a woman then; and as she knelt,—
  • Her sweet brow in the sweet brow's shadow there,—
  • They seemed two kindred forms whereby our land
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  • (Whose work still serves the world for miracle)
  • Made manifest herself in womanhood.
  • Father, the day I speak of was the first
  • For weeks that I had borne her company
  • Into the Duomo; and those weeks had been
  • Much troubled, for then first the glimpses came
  • 370 Of some impenetrable restlessness
  • Growing in her to make her changed and cold.
  • And as we entered there that day, I bent
  • My eyes on the fair Image, and I said
  • Within my heart, “Oh turn her heart to me!”
  • And so I left her to her prayers, and went
  • To gaze upon the pride of Monza's shrine,
  • Where in the sacristy the light still falls
  • Upon the Iron Crown of Italy,
  • On whose crowned heads the day has closed, nor yet
  • 380 The daybreak gilds another head to crown.
  • But coming back, I wondered when I saw
  • That the sweet Lady of her prayers now stood
  • Alone without her; until further off,
  • Before some new Madonna gaily decked,
  • Tinselled and gewgawed, a slight German toy,
  • I saw her kneel, still praying. At my step
  • She rose, and side by side we left the church.
  • I was much moved, and sharply questioned her
  • Of her transferred devotion; but she seemed
  • 390 Stubborn and heedless; till she lightly laughed
  • And said: “The old Madonna? Aye indeed,
  • She had my old thoughts,—this one has my new.”
  • Then silent to the soul I held my way:
  • And from the fountains of the public place
  • Unto the pigeon-haunted pinnacles,
  • Bright wings and water winnowed the bright air;
  • And stately with her laugh's subsiding smile
  • She went, with clear-swayed waist and towering neck
  • And hands held light before her; and the face
  • 400 Which long had made a day in my life's night
  • Was night in day to me; as all men's eyes
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  • Turned on her beauty, and she seemed to tread
  • Beyond my heart to the world made for her.
  • Ah, there! my wounds will snatch my sense again:
  • The pain comes billowing on like a full cloud
  • Of thunder, and the flash that breaks from it
  • Leaves my brain burning. That's the wound he gave,
  • The Austrian whose white coat I still made match
  • With his white face, only the two grew red
  • 410 As suits his trade. The devil makes them wear
  • White for a livery, that the blood may show
  • Braver that brings them to him. So he looks
  • Sheer o'er the field and knows his own at once.
  • Give me a draught of water in that cup;
  • My voice feels thick; perhaps you do not hear;
  • But you must hear. If you mistake my words
  • And so absolve me, I am sure the blessing
  • Will burn my soul. If you mistake my words
  • And so absolve me, Father, the great sin
  • 420 Is yours, not mine: mark this: your soul shall burn
  • With mine for it. I have seen pictures where
  • Souls burned with Latin shriekings in their mouths:
  • Shall my end be as theirs? Nay, but I know
  • 'Tis you shall shriek in Latin. Some bell rings,
  • Rings through my brain: it strikes the hour in hell.
  • You see I cannot, Father; I have tried,
  • But cannot, as you see. These twenty times
  • Beginning, I have come to the same point
  • And stopped. Beyond, there are but broken words
  • 430 Which will not let you understand my tale.
  • It is that then we have her with us here,
  • As when she wrung her hair out in my dream
  • To-night, till all the darkness reeked of it.
  • Her hair is always wet, for she has kept
  • Its tresses wrapped about her side for years;
  • And when she wrung them round over the floor,
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    Note: There is a printing error on the third word in the first line of this page.
  • I heard he blood between her fingers hiss;
  • So that I sat up in my bed and screamed
  • Once and again; and once to once, she laughed.
  • 440 Look that you turn not now,—she's at your back:
  • Gather your robe up, Father, and keep close,
  • Or she'll sit down on it and send you mad.
  • At Iglio in the first thin shade o' the hills
  • The sand is black and red. The black was black
  • When what was spilt that day sank into it,
  • And the red scarcely darkened. There I stood
  • This night with her, and saw the sand the same.
  • What would you have me tell you? Father, father,
  • How shall I make you know? You have not known
  • 450 The dreadful soul of woman, who one day
  • Forgets the old and takes the new to heart,
  • Forgets what man remembers, and therewith
  • Forgets the man. Nor can I clearly tell
  • How the change happened between her and me.
  • Her eyes looked on me from an emptied heart
  • When most my heart was full of her; and still
  • In every corner of myself I sought
  • To find what service failed her; and no less
  • Than in the good time past, there all was hers.
  • 460 What do you love? Your Heaven? Conceive it spread
  • For one first year of all eternity
  • All round you with all joys and gifts of God;
  • And then when most your soul is blent with it
  • And all yields song together,—then it stands
  • O' the sudden like a pool that once gave back
  • Your image, but now drowns it and is clear
  • Again,—or like a sun bewitched, that burns
  • Your shadow from you, and still shines in sight.
  • How could you bear it? Would you not cry out,
  • 470 Among those eyes grown blind to you, those ears
  • That hear no more your voice you hear the same,—
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  • “God! what is left but hell for company,
  • But hell, hell, hell?”—until the name so breathed
  • Whirled with hot wind and sucked you down in fire?
  • Even so I stood the day her empty heart
  • Left her place empty in our home, while yet
  • I knew not why she went nor where she went
  • Nor how to reach her: so I stood the day
  • When to my prayers at last one sight of her
  • 480 Was granted, and I looked on heaven made pale
  • With scorn, and heard heaven mock me in that laugh.
  • O sweet, long sweet! Was that some ghost of you,
  • Even as your ghost that haunts me now,—twin shapes
  • Of fear and hatred? May I find you yet
  • Mine when death wakes? Ah! be it even in flame,
  • We may have sweetness yet, if you but say
  • As once in childish sorrow: “Not my pain,
  • My pain was nothing: oh your poor poor love,
  • Your broken love!”
  • My Father, have I not
  • 490 Yet told you the last things of that last day
  • On which I went to meet her by the sea?
  • O God, O God! but I must tell you all.
  • Midway upon my journey, when I stopped
  • To buy the dagger at the village fair,
  • I saw two cursed rats about the place
  • I knew for spies—blood-sellers both. That day
  • Was not yet over; for three hours to come
  • I prized my life: and so I looked around
  • For safety. A poor painted mountebank
  • 500 Was playing tricks and shouting in a crowd.
  • I knew he must have heard my name, so I
  • Pushed past and whispered to him who I was,
  • And of my danger. Straight he hustled me
  • Into his booth, as it were in the trick,
  • And brought me out next minute with my face
  • All smeared in patches and a zany's gown;
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  • And there I handed him his cups and balls
  • And swung the sand-bags round to clear the ring
  • For half an hour. The spies came once and looked;
  • 510 And while they stopped, and made all sights and
  • sounds
  • Sharp to my startled senses, I remember
  • A woman laughed above me. I looked up
  • And saw where a brown-shouldered harlot leaned
  • Half through a tavern window thick with vine.
  • Some man had come behind her in the room
  • And caught her by her arms, and she had turned
  • With that coarse empty laugh on him, as now
  • He munched her neck with kisses, while the vine
  • Crawled in her back.
