12 Sonnets

By

Dante G. Rossetti

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All from “The House of Life”.

and other sonnets by D.G.R. —

28 leaves.





     

• Flowers hast thou in thyself, and foliage,
• And what is good, and what is glad to see;
• The sun is not so bright as thy visàge;
• All is stark naught when one hath look'd on thee;
• There is not such a beautiful personage
• Anywhere on the green earth verily:
• If one fear love, thy bearing sweet & sage
• Comforteth him, and no more fear hath he.
• Thy lady friends and maidens ministering
• 10 Are all, for love of thee, much to my taste
• And much I pray the e m that in everything
• They honour thee even as thou meritest
• And have thee in their gentle harbouring.
• Because among them all thou art the best.

   

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• Even as a child, of sorrow that we give
• The dead, but little in his heart can find,
• Since without need of thought to his clear mind
• Their turn it is to die and his to live: —
• Even so the winged New Love smiles to receive
• Along his eddying wings/[?] the auroral wind,
• Nor, forward glorying, casts one look behind
• Where night-rack shrouds the Old Love fugitive.

• There is a change in every hour's recall,
• 10And the last cowslip in the fields we see
• In the same day with the first corn-poppy.
• Alas for hourly change! Alas for all
• The loves that from his hand proud Youth lets fall
• Even as the beads of a told rosary!

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• Sometimes though seem'st not as thyself alone,
• But as the meaning of all things that are;
• A breathless wonder, shadowing forth afar
• Some heavenly solstice hushed and halcyon;
• Whose unstirred lips are music's visible tone;
• Where eyes the sun-gate of the soul unbar
• Being of its furthest first oracular; —
• The evident heart of all life sown and mown.

• Even such Love is; and is not thy name Love?
• 10Yea, by thy hand the Love-god rends apart
• All gathering clouds of Night's ambiguous art;
• Flings them far down, and sets thine eyes above;
• And simply, as some gage of flower or glove,
• Stakes with a smile the world g against thy heart.

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• Lady, I thank thee for thy loveliness,
• Because my lady is more lovely still.
• Glorying I gaze, and yield with glad goodwill
• To thee thy tribute; by whose sweet-spun dress
• Of delicate life Love labours to assess
• My lady's absolute queendom; saying, “Lo!
• How high this beauty is, which yet doth show
• But us that beauty's sovereign votaress.”

• Lady, I saw thee with her, side by side;
• 10And as, when night's fair fires their queen surround,
• An emulous star too near the moon will ride, —
• Even so thy rays within her luminous bound
• Were traced no more; and by the light so drown'd,
• Lady, not thou but she was glorified.

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• High grace, the dower of queens; such therewithal
• Some wood-born wonder sweet simplicity;
• A glance like water trimming with the sky
• Or hyacinth-light where forest-shadows fall;
• Such thrilling pallor of cheek as doth entrhall
• The heart; a month whose passionate forms imply
• All music and all silence held thereby;
• Deep locks, the brow's embowering coronal;
• A round reared neck, meet column of Love's shrine,
• 10To cling to when the heart takes sanctuary;
• And soft-stirred feet still answering to his sign: —
• These are her gifts, as tongue may tell thou o'er.
• Breathe low her name, my soul; for that means more.

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• Two separate divided silences,
• Which, brought together, would find loving voice;
• Two glances which together would rejoice
• In love, now lost like stars beyond dark trees;
• Two hands apart whose touch alone gives ease;
• Two bosoms which, heart-shrined with mutual flame,
• Would, meeting in one clasp, be made the same;
• Two souls, the shores wave-mocked of sundering seas: —

• Such are we now. Ah! may our hope forecast
• 10Indeed one hour again, when on this stream
• Of darkened love once more the light shall gleam? —
• An hour how slow to come, how quickly past, —
• Which beams and fades, and only leaves at last,
• Faint as shed flowers, the attenuated dream.

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• I deemed thy garments, O my Hope, were grey,
• So far I viewed thee. Now the space between
• Is passed at length; and garmented in green
• Even as in days of yore thou stand'st to-day -
• Ah God! and but for lingering dull dismay,
• On all that road our footsteps erst had been
• Even thus commingled, and our shadows seen
• Blent on the hedgerows and the water-way.

