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Document Title: The Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1911)
Author: Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Date of publication: 1911
Publisher: Ellis
Printer: Hazell, Watson and Viney, Ltd.

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

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Manuscript Addition: James Smith / Trin. Coll. / Cambridge. / G3
Editorial Description: Note written in pen in upper right corner.
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THE WORKS

OF

DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
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D. G. Rossetti

From a Photograph by Downey 1862

Note: First line of the caption is a facsimile reproduction of Rossetti's autograph. The remainder of the caption is in cursive type.
Figure: Photogravure reproduction of photograph of DGR by Downey. Nearly full-length of DGR in overcoat, turned slightly to right. Left hand rests on ornately carved table, right hand upon hip.



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THE WORKS

OF

DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI



EDITED

WITH PREFACE AND NOTES

BY

WILLIAM M. ROSSETTI

REVISED AND ENLARGED EDITION

LONDON

ELLIS: 29 New Bond Street, W.

1911

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PRINTED AND BOUND BY

HAZELL, WATSON AND 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 COLLECTED EDITION OF

THE SON'S WORKS

IS DEDICATED BY

THE SURVIVING SON AND BROTHER

W M R
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more about this work
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 (now 110 Hallam Street), Portland Place, London.

In blood he was three-fourths Italian, and only one-fourth

English; 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 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 in 1824, married, and
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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 com-

plete 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 Francesca

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

Georgina (died 1894). 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 1842 (or

perhaps 1841) 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 school of the

Royal Academy, but never proceeded beyond its antique

section. In 1848 Rossetti co-operated with two of his fellow-

students in painting, John Everett Millais and William Hol-

man Hunt, and with the sculptor Thomas Woolner, in form-

ing the so-called Præraphaelite Brotherhood. There were

three other members of the Brotherhood—James Collinson,

Frederic George Stephens, and the present writer. Ford

Madox Brown, the historical painter, was known to Rossetti

a little before 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

a fellow-painter, Walter Howell 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-
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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 removed 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 1871 he was some-

times away at Kelmscot manorhouse, in Oxfordshire, 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 Præraphae-

lite Brotherhood, with the co-operation of some friends,

brought out a short-lived magazine named The Germ (after-

wards 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 and Staff and Scrip. 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, for, after the first two or three years of

his professional course, he adhered with practical uniformity

to the plan of abstaining from exhibition altogether. He

had contemplated bringing out in or about 1862 a volume of

original poems; but, in the grief and dismay which over-

whelmed him in losing his wife, he determined to sacrifice 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 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
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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 afterwards reissued as a pamphlet. The

assault produced on Rossetti an effect altogether dispropor-

tionate to its intrinsic importance; indeed, it developed in

his character 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 out-

look. 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 apprehension, 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 spring of 1870. 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 in-

tervals of serenity, even of brightness; for in fact he was

often genial and pleasant, and a most agreeable 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 Birchington-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

companionship at Birchington of Mr. Hall Caine, and in the
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presence likewise of Mr. Theodore Watts-Dunton, Mr.

Frederic 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 child-

hood, 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 define a few of its

leading traits. He was always and essentially of a dominant

turn, in intellect and in temperament a leader. He was im-

petuous and vehement, 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 he per-

ceived constancy to be reciprocated; free-handed and heed-

less 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 demon-

strative. 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 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 manhood I considered him

to be markedly free from vanity, though certainly well

equipped in pride; the distinction between these two ten-

dencies 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 accommo-

dating; 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.
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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 unconven-

tional, caring not at all to fall in with the humours or pre-

possessions of any particular class of society, or to conciliate

or approximate 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 re-

sembled 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 un-

moulded under-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 lips 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 determined, the prevailing expression of

the face that of a fiery and dictatorial mind concentrated
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into repose. 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, considered 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 1873 or thereabouts he grew whiskers and beard,

moderately 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; moreover, he was a

bad sailor. In boyhood 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 travel-

ling. 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 1878 or there-

abouts 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 inter-

course with any number of ardent or kindly well-wishers, had

he but felt elasticity or 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 through-

out life, on the unexhausted resources of whose affection and

converse he drew incessantly for long years; they were at

last separated by the removal of Mr. Brown to Manchester,

for the purpose of painting the Town Hall frescoes. The

Præraphaelites—Millais, Hunt, Woolner, Stephens, Collinson

—were on terms of unbounded familiarity with him in youth;

owing to death or other causes, he lost sight eventually of all
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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 re-

spected and cherished. Then Mr. Hueffer the musical critic

(afterwards 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-

Dunton, 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 acquaint-

ances 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 Shakespear.