  • And three hours afterwards,
  • 520 When she that I had run all risks to meet
  • Laughed as I told you, my life burned to death
  • Within me, for I thought it like the laugh
  • Heard at the fair. She had not left me long;
  • But all she might have changed to, or might change to,
  • (I know nought since—she never speaks a word—)
  • Seemed in that laugh. Have I not told you yet,
  • Not told you all this time what happened, Father,
  • When I had offered her the little knife,
  • And bade her keep it for my sake that loved her,
  • 530 And she had laughed? Have I not told you yet?
  • “Take it,” I said to her the second time,
  • “Take it and keep it.” And then came a fire
  • That burnt my hand; and then the fire was blood,
  • And sea and sky were blood and fire, and all
  • The day was one red blindness; till it seemed,
  • Within the whirling brain's eclipse, that she
  • Or I or all things bled or burned to death.
  • And then I found her laid against my feet
  • And knew that I had stabbed her, and saw still
  • 540 Her look in falling. For she took the knife
  • Deep in her heart, even as I bade her then,
    • Sig. 3
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  • And fell; and her stiff bodice scooped the sand
  • Into her bosom.
  • And she keeps it, see,
  • Do you not see she keeps it?—there, beneath
  • Wet fingers and wet tresses, in her heart.
  • For look you, when she stirs her hand, it shows
  • The little hilt of horn and pearl,—even such
  • A dagger as our women of the coast
  • Twist in their garters.
  • Father, I have done:
  • 550 And from her side now she unwinds the thick
  • Dark hair; all round her side it is wet through,
  • But, like the sand at Iglio, does not change.
  • Now you may see the dagger clearly. Father,
  • I have told all: tell me at once what hope
  • Can reach me still. For now she draws it out
  • Slowly, and only smiles as yet: look, Father,
  • She scarcely smiles: but I shall hear her laugh
  • Soon, when she shows the crimson steel to God.
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more about The Bride's Prelude.
THE BRIDE'S PRELUDE.
  • “Sister,” said busy Amelotte
  • To listless Aloÿse;
  • “Along your wedding-road the wheat
  • Bends as to hear your horse's feet,
  • And the noonday stands still for heat.”
  • Amelotte laughed into the air
  • With eyes that sought the sun:
  • But where the walls in long brocade
  • Were screened, as one who is afraid
  • 10 Sat Aloÿse within the shade.
  • And even in shade was gleam enough
  • To shut out full repose
  • From the bride's 'tiring-chamber, which
  • Was like the inner altar-niche
  • Whose dimness worship has made rich.
  • Within the window's heaped recess
  • The light was counterchanged
  • In blent reflexes manifold
  • From perfume-caskets of wrought gold
  • 20 And gems the bride's hair could not hold
  • All thrust together: and with these
  • A slim-curved lute, which now,
  • At Amelotte's sudden passing there,
  • Was swept in somewise unaware,
  • And shook to music the close air.
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  • Against the haloed lattice-panes
  • The bridesmaid sunned her breast;
  • Then to the glass turned tall and free,
  • And braced and shifted daintily
  • 30 Her loin-belt through her cote-hardie.
  • The belt was silver, and the clasp
  • Of lozenged arm-bearings;
  • A world of mirrored tints minute
  • The rippling sunshine wrought into 't,
  • That flushed her hand and warmed her foot.
  • At least an hour had Aloÿse,—
  • Her jewels in her hair,—
  • Her white gown, as became a bride,
  • Quartered in silver at each side,—
  • 40 Sat thus aloof, as if to hide.
  • Over her bosom, that lay still,
  • The vest was rich in grain,
  • With close pearls wholly overset:
  • Around her throat the fastenings met
  • Of chevesayle and mantelet.
  • Her arms were laid along her lap
  • With the hands open: life
  • Itself did seem at fault in her:
  • Beneath the drooping brows, the stir
  • 50 Of thought made noonday heavier.
  • Long sat she silent; and then raised
  • Her head, with such a gasp
  • As while she summoned breath to speak
  • Fanned high that furnace in the cheek
  • But sucked the heart-pulse cold and weak.
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  • (Oh gather round her now, all ye
  • Past seasons of her fear,—
  • Sick springs, and summers deadly cold!
  • To flight your hovering wings unfold,
  • 60 For now your secret shall be told.
  • Ye many sunlights, barbed with darts
  • Of dread detecting flame,—
  • Gaunt moonlights that like sentinels
  • Went past with iron clank of bells,—
  • Draw round and render up your spells!)
  • “Sister,” said Aloÿse, “I had
  • A thing to tell thee of
  • Long since, and could not. But do thou
  • Kneel first in prayer awhile, and bow
  • 70 Thine heart, and I will tell thee now.”
  • Amelotte wondered with her eyes;
  • But her heart said in her:
  • “Dear Aloÿse would have me pray
  • Because the awe she feels to-day
  • Must need more prayers than she can say.”
  • So Amelotte put by the folds
  • That covered up her feet,
  • And knelt,—beyond the arras'd gloom
  • And the hot window's dull perfume,—
  • 80 Where day was stillest in the room.
  • “Queen Mary, hear,” she said, “and say
  • To Jesus the Lord Christ,
  • This bride's new joy, which He confers,
  • New joy to many ministers,
  • And many griefs are bound in hers.”
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  • The bride turned in her chair, and hid
  • Her face against the back,
  • And took her pearl-girt elbows in
  • Her hands, and could not yet begin,
  • 90 But shuddering, uttered, “Urscelyn!”
  • Most weak she was; for as she pressed
  • Her hand against her throat,
  • Along the arras she let trail
  • Her face, as if all heart did fail,
  • And sat with shut eyes, dumb and pale.
  • Amelotte still was on her knees
  • As she had kneeled to pray.
  • Deeming her sister swooned, she thought,
  • At first, some succour to have brought;
  • 100 But Aloÿse rocked, as one distraught.
  • She would have pushed the lattice wide
  • To gain what breeze might be;
  • But marking that no leaf once beat
  • The outside casement, it seemed meet
  • Not to bring in more scent and heat.
  • So she said only: “Aloÿse,
  • Sister, when happened it
  • At any time that the bride came
  • To ill, or spoke in fear of shame
  • 110 When speaking first the bridegroom's name?
  • A bird had out its song and ceased
  • Ere the bride spoke. At length
  • She said: “The name is as the thing:—
  • Sin hath no second christening,
  • And shame is all that shame can bring.
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  • “In divers places many an while
  • I would have told thee this;
  • But faintness took me, or a fit
  • Like fever. God would not permit
  • 120 That I should change thine eyes with it.
  • “Yet once I spoke, hadst thou but heard:—
  • That time we wandered out
  • All the sun's hours, but missed our way
  • When evening darkened, and so lay
  • The whole night covered up in hay.
  • “At last my face was hidden: so,
  • Having God's hint, I paused
  • Not long; but drew myself more near
  • Where thou wast laid, and shook off fear,
  • 130 And whispered quick into thine ear
  • “Something of the whole tale. At first
  • I lay and bit my hair
  • For the sore silence thou didst keep:
  • Till, as thy breath came long and deep,
  • I knew that thou hadst been asleep.
  • “The moon was covered, but the stars
  • Lasted till morning broke.
  • Awake, thou told'st me that thy dream
  • Had been of me,—that all did seem
  • 140 At jar,—but that it was a dream.
  • “I knew God's hand and might not speak.
  • After that night I kept
  • Silence and let the record swell:
  • Till now there is much more to tell
  • Which must be told out ill or well.”