• O Hope of mine whose eyes are living love,
• 10No eyes but hers, —O Love and Hope the same! —
• Lean close to me, for now the sinking sun
• That warmed our feet scarce gilds our hair above.
• O hers thy voice and very hers thy name!
• Alas, cling round me, for the day is done!

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• I deemed thy garments, O my Hope, were grey,
• So far I viewed thee. Now the space between
• Once [illegible] has cleared; Is passed at length; and garmented in green
• Even as in days of yore thou standst today
• Ah God! and save but for lingering dull dismay,
• On all the past that road our footprints still might have erst had been
• Even thus commingled, and our shadows seen
• Blent on the hedgerows and the water-way.

• O Hope of mine that hast the eyes I whose eyes are living love,
• 10No eyes but hers, —O Love & Hope the same! —
• Lean close to me, for now the sinking sun
• That warmed our feet scarce gleams gilds our hair above.
• O hers thy voice and very hers thy name!
• Alas, cling round me, for the day is done!

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• Sweet twining hedgeflowers stirred wind-stirred in no [illegible] wise
• On their warm day; and hand that clings in hand:
• Still glads; & meeting faces scarcely fanned:
• An osin-odoured stream that draws the skies
• Deep to its heart; and mirrored eyes in eyes:
• Fresh hourly wonder o'er the summer laced
• Of light and cloud; and two souls softly spann'd
• With one o'erarching heaven of smiles & sighs: —

• Even such their path; till round the sunset hill
• 10The wayward clouds of starlings, at wild play,
• Sink deep in every copse, and to whirl away.
• Oft ere they rest; and sun and soul are still: love's hour hath its fill:
• Nor yet the/ shall shall yon gathering rooks that sail and soar
• Seem to these hearts to cry, Farewell, No more!

   

• Love, should I fear death most for you or me?
• Yet if you die, can I not follow you,
• Forcing the straits of change? Alas! but who
• Shall wrest a bond from night's inveteracy,
• Ere yet my hazardous soul put forth, to be
• Her warrant against all her haste might rue? —
• Ah! in your eyes so reached what dumb adieu,
• What unsunned gyres of waste eternity?

• And if I die the first, shall death be then
• 10A lampless watchtower whence I see you weep? —
• Or (woe is me!) a bed wherein my sleep
• Ne'er notes (as death's dear cup at last you drain,)
• The hour when you too learn that all is vain
• And that Hope sows what Love shall never reap?

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• By thine own tears thy song must tears beget,
• O Singer! Magic mirror thou hast none
• Except thy manifest heart;and save thine own
• Anguish or ardour, else no amulet.
• Cisterned in Pride, verse is the feathery jet
• Of soulless air-flung fountains; nay, more dry
• Than the Dead Sea for throats that thirst and sigh,
• That song o'er which no singer's lids grew wet.

• The Song-god — He the Sun-god — is no slave
• 10Of thine: Thy Hunter he, who for thy soul
• Fledges his shaft: to no august control
• Of thy skilled hand his quivered store he gave:
• But if thy lips' loud cry leap to his smart,
• The inspir'd recoil shall pierce thy brother's heart.

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• Some prisoned moon in steep closed-fastnesses, —
• Throned queen and thralled; some dying sun where pyre
• Blazed with momentos memorable fire; —
• Who hath not yearned and fed his heart with these?
• Who, sleepless, hath not anguished to appease
• Tragical shadow's realm of sound and sight
• Conjectured in the lamentable night?.....
• Lo! The soul's sphere of infinite images!

• What sense shall count them? Whether it forecast
• 10The rose-winged hours that flutter in the van
• Of Love's unquestioning unrevealèd space, —
• Visions of golden futures: or that last
• Wild pageant of the accumulated past
• That clangs and flashes for a drowning man.

