Such thrilling pallor of cheek as doth enthrall The heart; a mouth whose passionate forms imply All music and all silence held thereby; Deep golden locks, her sovereign coronal; A round reared neck, meet column of Love's shrine To cling to when the heart takes sanctuary; Hands which for ever at Love's bidding be, And soft-stirred feet still answering to his sign: These are her gifts, as tongue may tell them o'er. Breathe low her name, my soul; for that means more. 1881.. XXXIV. THE DARK GLASS NOT I myself know all my love for thee: Shall birth and death, and all dark names As doors and windows bared to some loud sea, Lash deaf mine cars and blind my face with spray; And shall my sense pierce love, the last And ultimate outpost of eternity? Lo! what am I to Love, the lord of all? One murmuring shell he gathers from the sand, One little heart-flame sheltered in his hand. Yet through thine eyes he grants me clearest call And veriest touch of powers primordial That any hour-girt life may understand. 1881. LVI. TRUE WOMAN-L HERSELF To be a sweetness more desired than Spring; A bodily beauty more acceptable Than the wild rose-tree's arch that crowns the fell; To be an essence more environing Than wine's drained juice; a music ravishing More than the passionate pulse of Philomel;To be all this 'neath one soft bosom's swell That is the flower of life:-how strange a thing! How strange a thing to be what Man can know But as a sacred secret! Heaven's own screen Hides her soul's purest depth and loveliness glow; Closely withheld, as all things most unseen,The wave-bowered pearl,-the heart-shaped seal of green That flecks the snowdrop underneath the snow. LVII. TRUE WOMAN-II. HER LOVE SHE loves him; for her infinite soul is Love, A glass facing his fire, where the bright bliss Is mirrored, and the heat returned. Yet move That glass, a stranger's amorous flame to prove, And it shall turn, by instant contraries, Ice to the moon; while her pure fire to his For whom it burns, clings close i' the heart's alcove. Lo! they are one. With wifely breast to breast LVIII. TRUE WOMAN-III. HER HEAVEN IF to grow old in Heaven is to grow young, (As the Seer saw and said,) then blest were he With youth for evermore, whose heaven should be True Woman, she whom these weak notes have sung, Here and hereafter,-choir-strains of her tongue,-- The sunrise blooms and withers on the hill Like any hillflower; and the noblest troth Dies here to dust. Yet shall Heaven's promise clothe Even yet those lovers who have cherished still XCVII, A SUPERSCRIPTION Look in my face; my name is Might-have-been; I am also called No-more, Too-late, Farewell; 'Unto thine ear I hold the dead-sea shell Cast up thy Life's foam-fretted feet between; Unto thine eyes the glass where that is seen Which had Life's form and Love's, but by my spell Is now a shaken shadow intolerable, Of ultimate things unuttered the frail screen. Mark me, how still I am! But should there dart One moment through thy soul the soft surprise Of that winged Peace which lulls the breath of sighs, Then shalt thou see me smile, and turn apart 1870. Dante Gabriel Rossetti. ONE CERTAINTY VANITY of vanities, the Preacher saith, To-day is still the same as yesterday, To-morrow also even as one of them; And morning shall be cold and twilight grey. 1849. 66 BETWEEN THE SUNKEN SUN BETWEEN the sunken sun and the new moon, 1Copyright, 1882, D. Lothrop & Co., Boston. |