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  • She paused then, weary, with dry lips
  • Apart. From the outside
  • By fits there boomed a dull report
  • From where i' the hanging tennis-court
  • 150 The bridegroom's retinue made sport.
  • The room lay still in dusty glare,
  • Having no sound through it
  • Except the chirp of a caged bird
  • That came and ceased: and if she stirred,
  • Amelotte's raiment could be heard.
  • Quoth Amelotte: “The night this chanced
  • Was a late summer night
  • Last year! What secret, for Christ's love,
  • Keep'st thou since then? Mary above!
  • 160 What thing is this thou speakest of?
  • “Mary and Christ! Lest when 'tis told
  • I should be prone to wrath,—
  • This prayer beforehand! How she errs
  • Soe'er, take count of grief like hers,
  • Whereof the days are turned to years!”
  • She bowed her neck, and having said,
  • Kept on her knees to hear;
  • And then, because strained thought demands
  • Quiet before it understands,
  • 170 Darkened her eyesight with her hands.
  • So when at last her sister spoke,
  • She did not see the pain
  • O' the mouth nor the ashamèd eyes,
  • But marked the breath that came in sighs
  • And the half-pausing for replies.
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  • This was the bride's sad prelude-strain:—
  • “I' the convent where a girl
  • I dwelt till near my womanhood,
  • I had but preachings of the rood
  • 180 And Aves told in solitude
  • “To spend my heart on: and my hand
  • Had but the weary skill
  • To eke out upon silken cloth
  • Christ's visage, or the long bright growth
  • Of Mary's hair, or Satan wroth.
  • “So when at last I went, and thou,
  • A child not known before,
  • Didst come to take the place I left,—
  • My limbs, after such lifelong theft
  • 190 Of life, could be but little deft
  • “In all that ministers delight
  • To noble women: I
  • Had learned no word of youth's discourse,
  • Nor gazed on games of warriors,
  • Nor trained a hound, nor ruled a horse.
  • “Besides, the daily life i' the sun
  • Made me at first hold back.
  • To thee this came at once; to me
  • It crept with pauses timidly;
  • 200 I am not blithe and strong like thee.
  • “Yet my feet liked the dances well,
  • The songs went to my voice,
  • The music made me shake and weep;
  • And often, all night long, my sleep
  • Gave dreams I had been fain to keep.
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  • “But though I loved not holy things,
  • To hear them scorned brought pain,—
  • They were my childhood; and these dames
  • Were merely perjured in saints' names
  • 210 And fixed upon saints' days for games.
  • “And sometimes when my father rode
  • To hunt with his loud friends,
  • I dared not bring him to be quaff'd,
  • As my wont was, his stirrup-draught,
  • Because they jested so and laugh'd.
  • “At last one day my brothers said,
  • ‘The girl must not grow thus,—
  • Bring her a jennet,—she shall ride.’
  • They helped my mounting, and I tried
  • 220 To laugh with them and keep their side.
  • “But brakes were rough and bents were steep
  • Upon our path that day:
  • My palfrey threw me; and I went
  • Upon men's shoulders home, sore spent,
  • While the chase followed up the scent.
  • “Our shrift-father (and he alone
  • Of all the household there
  • Had skill in leechcraft,) was away
  • When I reached home. I tossed, and lay
  • 230 Sullen with anguish the whole day.
  • “For the day passed ere some one brought
  • To mind that in the hunt
  • Rode a young lord she named, long bred
  • Among the priests, whose art (she said)
  • Might chance to stand me in much stead.
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  • “I bade them seek and summon him:
  • But long ere this, the chase
  • Had scattered, and he was not found.
  • I lay in the same weary stound,
  • 240 Therefore, until the night came round.
  • “It was dead night and near on twelve
  • When the horse-tramp at length
  • Beat up the echoes of the court:
  • By then, my feverish breath was short
  • With pain the sense could scarce support.
  • “My fond nurse sitting near my feet
  • Rose softly,—her lamp's flame
  • Held in her hand, lest it should make
  • My heated lids, in passing, ache;
  • 250 And she passed softly, for my sake.
  • “Returning soon, she brought the youth
  • They spoke of. Meek he seemed,
  • But good knights held him of stout heart.
  • He was akin to us in part,
  • And bore our shield, but barred athwart.
  • “I now remembered to have seen
  • His face, and heard him praised
  • For letter-lore and medicine,
  • Seeing his youth was nurtured in
  • 260 Priests' knowledge, as mine own had been.”
  • The bride's voice did not weaken here,
  • Yet by her sudden pause
  • She seemed to look for questioning;
  • Or else (small need though) 'twas to bring
  • Well to her mind the bygone thing.
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  • Her thought, long stagnant, stirred by speech,
  • Gave her a sick recoil;
  • As, dip thy fingers through the green
  • That masks a pool,—where they have been
  • 270 The naked depth is black between.
  • Amelotte kept her knees; her face
  • Was shut within her hands,
  • As it had been throughout the tale;
  • Her forehead's whiteness might avail
  • Nothing to say if she were pale.
  • Although the lattice had dropped loose,
  • There was no wind; the heat
  • Being so at rest that Amelotte
  • Heard far beneath the plunge and float
  • 280 Of a hound swimming in the moat.
  • Some minutes since, two rooks had toiled
  • Home to the nests that crowned
  • Ancestral ash-trees. Through the glare
  • Beating again, they seemed to tear
  • With that thick caw the woof o' the air.
  • But else, 'twas at the dead of noon
  • Absolute silence; all,
  • From the raised bridge and guarded sconce
  • To green-clad places of pleasaunce
  • 290 Where the long lake was white with swans.
  • Amelotte spoke not any word
  • Nor moved she once; but felt
  • Between her hands in narrow space
  • Her own hot breath upon her face,
  • And kept in silence the same place.
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  • Aloÿse did not hear at all
  • The sounds without. She heard
  • The inward voice (past help obey'd)
  • Which might not slacken nor be stay'd,
  • 300 But urged her till the whole were said.
  • Therefore she spoke again: “That night
  • But little could be done:
  • My foot, held in my nurse's hands,
  • He swathed up heedfully in bands,
  • And for my rest gave close commands.
  • “I slept till noon, but an ill sleep
  • Of dreams: through all that day
  • My side was stiff and caught the breath;
  • Next day, such pain as sickeneth
  • 310 Took me, and I was nigh to death.
  • “Life strove, Death claimed me for his own
  • Through days and nights: but now
  • 'Twas the good father tended me,
  • Having returned. Still, I did see
  • The youth I spoke of constantly.
  • “For he would with my brothers come
  • To stay beside my couch,
  • And fix my eyes against his own,
  • Noting my pulse; or else alone,
  • 320 To sit at gaze while I made moan.
  • “(Some nights I knew he kept the watch,
  • Because my women laid
  • The rushes thick for his steel shoes.)
  • Through many days this pain did use
  • The life God would not let me lose.
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  • “At length, with my good nurse to aid,
  • I could walk forth again:
  • And still, as one who broods or grieves,
  • At noons I'd meet him and at eves,
  • 330 With idle feet that drove the leaves.
  • “The day when I first walked alone
  • Was thinned in grass and leaf,
  • And yet a goodly day o' the year:
  • The last bird's cry upon mine ear
  • Left my brain weak, it was so clear.
