Rossetti Archive Textual Transcription

Document Title: Ballads and Sonnets (1881), proof Signature P (Delaware Museum, 9 May proof, copy 2)
Author: Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Date of publication: 1881 May 9
Publisher: F. S. Ellis
Printer: Chiswick Press, C. Whittingham and Co.
Issue: 3

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

Image of page 209 page: 209
Sig. P
Manuscript Addition: 3b
Editorial Description: Printer's proof number added in upper left.
Manuscript Addition: [Charles Whittingham's printer date stamp, 4 May 81]
SONNET XLVII.

BROKEN MUSIC.
  • The mother will not turn, who thinks she hears
  • Her nursling's speech first grow articulate;
  • But breathless with averted eyes elate
  • She sits, with open lips and open ears,
  • That it may call her twice. 'Mid doubts and fears
  • Thus oft my soul has hearkened; till the song,
  • A central moan for days, at length found tongue,
  • And the sweet music welled and the sweet tears.
  • But now, whatever while the soul is fain
  • 10 To list that wonted murmur, as it were
  • The speech-bound sea-shell's low importunate
  • strain,—
  • No breath of song, thy voice alone is there,
  • O bitterly beloved! and all her gain
  • Is but the pang of unpermitted prayer.
Image of page 210 page: 210
SONNET XLVIII.

DEATH-IN-LOVE.
  • There came an image in Life's retinue
  • That had Love's wings and bore his gonfalon:
  • Fair was the web, and nobly wrought thereon,
  • O soul-sequestered face, thy form and hue!
  • Bewildering sounds, such as Spring wakens to,
  • Shook in its folds; and through my heart its
  • power
  • Sped trackless as the immemorable hour
  • When birth's dark portal groaned and all was new.
  • But a veiled woman followed, and she caught
  • 10 The banner round its staff, to furl and cling,—
  • Then plucked a feather from the bearer's wing,
  • And held it to his lips that stirred it not,
  • And said to me, “Behold, there is no breath:
  • I and this Love are one, and I am Death.”
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SONNETS XLIX., L., LI., LII.

WILLOWWOOD.
I.
  • I sat with Love upon a woodside well,
  • Leaning across the water, I and he;
  • Nor ever did he speak nor looked at me,
  • But touched his lute wherein was audible
  • The certain secret thing he had to tell:
  • Only our mirrored eyes met silently
  • In the low wave; and that sound came to be
  • The passionate voice I knew; and my tears fell.
  • And at their fall, his eyes beneath grew hers;
  • 10And with his foot and with his wing-feathers
  • He swept the spring that watered my heart's
  • drouth.
  • Then the dark ripples spread to waving hair,
  • And as I stooped, her own lips rising there
  • Bubbled with brimming kisses at my mouth.
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II.
  • And now Love sang: but his was such a song,
  • So meshed with half-remembrance hard to free,
  • As souls disused in death's sterility
  • May sing when the new birthday tarries long.
  • And I was made aware of a dumb throng
  • That stood aloof, one form by every tree,
  • All mournful forms, for each was I or she,
  • The shades of those our days that had no tongue.
  • They looked on us, and knew us and were known;
  • 10 While fast together, alive from the abyss,
  • Clung the soul-wrung implacable close kiss;
  • And pity of self through all made broken moan
  • Which said, “For once, for once, for once alone!”
  • And still Love sang, and what he sang was this:—
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III.
  • “O ye, all ye that walk in Willowwood,
  • That walk with hollow faces burning white;
  • What fathom-depth of soul-struck widowhood,
  • What long, what longer hours, one lifelong night,
  • Ere ye again, who so in vain have wooed
  • Your last hope lost, who so in vain invite
  • Your lips to that their unforgotten food,
  • Ere ye, ere ye again shall see the light!
  • Alas! the bitter banks in Willowwood,
  • 10 With tear-spurge wan, with blood-wort burning
  • red:
  • Alas! if ever such a pillow could
  • Steep deep the soul in sleep till she were dead,—
  • Better all life forget her than this thing,
  • That Willowwood should hold her wandering!”
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IV.
  • So sang he: and as meeting rose and rose
  • Together cling through the wind's wellaway
  • Nor change at once, yet near the end of day
  • The leaves drop loosened where the heart-stain
  • glows,—
  • So when the song died did the kiss unclose;
  • And her face fell back drowned, and was as grey
  • As its grey eyes; and if it ever may
  • Meet mine again I know not if Love knows.
  • Only I know that I leaned low and drank
  • 10A long draught from the water where she sank,
  • Her breath and all her tears and all her soul:
  • And as I leaned, I know I felt Love's face
  • Pressed on my neck with moan of pity and grace,
  • Till both our heads were in his aureole.
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SONNET LIII.