Then followed 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 been towards this
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date, say 1845, that he first seriously applied himself to

Dante, and drank deep of that inexhaustible 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 boyhood was practically past. Bailey's Festus was

enormously relished about the same time—read again and

yet again; also Faust, Victor Hugo, Alfred 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 consider-

ably 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

particular 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 fragmentary recitations of Bells and Pomegranates,

Paracelsus, and above all Sordello, are something to remember

from a now distant past. My brother lighted upon Pauline

(published anonymously) in the British Museum, 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 intercourse 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 he knew to some

extent in boyhood, and 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
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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 re-

member and know them. Chaucer, Spenser, the Elizabethan

dramatists (other than Shakespear), 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 comparatively 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 Petrarca, Boccaccio,

Ariosto, Tasso, or Leopardi, though in boyhood he delighted

well enough in Ariosto. Of French poets, none beyond

Hugo and Alfred 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 seventh year of his age. It is of course simple

nonsense. “Slave” and “traitor” were two words which
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he found passim in Shakespear; so he gave to his principal

characters the names of Slave and Traitor. If what they do

is meaningless, what they say (when they deviate from

prose) is not exactly unmetrical. Towards his thirteenth

year he began a romantic prose-tale named Roderick and

Rosalba . I 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 some couple of years after the date 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 there

was the translation of Bürger's Lenore , spirited and fairly

efficient; and in November 1845 was begun a translation of

the Nibelungenlied , almost deserving (if my memory serves me)

to be considered 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 begin-

ning of his translations from the early Italians. These must,

I think, have been in full career in the first half of 1847, and

may even have begun in 1845. They show a keen sensitive-

ness 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 nine-

teenth year, or before 12th May 1847, he wrote The Blessed

Damozel . As that is universally recognized as one of his

typical 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 latter 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;
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and we would write off our emulous exercises with consider-

able 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. Several of his bouts-rimés sonnets still exist in

my possession, a little touched up after the first draft: I

present most of them in this re-edition. Some have a faux

air of intensity of meaning, as well as of expression; but

their real core of significance 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-rimés 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 mean-

ing, 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.
(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 reproduc-

tion, as regards all editorial parts of this work, are reserved.
(1 b) Dante and his Circle, with the Italian Poets preceding

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
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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 simul-

taneously, The House of Life was completed, was made to

consist solely of sonnets, and was transferred to 3; while the

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

modification of The House of Life clearly governed my action.
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 arrange-

ment, the entire contents of 2 b and 3, inserting here and

there, in their most appropriate 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 con-

firmed 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, Miscel-

laneous 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 the order of the dates

of their composition. This order of date is certainly near to

being correct; though some allowance, especially in the case

of The House of Life , must be made for differences of period

when the poems were begun and were brought into their final

form. The few translations which were printed in 2 b (as

also in 2 a) have been removed to follow on after 1 b.
There are two poems by my brother which I am unable
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to include among his Collected Works. One of these is a

grotesque ballad about a Dutchman, Jan van Hunks , begun

at a very early date, and finished in his last illness. The

other is a brace of sonnets, interesting in subject, and as

being the very latest thing that he wrote. These works were

presented as a gift of love and gratitude to Mr. Watts-Dunton,

with whom it remains to publish them at his own discretion:

he has already brought out Jan van Hunks in The English

Review .
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 ab-

horred 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 to a large

extent by these feelings of his, whether my own entirely

correspond with them or not. The 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 few, which he might have objected to, figure

as Juvenilia. Some details regarding the new items 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 of Arc to match

The White Ship and The King's Tragedy .
I have not unfrequently heard my brother say that he
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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 conceptions in the

verbal and rhythmical vehicle more thoroughly than in form

and design, perhaps more thoroughly than in colour.
William M. Rossetti.

London, April 1911.
I add here the dedications to Rossetti's volumes 1 a, 2 a,

2 b, and 3. The dedication to 1 b appears in its proper place.
1 a.— The Early Italian Poets:
Whatever is mine in this book is inscribed to my Wife.—

D.G.R. 1861.
2 a.— 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.
2 b.— 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.
In the Poems, 1881, appeared the ensuing “Advertise-

ment”:

“‘Many poems in this volume were written between 1847 and

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

vening 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 unfinished form needs

some indulgence.”

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CONTENTS
The pieces marked thus * are now printed for the first time;