  • “The tears were sharp within mine eyes
  • I sat down, being glad,
  • And wept; but stayed the sudden flow
  • Anon, for footsteps that fell slow;
  • 340 'Twas that youth passed me, bowing low.
  • “He passed me without speech; but when,
  • At least an hour gone by,
  • Rethreading the same covert, he
  • Saw I was still beneath the tree,
  • He spoke and sat him down with me.
  • “Little we said; nor one heart heard
  • Even what was said within;
  • And, faltering some farewell, I soon
  • Rose up; but then i' the autumn noon
  • 350 My feeble brain whirled like a swoon.
  • “He made me sit. ‘Cousin, I grieve
  • Your sickness stays by you.’
  • ‘I would,’ said I, ‘that you did err
  • So grieving. I am wearier
  • Than death, of the sickening dying year.’
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  • “He answered: ‘If your weariness
  • Accepts a remedy,
  • I hold one and can give it you.’
  • I gazed: ‘What ministers thereto,
  • 360 Be sure,’ I said, ‘that I will do.’
  • “He went on quickly:—'Twas a cure
  • He had not ever named
  • Unto our kin lest they should stint
  • Their favour, for some foolish hint
  • Of wizardry or magic in't:
  • “But that if he were let to come
  • Within my bower that night,
  • (My women still attending me,
  • He said, while he remain'd there,) he
  • 370 Could teach me the cure privily.
  • “I bade him come that night. He came;
  • But little in his speech
  • Was cure or sickness spoken of,
  • Only a passionate fierce love
  • That clamoured upon God above.
  • “My women wondered, leaning close
  • Aloof. At mine own heart
  • I think great wonder was not stirr'd.
  • I dared not listen, yet I heard
  • 380 His tangled speech, word within word.
  • “He craved my pardon first,—all else
  • Wild tumult. In the end
  • He remained silent at my feet
  • Fumbling the rushes. Strange quick heat
  • Made all the blood of my life meet.
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  • “And lo! I loved him. I but said,
  • If he would leave me then,
  • His hope some future might forecast.
  • His hot lips stung my hand: at last
  • 390 My damsels led him forth in haste.”
  • The bride took breath to pause; and turned
  • Her gaze where Amelotte
  • Knelt,—the gold hair upon her back
  • Quite still in all its threads,—the track
  • Of her still shadow sharp and black.
  • That listening without sight had grown
  • To stealthy dread; and now
  • That the one sound she had to mark
  • Left her alone too, she was stark
  • 400 Afraid, as children in the dark.
  • Her fingers felt her temples beat;
  • Then came that brain-sickness
  • Which thinks to scream, and murmureth;
  • And pent between her hands, the breath
  • Was damp against her face like death.
  • Her arms both fell at once; but when
  • She gasped upon the light,
  • Her sense returned. She would have pray'd
  • To change whatever words still stay'd
  • 410 Behind, but felt there was no aid.
  • So she rose up, and having gone
  • Within the window's arch
  • Once more, she sat there, all intent
  • On torturing doubts, and once more bent
  • To hear, in mute bewilderment
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  • But Aloÿse still paused. Thereon
  • Amelotte gathered voice
  • In somewise from the torpid fear
  • Coiled round her spirit. Low but clear
  • 420 She said: “Speak, sister; for I hear.”
  • But Aloÿse threw up her neck
  • And called the name of God:—
  • “Judge, God, 'twixt her and me to-day!
  • She knows how hard this is to say,
  • Yet will not have one word away.”
  • Her sister was quite silent. Then
  • Afresh:—“Not she, dear Lord!
  • Thou be my judge, on Thee I call!”
  • She ceased,—her forehead smote the wall:
  • 430 “Is there a God,” she said “at all?”
  • Amelotte shuddered at the soul,
  • But did not speak. The pause
  • Was long this time. At length the bride
  • Pressed her hand hard against her side,
  • And trembling between shame and pride
  • Said by fierce effort: “From that night
  • Often at nights we met:
  • That night, his passion could but rave:
  • The next, what grace his lips did crave
  • 440 I knew not, but I know I gave.”
  • Where Amelotte was sitting, all
  • The light and warmth of day
  • Were so upon her without shade
  • That the thing seemed by sunshine made
  • Most foul and wanton to be said.
Sig. 4
Image of page 50 page: 50
  • She would have questioned more, and known
  • The whole truth at its worst,
  • But held her silent, in mere shame
  • Of day. 'Twas only these words came:—
  • 450 “Sister, thou hast not said his name.”
  • “Sister,” quoth Aloÿse, “thou know'st
  • His name. I said that he
  • Was in a manner of our kin.
  • Waiting the title he might win,
  • They called him the Lord Urscelyn.”
  • The bridegroom's name, to Amelotte
  • Daily familiar,—heard
  • Thus in this dreadful history,—
  • Was dreadful to her; as might be
  • 460 Thine own voice speaking unto thee.
  • The day's mid-hour was almost full;
  • Upon the dial-plate
  • The angel's sword stood near at One.
  • An hour's remaining yet; the sun
  • Will not decrease till all be done.
  • Through the bride's lattice there crept in
  • At whiles (from where the train
  • Of minstrels, till the marriage-call,
  • Loitered at windows of the wall,)
  • 470 Stray lute-notes, sweet and musical.
  • They clung in the green growths and moss
  • Against the outside stone;
  • Low like dirge-wail or requiem
  • They murmured, lost 'twixt leaf and stem:
  • There was no wind to carry them.
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  • Amelotte gathered herself back
  • Into the wide recess
  • That the sun flooded: it o'erspread
  • Like flame the hair upon her head
  • 480 And fringed her face with burning red.
  • All things seemed shaken and at change:
  • A silent place o' the hills
  • She knew, into her spirit came:
  • Within herself she said its name
  • And wondered was it still the same.
  • The bride (whom silence goaded) now
  • Said strongly,—her despair
  • By stubborn will kept underneath:—
  • “Sister, 'twere well thou didst not breathe
  • 490 That curse of thine. Give me my wreath.”
  • “Sister,” said Amelotte, “abide
  • In peace. Be God thy judge,
  • As thou hast said—not I. For me,
  • I merely will thank God that he
  • Whom thou hast lovèd loveth thee.”
  • Then Aloÿse lay back, and laughed
  • With wan lips bitterly,
  • Saying, “Nay, thank thou God for this,—
  • That never any soul like his
  • 500 Shall have its portion where love is.”
  • Weary of wonder, Amelotte
  • Sat silent: she would ask
  • No more, though all was unexplained:
  • She was too weak; the ache still pained
  • Her eyes,—her forehead's pulse remained.
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  • The silence lengthened. Aloÿse
  • Was fain to turn her face
  • Apart, to where the arras told
  • Two Testaments, the New and Old,
  • 510 In shapes and meanings manifold.
  • One solace that was gained, she hid.
  • Her sister, from whose curse
  • Her heart recoiled, had blessed instead:
  • Yet would not her pride have it said
  • How much the blessing comforted.
  • Only, on looking round again
  • After some while, the face
  • Which from the arras turned away
  • Was more at peace and less at bay
  • 520 With shame than it had been that day.
  • She spoke right on, as if no pause
  • Had come between her speech:
  • “That year from warmth grew bleak and pass'd,”
  • She said; “the days from first to last
  • How slow,—woe's me! the nights how fast!