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• The cuckoo-throb, the heartbeat of the Spring;
• The rosebud's blush that leaves it as it grows
• Into the full-eyed fair unblushing rose;
• The summer clouds that visit every wing
• With fires of sunrise and of sunsetting;
• The furtive flickering streams to light re-born
• 'Mid airs new-fledged and valorous lusts of morn,
• While all the daughters of the daybreak sing: —

• These ardor loves, and memory: and when flown
• 10All joys, and through dark forest-boughs in flight
• The wind swoops onward brandishing the light,
• Even yet the rose-tree's verdure left alone
• Will flush all ruddy when the rose is gone;
• With ditties and with dirges infinite.

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• Give honour unto Luke Evangelist;
• For he it was (the aged legends say)
• Who first taught Art to fold her hands & pray.
• Scarcely at once she dared to rend the mist
• Of devious symbols: but soon having wist
• How sky-breadth and field-silence and this day
• Are symbols also in some deeper way,
• She looked through these to God and was God's priest.

• And if, past noon, her toil began to irk,
• 10And she sought talismans, and turned in vain
• To soulless self-reflections of man's skill,—
• Yet now, in this the twilight, she might still
• Kneel in the latter grass to pray again,
• Ere the night cometh and she may not work.

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• “I am not as these are,” the poet saith
• When young, and the young painter, amid men
• At bay, where never pencil comes nor pen,
• And shut about with his own frozen breath.
• To others, for whom only rhyme wins faith
• As singers,—only paint as painters,—then
• He turns in the cold silence; and again
• Shrinking, “I am not as these are,” he saith.

• And say that this is so, what follows it?
• 10 For were thine eyes set backwards in thine head,
• These words were well; but they see on, and far.
• Unto the lights of the great Past, new-lit
• Fair for the Future's track, look thou instead,—
• Say thou instead, “I am not as these are.”

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• Though God, as one that is an householder,
• Called these to labour in his vineyard first,
• Before the husk of darkness was well burst
• Bidding them grope their way out and bestir,
• (Who, questioned of their wages, answered, “Sir,
• Unto each man a penny:”) though the worst
• Burthen of heat was theirs and the dry thirst:
• Though God has since found none such as these were
• To do their work like them:—Because of this
• 10 Stand not ye idle in the market-place.
• Which of ye knoweth he is not that last
• Who may be first by faith and will?—yea, his
• The hand which after the appointed days
• And hours shall give a Future to their Past?

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• What place so strange,—though unrevealèd snow
• With unimaginable fires arise
• At the earth's end,—what passion of surprise
• Like frost-bound fire-girt scenes of long ago?
• Lo! This is none but I this hour; and lo!
• This is the very place which to mine eyes
• Those mortal hours in vain immortalize,
• 'Mid hurrying crowds, with what alone I know.

• City, of thine a single simple door,
• 10By some new Power reduplicate, must be
• Even yet my life-porch in eternity,
• Even with one presence filled, as once of yore:
• Or mocking winds whirl round a chaff-strown floor
• Thee and thy years and these my words and me.

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• Ye who have passed Death's haggard hills; and ye
• Whom trees that knew your sires shall cease to know
• And still stand silent:—is it all a show,—
• A wisp that laughs upon the wall?—decree
• Of some inexorable supremacy
• Which ever, as man strains his blind surmise
• From depth s to ominous depth, looks past his eyes,
• Sphinx-faced with unabashèd augury?

• Nay, rather question the Earth's self. Invoke
• 10The storm-felled forest-trees mossgrown today
• Whose roots are hillocks where the children play;
• Or ask the silver sapling 'neath what yoke
• Those stars, his spray-crown's clustering gems, shall wage
• Their journey still when his boughs shrink with age.

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• As thy friend's face, with shadow of soul o'erspread,
• Somewhile unto thy night perchance hath been
• Ghastly and strange, yet never so is seen
• In thought, but to all fortunate favour wed;
• As thy love's death-bound features never dead
• To memory's glass return, but can travail
• Frail fugitive days, and always keep, I ween,
• Than all new life a livelier lovelihead:—

• So Life herself, thy spirit's friend and love,
• 10Even still as Spring's authentic harbinger,
• Glows with fresh hours for hope to glorify;
• Though pale she lay when in the winter grave
• Her funeral flowers were snow-flakes shed on her
• And the red wings of frost-fire rent the sky.