those marked † have appeared in print before, but are now first in-

cluded in the Collected Works.
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more about Principal Poems
PRINCIPAL POEMS
Sig. 1
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more about The Blessed Damozel
THE BLESSED DAMOZEL
  • The blessed damozel leaned out
  • From the gold bar of Heaven;
  • Her eyes were deeper than the depth
  • Of waters stilled at even;
  • She had three lilies in her hand,
  • And the stars in her hair were seven.
  • Her robe, ungirt from clasp to hem,
  • No wrought flowers did adorn,
  • But a white rose of Mary's gift,
  • 10 For service meetly worn;
  • Her hair that lay along her back
  • Was yellow like ripe corn.
  • Herseemed she scarce had been a day
  • One of God's choristers;
  • The wonder was not yet quite gone
  • From that still look of hers;
  • Albeit, to them she left, her day
  • Had counted as ten years.
  • (To one, it is ten years of years.
  • 20 . . . Yet now, and in this place,
  • Surely she leaned o'er me—her hair
  • Fell all about my face. . .
  • Nothing: the autumn-fall of leaves.
  • The whole year sets apace.)
  • It was the rampart of God's house
  • That she was standing on;
  • By God built over the sheer depth
  • The which is Space begun;
  • So high, that looking downward thence
  • 30 She scarce could see the sun.
  • It lies in Heaven, across the flood
  • Of ether, as a bridge.
  • Beneath, the tides of day and night
  • With flame and darkness ridge
  • The void, as low as where this earth
  • Spins like a fretful midge.
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  • Around her, lovers, newly met
  • 'Mid deathless love's acclaims,
  • Spoke evermore among themselves
  • 40 Their heart-remembered names;
  • And the souls mounting up to God
  • Went by her like thin flames.
  • And still she bowed herself and stooped
  • Out of the circling charm;
  • Until her bosom must have made
  • The bar she leaned on warm,
  • And the lilies lay as if asleep
  • Along her bended arm.
  • From the fixed place of Heaven she saw
  • 50 Time like a pulse shake fierce
  • Through all the worlds. Her gaze still strove
  • Within the gulf to pierce
  • Its path; and now she spoke as when
  • The stars sang in their spheres.
  • The sun was gone now; the curled moon
  • Was like a little feather
  • Fluttering far down the gulf; and now
  • She spoke through the still weather.
  • Her voice was like the voice of the stars
  • 60 Had when they sang together.
  • (Ah sweet! Even now, in that bird's song,
  • Strove not her accents there,
  • Fain to be hearkened? When those bells
  • Possessed the mid-day air,
  • Strove not her steps to reach my side
  • Down all the echoing stair?)
  • “I wish that he were come to me,
  • For he will come,” she said.
  • “Have I not prayed in Heaven?—on earth,
  • 70 Lord, Lord, has he not pray'd?
  • Are not two prayers a perfect strength?
  • And shall I feel afraid?
  • “When round his head the aureole clings,
  • And he is clothed in white,
  • I'll take his hand and go with him
  • To the deep wells of light;
  • As unto a stream we will step down,
  • And bathe there in God's sight.
  • “We two will stand beside that shrine,
  • 80 Occult, withheld, untrod,
  • Whose lamps are stirred continually
  • With prayer sent up to God;
  • And see our old prayers, granted, melt
  • Each like a little cloud.
  • “We two will lie i' the shadow of
  • That living mystic tree
  • Within whose secret growth the Dove
  • Is sometimes felt to be,
  • While every leaf that His plumes touch
  • 90 Saith His Name audibly.
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  • “And I myself will teach to him,
  • I myself, lying so,
  • The songs I sing here; which his voice
  • Shall pause in, hushed and slow,
  • And find some knowledge at each pause,
  • Or some new thing to know.”
  • (Alas! We two, we two, thou say'st!
  • Yea, one wast thou with me
  • That once of old. But shall God lift
  • 100 To endless unity
  • The soul whose likeness with thy soul
  • Was but its love for thee?)
  • “We two,” she said, “will seek the groves
  • Where the lady Mary is,
  • With her five handmaidens, whose names
  • Are five sweet symphonies,
  • Cecily, Gertrude, Magdalen,
  • Margaret and Rosalys.
  • “Circlewise sit they, with bound locks
  • 110 And foreheads garlanded;
  • Into the fine cloth white like flame
  • Weaving the golden thread,
  • To fashion the birth-robes for them
  • Who are just born, being dead.
  • “He shall fear, haply, and be dumb:
  • Then will I lay my cheek
  • To his, and tell about our love,
  • Not once abashed or weak:
  • And the dear Mother will approve
  • 120 My pride, and let me speak.
  • “Herself shall bring us, hand in hand,
  • To Him round whom all souls
  • Kneel, the clear-ranged unnumbered heads
  • Bowed with their aureoles:
  • And angels meeting us shall sing
  • To their citherns and citoles.
  • “There will I ask of Christ the Lord
  • Thus much for him and me:—
  • Only to live as once on earth
  • 130 With Love,—only to be,
  • As then awhile, for ever now
  • Together, I and he.”
  • She gazed and listened and then said,
  • Less sad of speech than mild,—
  • “All this is when he comes.” She ceased.
  • The light thrilled towards her, fill'd
  • With angels in strong level flight.
  • Her eyes prayed, and she smil'd.
  • (I saw her smile.) But soon their path
  • 140 Was vague in distant spheres:
  • And then she cast her arms along
  • The golden barriers,
  • And laid her face between her hands,
  • And wept. (I heard her tears.)
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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?
  • 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.
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  • 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
  • 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 bend
  • 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.
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  • 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 wall
  • 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
  • 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?
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  • 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.”
  • 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.
  • 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.
Transcribed Footnote (page 9):

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

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  • 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
  • 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.*
Transcribed Footnote (page 10):

* Uguccione della Faggiuola, Dante's former protector, was now his fellow-guest at Verona.

