Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). A Victorian Anthology, 1837–1895. 1895.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti 182882The Portrait
RossetDGT
It seems a thing to wonder on,
As though mine image in the glass
Should tarry when myself am gone.
I gave until she seems to stir,—
Until mine eyes almost aver
That now, even now, the sweet lips part
To breathe the words of the sweet heart:
And yet the earth is over her.
That makes the prison-depths more rude,—
The drip of water night and day
Giving a tongue to solitude.
Yet only this, of love’s whole prize
Remains; save what, in mournful guise,
Takes counsel with my soul alone,—
Save what is secret and unknown,
Below the earth, above the skies.
’Mid mystic trees, where light falls in
Hardly at all; a covert place
Where you might think to find a din
Of doubtful talk, and a live flame
Wandering, and many a shape whose name
Not itself knoweth, and old dew,
And your own footsteps meeting you,
And all things going as they came.
As in that wood that day: for so
Was the still movement of her hands,
And such the pure line’s gracious flow.
And passing fair the type must seem,
Unknown the presence and the dream.
’T is she: though of herself, alas!
Less than her shadow on the grass,
Or than her image in the stream.
One with the other all alone;
And we were blithe; yet memory
Saddens those hours, as when the moon
Looks upon daylight. And with her
I stoop’d to drink the spring-water,
Athirst where other waters sprang:
And where the echo is, she sang,—
My soul another echo there.
For words whose silence wastes and kills,
Dull raindrops smote us, and at length
Thunder’d the heat within the hills.
That eve I spoke those words again
Beside the pelted window-pane;
And there she hearken’d what I said,
With under-glances that survey’d
The empty pastures blind with rain.
Like leaves through which a bird has flown,
Still vibrated with Love’s warm wings;
Till I must make them all my own
And paint this picture. So, ’twixt ease
Of talk and sweet, long silences,
She stood among the plants in bloom
At windows of a summer room,
To feign the shadow of the trees.
And as I wrought, while all above
And all around was fragrant air,
In the sick burthen of my love
It seemed each sun-thrill’d blossom there
Beat like a heart among the leaves.
O heart, that never beats nor heaves,
In that one darkness lying still,
What now to thee my love’s great will,
Or the fine web the sunshine weaves?
Those days—nought left to see or hear.
Only in solemn whispers now
At night-time these things reach mine ear;
When the leaf-shadows at a breath
Shrink in the road, and all the heath,
Forest and water, far and wide,
In limpid starlight glorified,
Lie like the mystery of death.
And yet delay’d my sleep till dawn,
Still wandering. Then it was I wept:
For unawares I came upon
Those glades where once she walk’d with me:
And as I stood there suddenly,
All wan with traversing the night,
Upon the desolate verge of light
Yearn’d loud the iron-bosom’d sea.
The beating heart of Love’s own breast,—
Where round the secret of all spheres
All angels lay their wings to rest,—
How shall my soul stand rapt and aw’d,
When, by the new birth borne abroad
Throughout the music of the suns,
It enters in her soul at once
And knows the silence there for God!
Meanwhile, and wait the day’s decline,
Till other eyes shall look from it,
Eyes of the spirit ’s Palestine,
Even than the old gaze tenderer:
While hopes and aims long lost with her
Stand round her image side by side,
Like tombs of pilgrims that have died
About the Holy Sepulchre.