  • “From first to last it was not known:
  • My nurse, and of my train
  • Some four or five, alone could tell
  • What terror kept inscrutable:
  • 530 There was good need to guard it well.
  • “Not the guilt only made the shame,
  • But he was without land
  • And born amiss. He had but come
  • To train his youth here at our home,
  • And, being man, depart therefrom.
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  • “Of the whole time each single day
  • Brought fear and great unrest:
  • It seemed that all would not avail
  • Some once,—that my close watch would fail,
  • 540 And some sign, somehow, tell the tale.
  • “The noble maidens that I knew,
  • My fellows, oftentimes
  • Midway in talk or sport, would look
  • A wonder which my fears mistook,
  • To see how I turned faint and shook.
  • “They had a game of cards, where each
  • By painted arms might find
  • What knight she should be given to.
  • Ever with trembling hand I threw
  • 550 Lest I should learn the thing I knew.
  • “And once it came. And Aure d'Honvaulx
  • Held up the bended shield
  • And laughed: ‘Gramercy for our share!—
  • If to our bridal we but fare
  • To smutch the blazon that we bear!’
  • “But proud Denise de Villenbois
  • Kissed me, and gave her wench
  • The card, and said: ‘If in these bowers
  • You women play at paramours,
  • 560 You must not mix your game with ours.’
  • “And one upcast it from her hand:
  • ‘Lo! see how high he'll soar!’
  • But then their laugh was bitterest;
  • For the wind veered at fate's behest
  • And blew it back into my breast.
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  • “Oh! if I met him in the day
  • Or heard his voice,—at meals
  • Or at the Mass or through the hall,—
  • A look turned towards me would appal
  • 570 My heart by seeming to know all.
  • “Yet I grew curious of my shame,
  • And sometimes in the church,
  • On hearing such a sin rebuked,
  • Have held my girdle-glass unhooked
  • To see how such a woman looked.
  • “But if at night he did not come,
  • I lay all deadly cold
  • To think they might have smitten sore
  • And slain him, and as the night wore,
  • 580 His corpse be lying at my door.
  • “And entering or going forth,
  • Our proud shield o'er the gate
  • Seemed to arraign my shrinking eyes.
  • With tremors and unspoken lies
  • The year went past me in this wise.
  • “About the spring of the next year
  • An ailing fell on me;
  • (I had been stronger till the spring;)
  • 'Twas mine old sickness gathering,
  • 590 I thought; but 'twas another thing.
  • “I had such yearnings as brought tears,
  • And a wan dizziness:
  • Motion, like feeling, grew intense;
  • Sight was a haunting evidence
  • And sound a pang that snatched the sense.
Image of page 55 page: 55
  • “It now was hard on that great ill
  • Which lost our wealth from us
  • And all our lands. Accursed be
  • The peevish fools of liberty
  • 600 Who will not let themselves be free!
  • “The Prince was fled into the west:
  • A price was on his blood,
  • But he was safe. To us his friends
  • He left that ruin which attends
  • The strife against God's secret ends.
  • “The league dropped all asunder,—lord,
  • Gentle and serf. Our house
  • Was marked to fall. And a day came
  • When half the wealth that propped our name
  • 610 Went from us in a wind of flame.
  • “Six hours I lay upon the wall
  • And saw it burn. But when
  • It clogged the day in a black bed
  • Of louring vapour, I was led
  • Down to the postern, and we fled.
  • “But ere we fled, there was a voice
  • Which I heard speak, and say
  • That many of our friends, to shun
  • Our fate, had left us and were gone,
  • 620 And that Lord Urscelyn was one.
  • “That name, as was its wont, made sight
  • And hearing whirl. I gave
  • No heed but only to the name:
  • I held my senses, dreading them,
  • And was at strife to look the same.
Note: There is printer's inking after the word “sight” in line 621
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  • “We rode and rode. As the speed grew,
  • The growth of some vague curse
  • Swarmed in my brain. It seemed to me
  • Numbed by the swiftness, but would be—
  • 630 That still—clear knowledge certainly.
  • “Night lapsed. At dawn the sea was there
  • And the sea-wind: afar
  • The ravening surge was hoarse and loud
  • And underneath the dim dawn-cloud
  • Each stalking wave shook like a shroud.
  • “From my drawn litter I looked out
  • Unto the swarthy sea,
  • And knew. That voice, which late had cross'd
  • Mine ears, seemed with the foam uptoss'd:
  • 640 I knew that Urscelyn was lost.
  • “Then I spake all: I turned on one
  • And on the other, and spake:
  • My curse laughed in me to behold
  • Their eyes: I sat up, stricken cold,
  • Mad of my voice till all was told.
  • “Oh! of my brothers, Hugues was mute,
  • And Gilles was wild and loud,
  • And Raoul strained abroad his face,
  • As if his gnashing wrath could trace
  • 650 Even there the prey that it must chase.
  • “And round me murmured all our train,
  • Hoarse as the hoarse-tongued sea;
  • Till Hugues from silence louring woke,
  • And cried: ‘What ails the foolish folk?
  • Know ye not frenzy's lightning-stroke?’
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  • “But my stern father came to them
  • And quelled them with his look,
  • Silent and deadly pale. Anon
  • I knew that we were hastening on,
  • 660 My litter closed and the light gone.
  • “And I remember all that day
  • The barren bitter wind
  • Without, and the sea's moaning there
  • That I first moaned with unaware,
  • And when I knew, shook down my hair.
  • “Few followed us or faced our flight:
  • Once only I could hear,
  • Far in the front, loud scornful words,
  • And cries I knew of hostile lords,
  • 670 And crash of spears and grind of swords.
  • “It was soon ended. On that day
  • Before the light had changed
  • We reached our refuge; miles of rock
  • Bulwarked for war; whose strength might mock
  • Sky, sea, or man, to storm or shock.
  • “Listless and feebly conscious, I
  • Lay far within the night
  • Awake. The many pains incurred
  • That day,—the whole, said, seen or heard,—
  • 680 Stayed by in me as things deferred.
  • “Not long. At dawn I slept. In dreams
  • All was passed through afresh
  • From end to end. As the morn heaved
  • Towards noon, I, waking sore aggrieved,
  • That I might die, cursed God, and lived.
Note: The period at the end of line 685 is not fully inked.
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  • “Many days went, and I saw none
  • Except my women. They
  • Calmed their wan faces, loving me;
  • And when they wept, lest I should see,
  • 690 Would chaunt a desolate melody.
  • “Panic unthreatened shook my blood
  • Each sunset, all the slow
  • Subsiding of the turbid light.
  • I would rise, sister, as I might,
  • And bathe my forehead through the night
  • “To elude madness. The stark walls
  • Made chill the mirk: and when
  • We oped our curtains, to resume
  • Sun-sickness after long sick gloom,
  • 700 The withering sea-wind walked the room.
  • “Through the gaunt windows the great gales
  • Bore in the tattered clumps
  • Of waif-weed and the tamarisk-boughs;
  • And sea-mews, 'mid the storm's carouse,
  • Were flung, wild-clamouring, in the house.
  • “My hounds I had not; and my hawk,
  • Which they had saved for me,
  • Wanting the sun and rain to beat
  • His wings, soon lay with gathered feet;
  • 710 And my flowers faded, lacking heat.
  • “Such still were griefs: for grief was still
  • A separate sense, untouched
  • Of that despair which had become
  • My life. Great anguish could benumb
  • My soul,—my heart was quarrelsome.