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  • Through leaves and trellis-work the sun
  • Left the wine cool within the glass,—
  • They feasting where no sun could pass:
  • 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.
  • Much loved, him Dante loathed. And so,
  • One day when Dante felt perplexed
  • 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.”
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  • 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.”*
  • 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,—
  • 340The man abode aloof from us
  • Nigh fifteen years, yet lastly skulk'd
  • Hither to candleshrift and mulct.
Transcribed Footnote (page 12):

* “ 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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  • “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.
  • 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 the 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.
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  • 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
  • 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
  • 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.
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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  • 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.”
  • 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 smiled
  • For pride in fame.” It might be so:
  • Nevertheless we cannot know
  • If haply he were not beguiled
  • 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 not. 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.
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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  • No book keeps record how the Prince
  • Sunned himself out of Dante's reach,
  • Nor how the Jester stank in speech:
  • 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.
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Sig. 2
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.
  • 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 côte-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.
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  • 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.
  • (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.”
  • 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!”
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  • 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.
  • “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.
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  • “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.”
  • 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.
  • 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
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  • “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.
  • “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 laughed.
  • “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.
  • “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.
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Note: There are three identical smudges, caused by inked quads, on this page: line 255 (between “bore” and “our”), line 260 (between “as” and “mine”) and line 265 (between “her” and “mind”)
  • “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.
  • 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 pleasaùnce
  • 290 Where the long lake was white with swans.
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  • 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.
  • 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.
  • “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.
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  • “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.’
  • “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.
  • “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.”
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  • 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.
  • 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.”
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  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.”
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  • “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.
  • 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.
  • ‘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.
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  • “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.
  • “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.
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  • “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.
  • “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.
  • “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.
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  • “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?’
  • “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.
  • “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.
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  • “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.
  • “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.
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  • “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.
  • “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.
  • 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.”
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Sig. 3
  • 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.
  • “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.
  • 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.
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  • “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
  • “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.
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Note: The end-punctuation marks in line 891 below (immediately following the word “them”), line 905 (immediately following the word “know'st”), and line 911 (immediately following the word “house,”) are badly type-damaged. It is unclear whether the marks are commas or periods.
  • “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.
  • “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 wouldst 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
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more about Jenny.
JENNY

Vengeance of Jenny's case! Fie on her! Never name her, child! —(Mrs. Quickly.)