   

• “The silver cord is loosed,” he said,
• “The golden bowl is broken;
• A few more prayers having been prayed,
• A few more love-words spoken,
• I shall turn my face unto the wall,
• And sleeping, not be woken.

• “Yet a short while, Mamma,—dear friends,
• Yet but a little space,—
• And the shadows will have shut me in
• 10That gather round my face.
• But do not therefore weep; I go
• To Heaven, a better place.”

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• “Is it a better place, my child,
• That thou art gone unto?
page: [20v]  
• Upon this earth that thou hast left
• Hadst thou not much to do?
• Would not thy joys have been a crowd
• And thy troubles small and few?

• Had'st thou not wealth, and are there not
• 20Those who do lack for bread,
• Who would have looked to thee, their hope,
• To be taught and comforted?—
• And the naked to be clothed by thee
• And the hungry to be fed?

• Hadst thou not friends, and were they not
• Those friends who love us most
• I' the world? And would'st thou not have borne
• A name it is a boast
• To bear—whose written history
• 30All know even as thou know'st?

• And beauty too was thine: thou hadst
• The look that angels have
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Note: Library of Congress seal. The page is numbered {20b] by the person who put the collection together.
• Who from their Heaven behold our earth
• Where Grief is and the Grave,
• And joy in the many souls there are
• For them to help and save.

• And many thou hast helped, dear child,
• And savèd, verily;
• Thy spirit was a temple for
• 40Christ-hearted charity;
• Yea, the loud prayers of the rescued poor
• Have often followed thee.

• And Genius lit within thy breast
• An upward flame and strong;—
• Genius, begetting Poesy,
• Whose hoard of hidden song,
• Lyingat thy warm heart, would soon
• Have risen to thy tongue.

• Beauty, and rank, and friends, and wealth,
• 50Genius and excellence,—
page: [unpaginated]  
• Could not all these, thy heritage,
• Win thee from hastening hence?
• Was the soul so much more unto thee
• Than joys of mind and sense?

• For mind and sense have their deep joys:
• Thou would'st have seen thy name
• A star to the world; the great and wise,
• As sunshine to a gem,
• Would have been drawn to thee,—thyself
• 60Being as one of them

• “And, bending with an English grace,
• The ladies of our isle,
• With their soft curls and their virgin eyes
• Which look so sweet the while,
• Had given thee for thy nobleness
• A precious golden smile.

• “These will not now be thine: thy life's
• Appointed period
  page: 20.1v  
• Being past o'er, thou liest on
• 70 The folded pinions broad
• Of the Seraph who is bearing thee
• Up through the sun to God.

• It has a solemn sound—“to God”;
• And strange high thought it weaves
• Of a garden where the Tree of Life
• Its mystic shadow gives
• And the music of the rapid worlds
• Is the wind that stirs the leaves.

• Yet thou!—the brave, deep-thoughted child,
• 80Whom Love and Sympathy
• And admiration gathered round
• And worshipped!—Can it be
• That there is anywhere. in truth,
• “A better place” for thee?

• Pause awhile, cherub, in thy song;
• Let thy curl-shaded face
page: [20a]  
Note: Library of Congress seal
• Lean to us from thy heavenly seat
• With the old childish grace;
• And tell us, dearest— Is it there,
• 90Truly, “a better place?”

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• What have I asked? Do I so love
• Life then, and cling thereby,
• As to make all this marvel that
• The heaven-home, huished and high
• Should be a better place for one
• So far more pure than I?