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  • “Time crept. Upon a day at length
  • My kinsfolk sat with me:
  • That which they asked was bare and plain:
  • I answered: the whole bitter strain
  • 720 Was again said, and heard again.
  • “Fierce Raoul snatched his sword, and turned
  • The point against my breast.
  • I bared it, smiling: ‘To the heart
  • Strike home,’ I said; ‘another dart
  • Wreaks hourly there a deadlier smart.’
  • “'Twas then my sire struck down the sword,
  • And said with shaken lips:
  • ‘She from whom all of you receive
  • Your life, so smiled; and I forgive.’
  • 730 Thus, for my mother's sake, I live.
  • “But I, a mother even as she,
  • Turned shuddering to the wall:
  • For I said: ‘Great God! and what would I do,
  • When to the sword, with the thing I knew,
  • I offered not one life but two!’
  • “Then I fell back from them, and lay
  • Outwearied. My tired sense
  • Soon filmed and settled, and like stone
  • I slept; till something made me moan,
  • 740 And I woke up at night alone.
  • “I woke at midnight, cold and dazed;
  • Because I found myself
  • Seated upright, with bosom bare,
  • Upon my bed, combing my hair,
  • Ready to go, I knew not where.
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  • “It dawned light day,—the last of those
  • Long months of longing days.
  • That noon, the change was wrought on me
  • In somewise,—nought to hear or see,—
  • 750 Only a trance and agony.”
  • The bride's voice failed her, from no will
  • To pause. The bridesmaid leaned,
  • And where the window-panes were white,
  • Looked for the day: she knew not quite
  • If there were either day or night.
  • It seemed to Aloÿse that the whole
  • Day's weight lay back on her
  • Like lead. The hours that did remain
  • Beat their dry wings upon her brain
  • 760 Once in mid-flight, and passed again.
  • There hung a cage of burnt perfumes
  • In the recess: but these,
  • For some hours, weak against the sun,
  • Had simmered in white ash. From One
  • The second quarter was begun.
  • They had not heard the stroke. The air,
  • Though altered with no wind,
  • Breathed now by pauses, so to say:
  • Each breath was time that went away,—
  • 770 Each pause a minute of the day.
  • I' the almonry, the almoner,
  • Hard by, had just dispensed
  • Church-dole and march-dole. High and wide
  • Now rose the shout of thanks, which cried
  • On God that He should bless the bride.
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  • Its echo thrilled within their feet,
  • And in the furthest rooms
  • Was heard, where maidens flushed and gay
  • Wove with stooped necks the wreaths alway
  • 780 Fair for the virgin's marriage-day.
  • The mother leaned along, in thought
  • After her child; till tears,
  • Bitter, not like a wedded girl's,
  • Fell down her breast along her curls,
  • And ran in the close work of pearls.
  • The speech ached at her heart. She said:
  • “Sweet Mary, do thou plead
  • This hour with thy most blessed Son
  • To let these shameful words atone,
  • 790 That I may die when I have done.”
  • The thought ached at her soul. Yet now:—
  • “Itself—that life” (she said,)
  • “Out of my weary life—when sense
  • Unclosed, was gone. What evil men's
  • Most evil hands had borne it thence
  • “I knew, and cursed them. Still in sleep
  • I have my child; and pray
  • To know if it indeed appear
  • As in my dream's perpetual sphere,
  • 800 That I—death reached—may seek it there.
  • “Sleeping, I wept; though until dark
  • A fever dried mine eyes
  • Kept open; save when a tear might
  • Be forced from the mere ache of sight.
  • And I nursed hatred day and night.
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  • “Aye, and I sought revenge by spells;
  • And vainly many a time
  • Have laid my face into the lap
  • Of a wise woman, and heard clap
  • 810 Her thunder, the fiend's juggling trap.
  • “At length I feared to curse them, lest
  • From evil lips the curse
  • Should be a blessing; and would sit
  • Rocking myself and stifling it
  • With babbled jargon of no wit.
  • “But this was not at first: the days
  • And weeks made frenzied months
  • Before this came. My curses, pil'd
  • Then with each hour unreconcil'd,
  • 820 Still wait for those who took my child.”
  • She stopped, grown fainter. “Amelotte,
  • Surely,” she said, “this sun
  • Sheds judgment-fire from the fierce south:
  • It does not let me breathe: the drouth
  • Is like sand spread within my mouth.”
  • The bridesmaid rose. I' the outer glare
  • Gleamed her pale cheeks, and eyes
  • Sore troubled; and aweary weigh'd
  • Her brows just lifted out of shade;
  • 830 And the light jarred within her head.
  • 'Mid flowers fair-heaped there stood a bowl
  • With water. She therein
  • Through eddying bubbles slid a cup,
  • And offered it, being risen up,
  • Close to her sister's mouth, to sup.
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  • The freshness dwelt upon her sense,
  • Yet did not the bride drink;
  • But she dipped in her hand anon
  • And cooled her temples; and all wan
  • 840 With lids that held their ache, went on.
  • “Through those dark watches of my woe,
  • Time, an ill plant, had waxed
  • Apace. That year was finished. Dumb
  • And blind, life's wheel with earth's had come
  • Whirled round: and we might seek our home.
  • “Our wealth was rendered back, with wealth
  • Snatched from our foes. The house
  • Had more than its old strength and fame:
  • But still 'neath the fair outward claim
  • 850 I rankled,—a fierce core of shame.
  • “It chilled me from their eyes and lips
  • Upon a night of those
  • First days of triumph, as I gazed
  • Listless and sick, or scarcely raised
  • My face to mark the sports they praised.
  • “The endless changes of the dance
  • Bewildered me: the tones
  • Of lute and cithern struggled tow'rds
  • Some sense; and still in the last chords
  • 860 The music seemed to sing wild words.
  • “My shame possessed me in the light
  • And pageant, till I swooned.
  • But from that hour I put my shame
  • From me, and cast it over them
  • By God's command and in God's name
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  • “For my child's bitter sake. O thou
  • Once felt against my heart
  • With longing of the eyes,—a pain
  • Since to my heart for ever,—then
  • 870 Beheld not, and not felt again!”
  • She scarcely paused, continuing:—
  • “That year drooped weak in March;
  • And April, finding the streams dry,
  • Choked, with no rain, in dust: the sky
  • Shall not be fainter this July.
  • “Men sickened; beasts lay without strength;
  • The year died in the land.
  • But I, already desolate,
  • Said merely, sitting down to wait,—
  • 880 ‘The seasons change and Time wears late.’
  • “For I had my hard secret told,
  • In secret, to a priest;
  • With him I communed; and he said
  • The world's soul, for its sins, was sped,
  • And the sun's courses numberèd.
  • “The year slid like a corpse afloat:
  • None trafficked,—who had bread
  • Did eat. That year our legions, come
  • Thinned from the place of war, at home
  • 890 Found busier death, more burdensome.
  • “Tidings and rumours came with them,
  • The first for months. The chiefs
  • Sat daily at our board, and in
  • Their speech were names of friend and kin:
  • One day they spoke of Urscelyn.
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  • “The words were light, among the rest:
  • Quick glance my brothers sent
  • To sift the speech; and I, struck through,
  • Sat sick and giddy in full view:
  • 900 Yet did none gaze, so many knew.