  • Lazy laughing languid Jenny,
  • Fond of a kiss and fond of a guinea,
  • Whose head upon my knee to-night
  • Rests for a while, as if grown light
  • With all our dances and the sound
  • To which the wild tunes spun you round:
  • Fair Jenny mine, the thoughtless queen
  • Of kisses which the blush between
  • Could hardly make much daintier;
  • 10 Whose eyes are as blue skies, whose hair
  • Is countless gold incomparable:
  • Fresh flower, scarce touched with signs that tell
  • Of Love's exuberant hotbed:—Nay,
  • Poor flower left torn since yesterday
  • Until to-morrow leave you bare;
  • Poor handful of bright spring-water
  • Flung in the whirlpool's shrieking face;
  • Poor shameful Jenny, full of grace
  • Thus with your head upon my knee;—
  • 20 Whose person or whose purse may be
  • The lodestar of your reverie?
  • This room of yours, my Jenny, looks
  • A change from mine so full of books,
  • Whose serried ranks hold fast, forsooth,
  • So many captive hours of youth,—
  • The hours they thieve from day and night
  • To make one's cherished work come right,
  • And leave it wrong for all their theft,
  • Even as to-night my work was left:
  • 30 Until I vowed that since my brain
  • And eyes of dancing seemed so fain,
  • My feet should have some dancing too:—
  • And thus it was I met with you.
  • Well, I suppose 'twas hard to part,
  • For here I am. And now, sweetheart,
  • You seem too tired to get to bed.
  • It was a careless life I led
  • When rooms like this were scarce so strange
  • Not long ago. What breeds the change,—
  • 40 The many aims or the few years?
  • Because to-night it all appears
  • Something I do not know again.
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  • The cloud's not danced out of my brain—
  • The cloud that made it turn and swim
  • While hour by hour the books grew dim.
  • Why, Jenny, as I watch you there,—
  • For all your wealth of loosened hair,
  • Your silk ungirdled and unlac'd
  • And warm sweets open to the waist,
  • 50 All golden in the lamplight's gleam,—
  • You know not what a book you seem,
  • Half-read by lightning in a dream!
  • How should you know, my Jenny? Nay,
  • And I should be ashamed to say:—
  • Poor beauty, so well worth a kiss!
  • But while my thought runs on like this
  • With wasteful whims more than enough,
  • I wonder what you're thinking of.
  • If of myself you think at all,
  • 60 What is the thought?—conjectural
  • On sorry matters best unsolved?—
  • Or inly is each grace revolved
  • To fit me with a lure?—or (sad
  • To think!) perhaps you're merely glad
  • That I'm not drunk or ruffianly
  • And let you rest upon my knee.
  • For sometimes, were the truth confess'd,
  • You're thankful for a little rest,—
  • Glad from the crush to rest within,
  • 70 From the heart-sickness and the din
  • Where envy's voice at virtue's pitch
  • Mocks you because your gown is rich;
  • And from the pale girl's dumb rebuke,
  • Whose ill-clad grace and toil-worn look
  • Proclaim the strength that keeps her weak,
  • And other nights than yours bespeak;
  • And from the wise unchildish elf,
  • To schoolmate lesser than himself
  • Pointing you out, what thing you are:—
  • 80 Yes, from the daily jeer and jar,
  • From shame and shame's outbraving too,
  • Is rest not sometimes sweet to you?—
  • But most from the hatefulness of man,
  • Who spares not to end what he began,
  • Whose acts are ill and his speech ill,
  • Who, having used you at his will,
  • Thrusts you aside, as when I dine
  • I serve the dishes and the wine.
  • Well, handsome Jenny mine, sit up:
  • 90 I've filled our glasses, let us sup,
  • And do not let me think of you,
  • Lest shame of yours suffice for two.
  • What, still so tired? Well, well then, keep
  • Your head there, so you do not sleep;
  • But that the weariness may pass
  • And leave you merry, take this glass.
  • Ah! lazy lily hand, more bless'd
  • If ne'er in rings it had been dress'd
  • Nor ever by a glove conceal'd!
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  • 100 Behold the lilies of the field,
  • They toil not neither do they spin;
  • (So doth the ancient text begin,—
  • Not of such rest as one of these
  • Can share.) Another rest and ease
  • Along each summer-sated path
  • From its new lord the garden hath,
  • Than that whose spring in blessings ran
  • Which praised the bounteous husbandman,
  • Ere yet, in days of hankering breath,
  • 110 The lilies sickened unto death.
  • What, Jenny, are your lilies dead?
  • Aye, and the snow-white leaves are spread
  • Like winter on the garden-bed.
  • But you had roses left in May,—
  • They were not gone too. Jenny, nay,
  • But must your roses die, and those
  • Their purfled buds that should unclose?
  • Even so; the leaves are curled apart,
  • Still red as from the broken heart,
  • 120 And here's the naked stem of thorns.
  • Nay, nay, mere words. Here nothing warns
  • As yet of winter. Sickness here
  • Or want alone could waken fear,—
  • Nothing but passion wrings a tear.
  • Except when there may rise unsought
  • Haply at times a passing thought
  • Of the old days which seem to be
  • Much older than any history
  • That is written in any book;
  • 130 When she would lie in fields and look
  • Along the ground through the blown grass
  • And wonder where the city was,
  • Far out of sight, whose broil and bale
  • They told her then for a child's tale.
  • Jenny, you know the city now.
  • A child can tell the tale there, how
  • Some things which are not yet enroll'd
  • In market-lists are bought and sold
  • Even till the early Sunday light,
  • 140 When Saturday night is market-night
  • Everywhere, be it dry or wet,
  • And market-night in the Haymarket.
  • Our learned London children know,