• Surely it is a better place:
• Wealth shuts not there his kin
• From woes his heart yearns to assuage
• 100Nor noble origin
• Wounds him by lessening trust betwixt
• Him and his fellow-men;

• Nor Genius, with the sunny eyes
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Note: Library of Congress seal. The page is numbered [20c] by the person who put the collection together.
• Whose light sets like the sun,
• Gives to him, as to the dear child
• She chooseth for her own,
• Her laurel-wreath which maketh white
• The hair it resteth on;

• “Nor friends die from him, but instead
• 110 Come to him where he is;
• Nor Passion, rank with evil joys
• And worse satieties,
• Pouting her crimson lips at him
• Layeth her cheek to his;

• “Nor priests be there, like a bad dream
• That at your bed's foot stands
• All night (and yet it goes at last!)
• Nor moans of king-curst lands
• Make his breast heave and his pale brow
• 120 To drop into his hands.

• “But Love walks always with him now;
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Note: the epigram appears to have been written sometime after the scripting of the elegy
• And Faith, not chained but free;
• And Hope, bent forward, and with hair
• Held back continually
• To hear the distant chariot-wheels;
• And wise calm Charity.”

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• And thou the greatest king in Europe? Then
• May we have no more of thy brethren!
• 'Twould raise to an immoderate point the hopes
• Of those good folk here who sell microscopes.

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• From child to youth; from youth to arduous man;
• From lethargy to fever of the heart;
• From faithful life to dream-dowered days apart;
• From trust to doubt; from doubt to brink of ban;—
• Thus much of change in one swift cycle ran
• Till now. Alas, the soul!—how soon must she
• Accept her primal immortality,—
• The flesh resume its dust whence it began?

• O Lord of work and peace! O Lord of life!
• 10O Lord, the awful Lord of will! though late,
• Even yet renew this soul with duteous breath:
• That when the peace is garnered in from strife,
• The work retrieved, the will regenerate,
• This soul may see thy face, O Lord of death!

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• I said: Not so, but let the young fruit be:
• Even as thou sayest, it is ripe sweet and red
• But yet it shall ripen still [illegible]. The trees' bent— head
• Notes in the stream its own fecundity
• And bides the hour day of fulness. Shall not we,
• In other hours [?] [illegible]
  Added Text[illegible]
  At heat's high hour in close consummate shade
• Still cut
  Added Text[illegible]
  Added Textpluck
  claim our fruit before the summer fade
• And set among the boughs eat it from the branch and praise the tree?

• I say: Alas! the fruit that met wooed the sun
• 10Has hung too long and floats adown the stream.
• Lo [?] the last clusters! Pluck them every one,
• Nor [illegible] And trust let us sup with summer, , for ere the gleam
• Of autumn bid the drowsy forest dream
• Of the sea's wind's sorrow and wail in unison.

• Of [illegible] branches set the swallows sorrow autumn set the year's past ere the gleam fill
• And the wood s wail s like with echoes of the sea.

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• “Sister, said busy Amelotte
• To listless Héléno n r, Adelon
Deleted Text
“Beyond theyour casement, here the wheat
Stoops as if listening for your feet,
And the long noon stands still for heat.”
Added Text
“Along your bridal path, the wheat
Bends as if listening for your feet,
And the long noon stands still for heat.”

Added Text
Amelotte laughted into the glass
10And her eyes sought the sun.
But where the twain the wall some shelter made
Silent, as though she were afraid,
Sat Helenon within the shade.

• “Ah! sister, sister Hélénon!
• Keep watch, through all those fields,
• Upon your bridesmaid at your side,
• For if I wear my years with pride
• I too this day may be a bride.”

• ButYet even in shade was enough light
• 20To shut out rest or peace
• From the grand bridal-chamber, which
• Was like the inner altar-niche
• Whose darkness worship has made rich.

   

• From him did forty million serfs, endow'd
• Each with six feed of death-due soil, receive
• Rich freeborn lifelong land, wherein to sheave
• Their country's harvest. These today aloud
• Demand of Heaven Their Father's blood,—sore bow'd
• With tears and thrilled with wrath; who, while they grieve,
• On every guilty head would fain achieve
• All torment by his edicts disallow'd.

• H stayed the knout's red-ravening fangs; and first
• 10Of Russian traitors, his own murderers go
• White to the tomb. While he,—ladi foully low
• With limbs red-rent, with festering brain which erst
• Willed kingly freedom,—'gainst the deed accurst
• To God bears witness of his people's woe.

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