Dante Gabriel Rossetti - Poems
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Classic Poetry Series Dante Gabriel Rossetti - poems - Publication Date: 2012 Publisher: Poemhunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive Dante Gabriel Rossetti(12 May 1828 – 9 April 1882) Rossetti was born, the son of an Italian patriot and political refugee and an English mother, in England. He was raised in an environment of cultural and political activity that, it has been suggested, was of more import to his learning than his formal education. This latter was constituted by a general education at King's College from 1836 to 1841 and, following drawing lessons at a school in central London at the age of fourteen, some time as a student at the Royal Academy from 1845 onwards. Here he studied painting with William Hollman Hunt and John Everett Millais who, in 1848, would set up the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood with Rossetti, Rossetti's younger brother and three other students. The school's aspirations, in this its first incarnation, was to paint true to nature: a task pursued by way of minute attention to detail and the practice of painting out of doors. Rossetti's principal contribution to the Brotherhood was his insistence on linking poetry and painting, no doubt inspired in part by his earlier and avaricious readings of Keats, Shakespeare, Goethe, Sir Walter Scott, Byron, Edgar Allan Poe and, from 1847 onwards, the works of William Blake. 'The Germ' lasted however for only four issues, all published in 1850. In 1854 Rossetti met and gained an ally in the art critic John Ruskin and, two years later, meetings with Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris set a second phase of the Brotherhood into movement. In 1860 Rossetti married Elizabeth Siddal, also a writer and a painter, whom he had met ten years earlier in 1850. But, by this time she was an invalid and, after giving birth to a stillborn child, she died just two years later of a laudanum overdose. Rossetti had her interned with the only extent and complete manuscript of his poems, only to have her exhumed seven years later in order to retrieve his work. By this time he had moved to Chelsea where he was a joint tenant with Swinbourne and Meredith. In 1871 he moved again, this time to Kelmscott near Oxford, with William Morris and his wife Jane, the other great love of Rossetti's life whom he painted avidly. Rossetti collapsed in 1872 after which he never really regained his health. The last decade of his life was spent mostly in a state of semi-invalid hermitry. www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 1 A Bad Omen On the first day the priest Could find no heart in the beast, And two on the second day. Dante Gabriel Rossetti www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 2 A Bitter Song to His Lady O LADY amorous, Merciless lady, Full blithely play'd ye These your beguilings. So with an urchin A man makes merry, — In mirth grows clamorous, Laughs and rejoices, — But when his choice is To fall aweary, Cheats him with silence. This is Love's portion: — In much wayfaring With many burdens He loads his servants, But at the sharing, The underservice And overservice Are alike barren. As my disaster Your jest I cherish, And well may perish. Even so a falcon Is sometimes taken And scantly cautell'd; Till when his master At length to loose him, To train and use him, Is after all gone, — The creature's throttled And will not waken. Wherefore, my lady, If you will own me, O look upon me! If I'm not thought on, At least perceive me! O do not leave me So much forgotten! www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 3 If, lady, truly You wish my profit, What follows of it Though still you say so? — For all your well-wishes I still am waiting. I grow unruly, And deem at last I'm Only your pastime. A child will play so, Who greatly relishes Sporting and petting With a little wild bird: Unaware he kills it, — Then turns it, feels it, Calls it with a mild word, Is angry after, — Then again in laughter Loud is the child heard. O my delightful My own my lady, Upon the Mayday Which brought me to you Was all my haste then But a fool's venture? To have my sight full Of you propitious Truly my wish was, And to pursue you And let love chasten My heart to the centre. But warming, lady, May end in burning. Of all this yearning What comes, I beg you? In all your glances What is't a man sees? — Fever and ague. www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 4 Dante Gabriel Rossetti www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 5 A Death-Parting LEAVES and rain and the days of the year, (Water-willow and wellaway,) All these fall, and my soul gives ear, And she is hence who once was here. (With a wind blown night and day.) Ah! but now, for a secret sign, (The willow's wan and the water white,) In the held breath of the day's decline Her very face seemed pressed to mine. (With a wind blown day and night.) O love, of my death my life is fain; (The willows wave on the water-way,) Your cheek and mine are cold in the rain, But warm they'll be when we meet again. (With a wind blown night and day.) Mists are heaved and cover the sky; (The willows wail in the waning light,) O loose your lips, leave space for a sigh,— They seal my soul, I cannot die. (With a wind blown day and night.) Leaves and rain and the days of the year, (Water-willow and wellaway,) All still fall, and I still give ear, And she is hence, and I am here. (With a wind blown night and day.) Dante Gabriel Rossetti www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 6 A Foretaste AT length the then of my long hope was now; Yet had my spirit an extreme unrest: I knew the good from better was grown best At length, but could not just as yet tell how. So I lay straight along, and thrust my brow Under the heights of grass. Hours struck. The West, I knew, must be at change; but gazed not, lest The heat against my naked face (no bough For shade) should tease me mad, like poisoned spice. I lay along, letting my whole self think, Pressing my brow down that the thoughts might fix: Just as a dicer who holds loaded dice, Sure of his cast, keeps trifling with his drink Ere he will throw, and still must taste and mix. Dante Gabriel Rossetti www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 7 A Half-Way Pause The turn of noontide has begun. In the weak breeze the sunshine yields. There is a bell upon the fields. On the long hedgerow's tangled run A low white cottage intervenes: Against the wall a blind man leans, And sways his face to have the sun. Our horses' hoofs stir in the road, Quiet and sharp. Light hath a song Whose silence, being heard, seems long. The point of noon maketh abode, And will not be at once gone through. The sky's deep colour saddens you, And the heat weighs a dreamy load. Dante Gabriel Rossetti www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 8 A Last Confession 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 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. 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 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. www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 9 “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.