  • Poor Jenny, all your pride and woe;
  • Have seen your lifted silken skirt
  • Advertise dainties through the dirt;
  • Have seen your coach-wheels splash rebuke
  • On virtue; and have learned your look
  • When, wealth and health slipped past, you stare
  • 150 Along the streets alone, and there,
  • Round the long park, across the bridge,
  • The cold lamps at the pavement's edge
  • Wind on together and apart,
  • A fiery serpent for your heart.
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Note: Ink smudge on page 39, line 201 (between “a” and “kind”).
  • Let the thoughts pass, an empty cloud!
  • Suppose I were to think aloud,—
  • What if to her all this were said?
  • Why, as a volume seldom read
  • Being opened halfway shuts again,
  • 160 So might the pages of her brain
  • Be parted at such words, and thence
  • Close back upon the dusty sense.
  • For is there hue or shape defin'd
  • In Jenny's desecrated mind,
  • Where all contagious currents meet,
  • A Lethe of the middle street?
  • Nay, it reflects not any face,
  • Nor sound is in its sluggish pace,
  • But as they coil those eddies clot,
  • 170 And night and day remember not.
  • Why, Jenny, you're asleep at last!—
  • Asleep, poor Jenny, hard and fast,—
  • So young and soft and tired; so fair,
  • With chin thus nestled in your hair,
  • Mouth quiet, eyelids almost blue
  • As if some sky of dreams shone through!
  • Just as another woman sleeps!
  • Enough to throw one's thoughts in heaps
  • Of doubt and horror,—what to say
  • 180 Or think,—this awful secret sway,
  • The potter's power over the clay!
  • Of the same lump (it has been said)
  • For honour and dishonour made,
  • Two sister vessels. Here is one.
  • My cousin Nell is fond of fun,
  • And fond of dress, and change, and praise,
  • So mere a woman in her ways:
  • And if her sweet eyes rich in youth
  • Are like her lips that tell the truth,
  • 190 My cousin Nell is fond of love.
  • And she's the girl I'm proudest of.
  • Who does not prize her, guard her well?
  • The love of change, in cousin Nell,
  • Shall find the best and hold it dear:
  • The unconquered mirth turn quieter
  • Not through her own, through others' woe:
  • The conscious pride of beauty glow
  • Beside another's pride in her,
  • One little part of all they share.
  • 200 For Love himself shall ripen these
  • In a kind soil to just increase
  • Through years of fertilizing peace.
  • Of the same lump (as it is said)
  • For honour and dishonour made,
  • Two sister vessels. Here is one.
  • It makes a goblin of the sun.
  • So pure,—so fall'n! How dare to think
  • Of the first common kindred link?
  • Yet, Jenny, till the world shall burn
  • 210 It seems that all things take their turn;
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  • And who shall say but this fair tree
  • May need, in changes that may be,
  • Your children's children's charity?
  • Scorned then, no doubt, as you are scorn'd!
  • Shall no man hold his pride forewarn'd
  • Till in the end, the Day of Days,
  • At Judgment, one of his own race,
  • As frail and lost as you, shall rise,—
  • His daughter, with his mother's eyes?
  • 220 How Jenny's clock ticks on the shelf!
  • Might not the dial scorn itself
  • That has such hours to register?
  • Yet as to me, even so to her
  • Are golden sun and silver moon,
  • In daily largesse of earth's boon,
  • Counted for life-coins to one tune.
  • And if, as blindfold fates are toss'd,
  • Through some one man this life be lost,
  • Shall soul not somehow pay for soul?
  • 230 Fair shines the gilded aureole
  • In which our highest painters place
  • Some living woman's simple face.
  • And the stilled features thus descried
  • As Jenny's long throat droops aside,—
  • The shadows where the cheeks are thin,
  • And pure wide curve from ear to chin,—
  • With Raffael's, Leonardo's hand
  • To show them to men's souls, might stand,
  • Whole ages long, the whole world through,
  • 240 For preachings of what God can do.
  • What has man done here? How atone,
  • Great God, for this which man has done?
  • And for the body and soul which by
  • Man's pitiless doom must now comply
  • With lifelong hell, what lullaby
  • Of sweet forgetful second birth
  • Remains? All dark. No sign on earth
  • What measure of God's rest endows
  • The many mansions of his house.
  • 250 If but a woman's heart might see
  • Such erring heart unerringly
  • For once! But that can never be.
  • Like a rose shut in a book
  • In which pure women may not look,
  • For its base pages claim control
  • To crush the flower within the soul;
  • Where through each dead rose-leaf that clings,
  • Pale as transparent Psyche-wings,
  • To the vile text, are traced such things
  • 260 As might make lady's cheek indeed
  • More than a living rose to read;
  • So nought save foolish foulness may
  • Watch with hard eyes the sure decay;
  • And so the life-blood of this rose,
  • Puddled with shameful knowledge, flows
  • Through leaves no chaste hand may unclose:
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  • Yet still it keeps such faded show
  • Of when 'twas gathered long ago,
  • That the crushed petals' lovely grain,
  • 270 The sweetness of the sanguine stain,
  • Seen of a woman's eyes, must make
  • Her pitiful heart, so prone to ache,
  • Love roses better for its sake:—
  • Only that this can never be:—
  • Even so unto her sex is she.
  • Yet, Jenny, looking long at you,
  • The woman almost fades from view.
  • A cipher of man's changeless sum
  • Of lust, past, present, and to come,
  • 280 Is left. A riddle that one shrinks
  • To challenge from the scornful sphinx.
  • Like a toad within a stone
  • Seated while Time crumbles on;
  • Which sits there since the earth was curs'd
  • For Man's transgression at the first;