  • “Because in the beginning, much
  • Had caught abroad, through them
  • That heard my clamour on the coast:
  • But two were hanged; and then the most
  • Held silence wisdom, as thou know'st.
  • “That year the convent yielded thee
  • Back to our home; and thou
  • Then knew'st not how I shuddered cold
  • To kiss thee, seeming to enfold
  • 910 To my changed heart myself of old.
  • “Then there was showing thee the house,
  • So many rooms and doors;
  • Thinking the while how thou would'st start
  • If once I flung the doors apart
  • Of one dull chamber in my heart.
  • “And yet I longed to open it;
  • And often in that year
  • Of plague and want, when side by side
  • We've knelt to pray with them that died,
  • 920 My prayer was, ‘Show her what I hide!’”
End of Part I.
Sig. 5
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more about Sister Helen.
SISTER HELEN.
  • “Why did you melt your waxen man,
  • Sister Helen?
  • To-day is the third since you began.”
  • “The time was long, yet the time ran,
  • Little brother.”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • Three days to-day, between Hell and Heaven!)
  • “But if you have done your work aright,
  • Sister Helen,
  • 10You'll let me play, for you said I might.”
  • “Be very still in your play to-night,
  • Little brother.”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • Third night, to-night, between Hell and Heaven! )
  • “You said it must melt ere vesper-bell,
  • Sister Helen;
  • If now it be molten, all is well.”
  • “Even so,—nay, peace! you cannot tell,
  • Little brother.”
  • 20 ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • O what is this, between Hell and Heaven?)
  • “Oh the waxen knave was plump to-day,
  • Sister Helen;
  • How like dead folk he has dropped away!”
  • “Nay now, of the dead what can you say,
  • Little brother?”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • What of the dead, between Hell and Heaven?)
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Note: This page is numbered incorrectly as 79
  • “See, see, the sunken pile of wood,
  • 30 Sister Helen,
  • Shines through the thinned wax red as blood!”
  • “Nay now, when looked you yet on blood,
  • Little brother?”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • How pale she is, between Hell and Heaven!)
  • “Now close your eyes, for they're sick and sore,
  • Sister Helen,
  • And I'll play without the gallery door.”
  • “Aye, let me rest,—I'll lie on the floor,
  • 40 Little brother.”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • What rest to-night, between Hell and Heaven?)
  • “Here high up in the balcony,
  • Sister Helen,
  • The moon flies face to face with me.”
  • “Aye, look and say whatever you see,
  • Little brother.”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • What sight to-night, between Hell and Heaven?)
  • 50“Outside it's merry in the wind's wake,
  • Sister Helen;
  • In the shaken trees the chill stars shake.”
  • “Hush, heard you a horse-tread as you spake,
  • Little brother?”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • What sound to-night, between Hell and Heaven?)
  • “I hear a horse-tread, and I see,
  • Sister Helen,
  • Three horsemen that ride terribly.”
  • 60“Little brother, whence come the three,
  • Little brother?”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • Whence should they come, between Hell and Heaven? )
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  • “They come by the hill-verge from Boyne Bar,
  • Sister Helen,
  • And one draws nigh, but two are afar.”
  • “Look, look, do you know them who they are,
  • Little brother?”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • 70 Who should they be, between Hell and Heaven?)
  • “Oh, it's Keith of Eastholm rides so fast,
  • Sister Helen,
  • For I know the white mane on the blast.”
  • “The hour has come, has come at last,
  • Little brother!”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • Her hour at last, between Hell and Heaven!)
  • “He has made a sign and called Halloo!
  • Sister Helen,
  • 80And he says that he would speak with you.”
  • “Oh tell him I fear the frozen dew,
  • Little brother.”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • Why laughs she thus, between Hell and Heaven?)
  • “The wind is loud, but I hear him cry,
  • Sister Helen,
  • That Keith of Ewern's like to die.”
  • “And he and thou, and thou and I,
  • Little brother.”
  • 90 ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • And they and we, between Hell and Heaven!)
  • “Three days ago, on his marriage-morn,
  • Sister Helen,
  • He sickened, and lies since then forlorn.”
  • “For bridegroom's side is the bride a thorn,
  • Little brother?”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • Cold bridal cheer, between Hell and Heaven!)
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  • “Three days and nights he has lain abed,
  • 100 Sister Helen,
  • And he prays in torment to be dead.”
  • “The thing may chance, if he have prayed,
  • Little brother!”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • If he have prayed, between Hell and Heaven!)
  • “But he has not ceased to cry to-day,
  • Sister Helen,
  • That you should take your curse away.”
  • “ My prayer was heard,—he need but pray,
  • 110 Little brother!”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • Shall God not hear, between Hell and Heaven?)
  • “But he says, till you take back your ban,
  • Sister Helen,
  • His soul would pass, yet never can.”
  • “Nay then, shall I slay a living man,
  • Little brother?”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • A living soul, between Hell and Heaven!)
  • 120“But he calls for ever on your name,
  • Sister Helen,
  • And says that he melts before a flame.”
  • “My heart for his pleasure fared the same,
  • Little brother.”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • Fire at the heart, between Hell and Heaven!)
  • “Here's Keith of Westholm riding fast,
  • Sister Helen,
  • For I know the white plume on the blast.”
  • 130“The hour, the sweet hour I forecast,
  • Little brother!”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • Is the hour sweet, between Hell and Heaven?)
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  • “He stops to speak, and he stills his horse,
  • Sister Helen;
  • But his words are drowned in the wind's course.”
  • “Nay hear, nay hear, you must hear perforce,
  • Little brother!”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • 140 What word now heard, between Hell and Heaven?)
  • “Oh he says that Keith of Ewern's cry,
  • Sister Helen,
  • Is ever to see you ere he die.”
  • “In all that his soul sees, there am I,
  • Little brother!”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • The soul's one sight, between Hell and Heaven! )
  • “He sends a ring and a broken coin,
  • Sister Helen,
  • 150And bids you mind the banks of Boyne.”
  • “What else he broke will he ever join,
  • Little brother?”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • No, never joined, between Hell and Heaven!)
  • “He yields you these and craves full fain,
  • Sister Helen,
  • You pardon him in his mortal pain.”
  • “What else he took will he give again,
  • Little brother?”
  • 160 ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • Not twice to give, between Hell and Heaven!)
  • “He calls your name in an agony,
  • Sister Helen,
  • That even dead Love must weep to see.”
  • “Hate, born of Love, is blind as he,
  • Little brother!”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • Love turned to hate, between Hell and Heaven!)
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  • “Oh it's Keith of Keith now that rides fast,
  • 170 Sister Helen,
  • For I know the white hair on the blast.”
  • “The short short hour will soon be past,
  • Little brother!”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • Will soon be past, between Hell and Heaven!)
  • “He looks at me and he tries to speak,
  • Sister Helen,
  • But oh! his voice is sad and weak!”
  • “What here should the mighty Baron seek,
  • 180 Little brother?”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • Is this the end, between Hell and Heaven?)
  • “Oh his son still cries, if you forgive,
  • Sister Helen,
  • The body dies but the soul shall live.”
  • “Fire shall forgive me as I forgive,
  • Little brother!”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • As she forgives, between Hell and Heaven!)
  • 190“Oh he prays you, as his heart would rive,
  • Sister Helen,
  • To save his dear son's soul alive.”
