Meanwhile, although the more vigorous
members of the brotherhood had
shown no
special sympathy for Rossetti's religious mys-
ticism,
a feebler artist, himself one of the orig-
inal seven, had taken it
up with embarrassing
effusion. This was the late James Collinson,
whose principal picture, “
St. Elizabeth of
<lb/>Hungary” finished in 1851, produced a sort
of
crisis in Rossetti's career. This painting
out-mystified the mystic
himself; it was simply
maudlin and hysterical, though drawn with
some feeling for grace, and in a very earnest
spirit.
Rossetti, with his strong good sense,
recognized that it would be
impossible ever to
reach the public with art of this unmanly
character, and from this time forth he began
to abandon the
practice of directly sacred art.
Meanwhile, as is proved by two
sonnets which
Mr. W. B. Scott kindly permits me to print,
one
of them for the first time, the poet con-
tinued to dwell on that
field of thought from
which, as a painter, he had now shut himself
out. The earlier of these sonnets, which were
written in 1852,
and sent to Mr. Scott at
Newcastle, was published for the first
time,
with various alterations, in 1881:
“<hi rend="sc">The Church Porches.</hi>”
I.
“Sister, first shake we off the dust
we have
Upon our feet, lest it defile the stones
Inscriptured, covering their sacred bones
Who lie i' the aisles which keep the names they gave,
Their trust abiding round them in the grave;—
Whom painters paint with silent orisons,
And to whom sculptors pray in stone and
bronze;
Their voices echo still like a spent wave.
Without here, the church-bells are but a tune,
And on the gothic church-door this hot noon
Lays all its heavy sunshine here without:
But having entered in, we shall find there
Silence, and lighted tapers, and deep prayer,
And faces of crowned angels all about.
II.
“Sister, arise: we have no more to sing,
Or say. The priest abideth as is meet
To minister. Rise up out of thy seat,
Though peradventure 'tis an irksome thing
To cross again the threshold of a king,
Where his doors stand against the evil
street,
And let each step increase upon our feet
The dust we shook from them at entering.
Must we of very sooth go hence; the air,
Whose heat outside makes mist that can be
seen,
Is very clear and cool where we have been.
The priest abideth ministering. Lo!
As he for service, why not we for prayer?
It is so bidden. Sister, let us go.”