  • Which, living through all centuries,
  • Not once has seen the sun arise;
  • Whose life, to its cold circle charmed,
  • The earth's whole summers have not warmed;
  • 290 Which always—whitherso the stone
  • Be flung—sits there, deaf, blind, alone;—
  • Aye, and shall not be driven out
  • Till that which shuts him round about
  • Break at the very Master's stroke,
  • And the dust thereof vanish as smoke,
  • And the seed of Man vanish as dust:—
  • Even so within this world is Lust.
  • Come, come, what use in thoughts like this?
  • Poor little Jenny, good to kiss,—
  • 300 You'd not believe by what strange roads
  • Thought travels, when your beauty goads
  • A man to-night to think of toads!
  • Jenny, wake up . . . . Why, there's the dawn!
  • And there's an early waggon drawn
  • To market, and some sheep that jog
  • Bleating before a barking dog;
  • And the old streets come peering through
  • Another night that London knew;
  • And all as ghostlike as the lamps.
  • 310 So on the wings of day decamps
  • My last night's frolic. Glooms begin
  • To shiver off as lights creep in
  • Past the gauze curtains half drawn-to,
  • And the lamp's doubled shade grows blue,—
  • Your lamp, my Jenny, kept alight,
  • Like a wise virgin's, all one night!
  • And in the alcove coolly spread
  • Glimmers with dawn your empty bed;
  • And yonder your fair face I see
  • 320 Reflected lying on my knee,
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  • Where teems with first foreshadowings
  • Your pier-glass scrawled with diamond rings:
  • And on your bosom all night worn
  • Yesterday's rose now droops forlorn,
  • But dies not yet this summer morn.
  • And now without, as if some word
  • Had called upon them that they heard,
  • The London sparrows far and nigh
  • Clamour together suddenly;
  • 330 And Jenny's cage-bird grown awake
  • Here in their song his part must take,
  • Because here too the day doth break.
  • And somehow in myself the dawn
  • Among stirred clouds and veils withdrawn
  • Strikes greyly on her. Let her sleep.
  • But will it wake her if I heap
  • These cushions thus beneath her head
  • Where my knee was? No,—there's your bed,
  • My Jenny, while you dream. And there
  • 340 I lay among your golden hair,
  • Perhaps the subject of your dreams,
  • These golden coins.
  • For still one deems
  • That Jenny's flattering sleep confers
  • New magic on the magic purse,—
  • Grim web, how clogged with shrivelled flies!
  • Between the threads fine fumes arise
  • And shape their pictures in the brain.
  • There roll no streets in glare and rain,
  • Nor flagrant man-swine whets his tusk;
  • 350 But delicately sighs in musk
  • The homage of the dim boudoir;
  • Or like a palpitating star
  • Thrilled into song, the opera-night
  • Breathes faint in the quick pulse of light;
  • Or at the carriage-window shine
  • Rich wares for choice; or, free to dine,
  • Whirls through its hour of health (divine
  • For her) the concourse of the Park.
  • And though in the discounted dark
  • 360 Her functions there and here are one,
  • Beneath the lamps and in the sun
  • There reigns at least the acknowledged belle
  • Apparelled beyond parallel.
  • Ah Jenny, yes, we know your dreams.
  • For even the Paphian Venus seems
  • A goddess o'er the realms of love,
  • When silver-shrined in shadowy grove:
  • Aye, or let offerings nicely plac'd
  • But hide Priapus to the waist,
  • 370 And whoso looks on him shall see
  • An eligible deity.
  • Why, Jenny, waking here alone
  • May help you to remember one,
  • Though all the memory's long outworn
  • Of many a double-pillowed morn.
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  • I think I see you when you wake,
  • And rub your eyes for me, and shake
  • My gold, in rising, from your hair,
  • A Danaë for a moment there.
  • 380 Jenny, my love rang true! for still
  • Love at first sight is vague, until
  • That tinkling makes him audible.
  • And must I mock you to the last,
  • Ashamed of my own shame,—aghast
  • Because some thoughts not born amiss
  • Rose at a poor fair face like this?
  • Well, of such thoughts so much I know:
  • In my life, as in hers, they show,
  • By a far gleam which I may near,
  • 390 A dark path I can strive to clear.
  • Only one kiss. Good-bye, my dear.
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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.
  • 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.
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Note: Line 59 contains a typo: “fiftul” is printed instead of “fitful”.
  • 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
  • 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
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  • Some wounds already; and I lived alone,
  • 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
  • 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
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  • 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,
  • 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.
  • 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
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  • 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.
  • 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.
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    Sig. 4
  • 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
  • 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!
  • 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 la braccia bianche
more about She wept, sweet lady
Transcribed Footnote (page 49):
Note: The English poem is printed in two columns, divided by a horizontal 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