  • “Fire cannot slay it, it shall thrive,
  • Little brother!”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • Alas, alas, between Hell and Heaven!)
  • “He cries to you, kneeling in the road,
  • Sister Helen,
  • To go with him for the love of God!”
  • 200“The way is long to his son's abode,
  • Little brother.”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • The way is long, between Hell and Heaven!)
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  • “A lady's here, by a dark steed brought,
  • Sister Helen,
  • So darkly clad, I saw her not.”
  • “See her now or never see aught,
  • Little brother!”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • 210 What more to see, between Hell and Heaven?)
  • “Her hood falls back, and the moon shines fair,
  • Sister Helen,
  • On the Lady of Ewern's golden hair.”
  • “Blest hour of my power and her despair,
  • Little brother!”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • Hour blest and bann'd, between Hell and Heaven! )
  • “Pale, pale her cheeks, that in pride did glow,
  • Sister Helen,
  • 220'Neath the bridal-wreath three days ago.”
  • “One morn for pride and three days for woe,
  • Little brother!”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • Three days, three nights, between Hell and Heaven! )
  • “Her clasped hands stretch from her bending head,
  • Sister Helen;
  • With the loud wind's wail her sobs are wed.”
  • “What wedding-strains hath her bridal-bed,
  • Little brother?”
  • 230 ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • What strain but death's, between Hell and Heaven! )
  • “She may not speak, she sinks in a swoon,
  • Sister Helen,—
  • She lifts her lips and gasps on the moon.”
  • “Oh! might I but hear her soul's blithe tune,
  • Little brother!”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • Her woe's dumb cry, between Hell and Heaven!)
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  • “They've caught her to Westholm's saddle-bow,
  • 240 Sister Helen,
  • And her moonlit hair gleams white in its flow.”
  • “Let it turn whiter than winter snow,
  • Little brother!”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • Woe-withered gold, between Hell and Heaven!)
  • “O Sister Helen, you heard the bell,
  • Sister Helen!
  • More loud than the vesper-chime it fell.”
  • “No vesper-chime, but a dying knell,
  • 250 Little brother!”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • His dying knell, between Hell and Heaven!)
  • “Alas! but I fear the heavy sound,
  • Sister Helen;
  • Is it in the sky or in the ground?”
  • “Say, have they turned their horses round,
  • Little brother?”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • What would she more, between Hell and Heaven?)
  • 260 “They have raised the old man from his knee,
  • Sister Helen,
  • And they ride in silence hastily.”
  • “More fast the naked soul doth flee,
  • Little brother!”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • The naked soul, between Hell and Heaven!)
  • “Flank to flank are the three steeds gone,
  • Sister Helen,
  • But the lady's dark steed goes alone.”
  • 270 “And lonely her bridegroom's soul hath flown,
  • Little brother.”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • The lonely ghost, between Hell and Heaven!)
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  • “Oh the wind is sad in the iron chill,
  • Sister Helen,
  • And weary sad they look by the hill.”
  • “But he and I are sadder still,
  • Little brother!”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • 280 Most sad of all, between Hell and Heaven!)
  • “See, see, the wax has dropped from its place,
  • Sister Helen,
  • And the flames are winning up apace!”
  • “Yet here they burn but for a space,
  • Little brother!”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • Here for a space, between Hell and Heaven!)
  • “Ah! what white thing at the door has cross'd,
  • Sister Helen,
  • 290 Ah! what is this that sighs in the frost?”
  • “A soul that's lost as mine is lost,
  • Little brother!”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • Lost, lost, all lost, between Hell and Heaven! )
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more about The Staff and Scrip.
THE STAFF AND SCRIP.
  • “Who rules these lands?” the Pilgrim said.
  • “Stranger, Queen Blanchelys.”
  • “And who has thus harried them?” he said.
  • “It was Duke Luke did this:
  • God's ban be his!”
  • The Pilgrim said: “Where is your house?
  • I'll rest there, with your will.”
  • “You've but to climb these blackened boughs
  • And you'll see it over the hill,
  • 10 For it burns still.”
  • “Which road, to seek your Queen?” said he.
  • “Nay, nay, but with some wound
  • You'll fly back hither, it may be,
  • And by your blood i' the ground
  • My place be found.”
  • “Friend, stay in peace. God keep your head,
  • And mine, where I will go;
  • For He is here and there,” he said.
  • He passed the hill-side, slow,
  • 20 And stood below.
  • The Queen sat idle by her loom:
  • She heard the arras stir,
  • And looked up sadly: through the room
  • The sweetness sickened her
  • Of musk and myrrh.
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  • Her women, standing two and two,
  • In silence combed the fleece.
  • The Pilgrim said, “Peace be with you,
  • Lady;” and bent his knees.
  • 30 She answered, “Peace.”
  • Her eyes were like the wave within;
  • Like water-reeds the poise
  • Of her soft body, dainty thin;
  • And like the water's noise
  • Her plaintive voice.
  • For him, the stream had never well'd
  • In desert tracks malign
  • So sweet; nor had he ever felt
  • So faint in the sunshine
  • 40 Of Palestine.
  • Right so, he knew that he saw weep
  • Each night through every dream
  • The Queen's own face, confused in sleep
  • With visages supreme
  • Not known to him.
  • “Lady,” he said, “your lands lie burnt
  • And waste: to meet your foe
  • All fear: this I have seen and learnt.
  • Say that it shall be so,
  • 50 And I will go.”
  • She gazed at him. “Your cause is just,
  • For I have heard the same,”
  • He said: “God's strength shall be my trust.
  • Fall it to good or grame,
  • 'Tis in His name.”
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  • “Sir, you are thanked. My cause is dead.
  • Why should you toil to break
  • A grave, and fall therein?” she said.
  • He did not pause but spake:
  • 60 “For my vow's sake.”
  • “Can such vows be, Sir—to God's ear,
  • Not to God's will?” “My vow
  • Remains: God heard me there as here,”
  • He said with reverent brow,
  • “Both then and now.”
  • They gazed together, he and she,
  • The minute while he spoke;
  • And when he ceased, she suddenly
  • Looked round upon her folk
  • 70 As though she woke.
  • “Fight, Sir,” she said; “my prayers in pain
  • Shall be your fellowship.”
  • He whispered one among her train,—
  • “To-morrow bid her keep
  • This staff and scrip.”
  • She sent him a sharp sword, whose belt
  • About his body there
  • As sweet as her own arms he felt.
  • He kissed its blade, all bare,
  • 80 Instead of her.
  • She sent him a green banner wrought
  • With one white lily stem,
  • To bind his lance with when he fought.
  • He writ upon the same
  • And kissed her name.
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  • She sent him a white shield, whereon
  • She bade that he should trace
  • His will. He blent fair hues that shone,
  • And in a golden space
  • 90 He kissed her face.
  • Born of the day that died, that eve
  • Now dying sank to rest;
  • As he, in likewise taking leave,
  • Once with a heaving breast
  • Looked to the west.
  • And there the sunset skies unseal'd,
  • Like lands he never knew,
  • Beyond to-morrow's battle-field
  • Lay open out of view
  • 100 To ride into.
  • Next day till dark the women pray'd:
  • Nor any might know there
  • How the fight went: the Queen has bade
  • That there do come to her
  • No messenger.
  • The Queen is pale, her maidens ail;
  • And to the organ-tones
  • They sing but faintly, who