WITHOUT HER.
  • What of her glass without her? The blank grey
  • There where the pool is blind of the moon's face.
  • Her dress without her? The tossed empty space
  • Of cloud-rack whence the moon has passed away.
  • Her paths without her? Day's appointed sway
  • Usurped by desolate night. Her pillowed place
  • Without her? Tears, ah me! for love's good
  • grace,
  • And cold forgetfulness of night or day.
  • What of the heart without her? Nay, poor heart,
  • 10 Of thee what word remains ere speech be still?
  • A wayfarer by barren ways and chill,
  • Steep ways and weary, without her thou art,
  • Where the long cloud, the long wood's counterpart,
  • Sheds doubled darkness up the labouring hill.
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SONNET LIV.

LOVE'S FATALITY.
  • Sweet Love,—but oh! most dread Desire of Love
  • Life-thwarted. Linked in gyves I saw them stand,
  • Love shackled with Vain-longing, hand to hand:
  • And one was eyed as the blue vault above:
  • But hope tempestuous like a fire-cloud hove
  • I' the other's gaze, even as in his whose wand
  • Vainly all night with spell-wrought power has
  • spann'd
  • The unyielding caves of some deep treasure-trove.
  • Also his lips, two writhen flakes of flame,
  • 10 Made moan: “Alas O Love, thus leashed with
  • me!
  • Wing-footed thou, wing-shouldered, once born
  • free:
  • And I, thy cowering self, in chains grown tame,—
  • Bound to thy body and soul, named with thy
  • name,—
  • Life's iron heart, even Love's Fatality.”
Image of page 217 page: 217
SONNET LV.

STILLBORN LOVE.
  • The hour which might have been yet might not be,
  • Which man's and woman's heart conceived and
  • bore
  • Yet whereof life was barren,—on what shore
  • Bides it the breaking of Time's weary sea?
  • Bondchild of all consummate joys set free,
  • It somewhere sighs and serves, and mute before
  • The house of Love, hears through the echoing door
  • His hours elect in choral consonancy.
  • But lo! what wedded souls now hand in hand
  • 10Together tread at last the immortal strand
  • With eyes where burning memory lights love
  • home?
  • Lo! how the little outcast hour has turned
  • And leaped to them and in their faces yearned:—
  • “I am your child: O parents, ye have come!”
Image of page 223 page: 223
SONNET LXI.

THE SONG-THROE.
  • By thine own tears thy song must tears beget,
  • O Singer! Magic mirror thou hast none
  • Except thy manifest heart; and save thine own
  • Anguish or ardour, else no amulet.
  • Cisterned in Pride, verse is the feathery jet
  • Of soulless air-flung fountains; nay, more dry
  • Than the Dead Sea for throats that thirst and sigh,
  • That song o'er which no singer's lids grew wet.
  • The Song-god—He the Sun-god—is no slave
  • 10 Of thine; thy Hunter he, who for thy soul
  • Fledges his shaft: to no august control
  • Of thy skilled hand his quivered store he gave:
  • But if thy lips' loud cry leap to his smart,
  • The inspir'd recoil shall pierce thy brother's heart.
Image of page 224 page: 224
SONNET LXII.

THE SOUL'S SPHERE.
  • Some prisoned moon in steep cloud-fastnesses,—
  • Throned queen and thralled; some dying sun
  • whose pyre
  • Blazed with momentous memorable fire;—
  • Who hath not yearned and fed his heart with these?
  • Who, sleepless, hath not anguished to appease
  • Tragical shadow's realm of sound and sight
  • Conjectured in the lamentable night? . . . . .
  • Lo! the soul's sphere of infinite images!
  • What sense shall count them? Whether it forecast
  • 10 The rose-winged hours that flutter in the van
  • Of Love's unquestioning unrevealèd span,—
  • Visions of golden futures: or that last
  • Wild pageant of the accumulated past
  • That clangs and flashes for a drowning man.
Electronic Archive Edition: 1