    • Column Break


  • 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 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!
  • 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
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  • 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
  • (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
  • 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;
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  • 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,
  • I heard the 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,—
  • “God! what is left but hell for company,
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  • 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;
  • 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,
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  • 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,
  • 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 Burden of Nineveh.
THE BURDEN OF NINEVEH
  • In our Museum galleries
  • To-day I lingered o'er the prize
  • Dead Greece vouchsafes to living eyes,—
  • Her Art for ever in fresh wise
  • From hour to hour rejoicing me.
  • Sighing I turned at last to win
  • Once more the London dirt and din;
  • And as I made the swing-door spin
  • And issued, they were hoisting in
  • 10 A wingèd beast from Nineveh.
  • A human face the creature wore,
  • And hoofs behind and hoofs before,
  • And flanks with dark runes fretted o'er.
  • 'Twas bull, 'twas mitred Minotaur,
  • A dead disbowelled mystery:
  • The mummy of a buried faith
  • Stark from the charnel without scathe,
  • Its wings stood for the light to bathe,—
  • Such fossil cerements as might swathe
  • 20 The very corpse of Nineveh.
  • The print of its first rush-wrapping,
  • Wound ere it dried, still ribbed the thing.
  • What song did the brown maidens sing,
  • From purple mouths alternating,
  • When that was woven languidly?
  • What vows, what rites, what prayers preferr'd,
  • What songs has the strange image heard?
  • In what blind vigil stood interr'd
  • For ages, till an English word
  • 30 Broke silence first at Nineveh?
  • Oh when upon each sculptured court,
  • Where even the wind might not resort,—
  • O'er which Time passed, of like import
  • With the wild Arab boys at sport,—
  • A living face looked in to see:—
  • Oh seemed it not—the spell once broke—
  • As though the carven warriors woke,
  • As though the shaft the string forsook,
  • The cymbals clashed, the chariots shook,
  • 40 And there was life in Nineveh?
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  • On London stones our sun anew
  • The beast's recovered shadow threw.
  • (No shade that plague of darkness knew,
  • No light, no shade, while older grew
  • By ages the old earth and sea.)
  • Lo thou! could all thy priests have shown
  • Such proof to make thy godhead known?
  • From their dead Past thou liv'st alone;
  • And still thy shadow is thine own,
  • 50 Even as of yore in Nineveh.
  • That day whereof we keep record,
  • When near thy city-gates the Lord
  • Sheltered His Jonah with a gourd,
  • This sun, (I said) here present, pour'd
  • Even thus this shadow that I see.
  • This shadow has been shed the same
  • From sun and moon,—from lamps which came
  • For prayer,—from fifteen days of flame,
  • The last, while smouldered to a name
  • 60 Sardanapalus' Nineveh.
  • Within thy shadow, haply, once
  • Sennacherib has knelt, whose sons
  • Smote him between the altar-stones:
  • Or pale Semiramis her zones
  • Of gold, her incense brought to thee,
  • In love for grace, in war for aid: . . .
  • Ay, and who else? . . . till 'neath thy shade
  • Within his trenches newly made
  • Last year the Christian knelt and pray'd—
  • 70 Not to thy strength—in Nineveh.*
Transcribed Footnote (page 56):

* During the excavations, the Tiyari workmen held their services in the shadow of the great bulls.—( Layard's “ Nineveh,” chap. ix.)

  • Now, thou poor god, within this hall
  • Where the blank windows blind the wall
  • From pedestal to pedestal,
  • The kind of light shall on thee fall
  • Which London takes the day to be:
  • While school-foundations in the act
  • Of holiday, three files compact,
  • Shall learn to view thee as a fact
  • Connected with that zealous tract:
  • 80 “Rome,—Babylon and Nineveh.”
  • Deemed they of this, those worshippers,
  • When, in some mythic chain of verse
  • Which man shall not again rehearse,
  • The faces of thy ministers
  • Yearned pale with bitter ecstasy?
  • Greece, Egypt, Rome,—did any god
  • Before whose feet men knelt unshod
  • Deem that in this unblest abode
  • Another scarce more unknown god
  • 90 Should house with him, from Nineveh?
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  • Ah! in what quarries lay the stone
  • From which this pillared pile has grown,
  • Unto man's need how long unknown,
  • Since those thy temples, court and cone,
  • Rose far in desert history?
  • Ah! what is here that does not lie
  • All strange to thine awakened eye?
  • Ah! what is here can testify
  • (Save that dumb presence of the sky)
  • 100 Unto thy day and Nineveh?
  • Why, of those mummies in the room
  • Above, there might indeed have come
  • One out of Egypt to thy home,
  • An alien. Nay, but were not some
  • Of these thine own “antiquity”?
  • And now,—they and their gods and thou
  • All relics here together,—now
  • Whose profit? whether bull or cow,
  • Isis or Ibis, who or how,
  • 110 Whether of Thebes or Nineveh?
  • The consecrated metals found,
  • And ivory tablets, underground,
  • Winged teraphim and creatures crown'd.
  • When air and daylight filled the mound,
  • Fell into dust immediately.
  • And even as these, the images
  • Of awe and worship,—even as these,—
  • So, smitten with the sun's increase,
  • Her glory mouldered and did cease
  • 120 From immemorial Nineveh.
  • The day her builders made their halt,
  • Those cities of the lake of salt
  • Stood firmly 'stablished without fault,
  • Made proud with pillars of basalt,
  • With sardonyx and porphyry.
  • The day that Jonah bore abroad
  • To Nineveh the voice of God,
  • A brackish lake lay in his road,
  • Where erst Pride fixed her sure abode,
  • 130 As then in royal Nineveh.
  • The day when he, Pride's lord and Man's,
  • Showed all the kingdoms at a glance
  • To Him before whose countenance
  • The years recede, the years advance,
  • And said, Fall down and worship me:—
  • 'Mid all the pomp beneath that look,
  • Then stirred there, haply, some rebuke,
  • Where to the wind the Salt Pools shook,
  • And in those tracts, of life forsook,
  • 140 That knew thee not, O Nineveh!
  • Delicate harlot! On thy throne
  • Thou with a world beneath thee prone