66 'Strange to think by the way, Whatever there is to know, That shall we know one day.' The sky leans dumb on the sea, Our past is clean forgot, We who say as we go,- That shall we know one day." FROM THE HOUSE OF LIFE* A Sonnet is a moment's monument,- Of its own arduous fulness reverent: As Day or Night may rule; and let Time see Whether for tribute to the august appeals In Charon's palm it pay the toll to Death. IV. LOVESIGHT When do I see thee most, beloved one? Or when in the dusk hours, (we two alone,) The ground-whirl of the perished leaves of Hope, So this wing'd hour is dropt to us from above. To one dead deathless hour. Look that it be, This close-companioned inarticulate hour Whether for lustral rite or dire portent, The "house of life" was the first of the twelve divisions of the heavens made by old astrologers in casting the horoscope of a man's destiny. This series of a hundred and one sonnets is a faithful record, drawn from Rossetti's own inward experience, "of the mysterious conjunctions and oppositions wrought by Love, Change, and Fate in the House of Life."-Eng. Lit.. p. 373. When twofold silence was the song of love. XLIX-LII. WILLOWWOOD I I sat with Love upon a woodside well, But touched his lute wherein was audible Then the dark ripples spread to waving hair, II And now Love sang: but his was such a song, May sing when the new birthday tarries long. They looked on us, and knew us and were known; While fast together, alive from the abyss, And still Love sang, and what he sang was this: III "O ye, all ye that walk in Willowwood, Ere ye again, who so in vain have wooed With tear-spurge wan, with blood-wort burning red: Alas! if ever such a pillow could Steep deep the soul in sleep till she were dead,― Better all life forget her than this thing, That Willowwood should hold her wandering! IV So sang he and as meeting rose and rose Together cling through the wind's wellaway1 Nor change at once, yet near the end of day 1 An archaic expression of grief. The leaves drop loosened where the heart-stain glows, So when the song died did the kiss unclose; And her face fell back drowned, and was as gray As its gray eyes; and if it ever may Till both our heads were in his aureole. Whose wave, low down, I did not stoop to CHRISTINA ROSSETTI (1830-1894) drink, But sat and flung the pebbles from its brink But lo! the path is missed, I must go back, And thirst to drink when next I reach the spring Which once I stained, which since may have grown black. Yet though no light be left nor bird now sing LXX. THE HILL SUMMIT This feast-day of the sun, his altar there And now that I have climbed and won this height, I must tread downward through the sloping shade And travel the bewildered tracks till night. LXXIX. THE MONOCHORD* Is it this sky's vast vault or ocean's sound That is Life's self and draws my life from me, And by instinct ineffable decree Holds my breath quailing on the bitter bound? Now notes my separate wave, and to what sea The lifted shifted steeps and all the way?— space, And in regenerate rapture turns my face * A musical instrument of one string, hence, unity, harmony here apparently used to symbolize the ultimate merging of separate lives into one Life. GOBLIN MARKET* Morning and evening Maids heard the goblins cry: Apples and quinces, In summer weather,- Come buy, come buy: Our grapes fresh from the vine, Sweet to tongue and sound to eye; Evening by evening Among the brookside rushes, With clasping arms and cautioning lips, He * Of this poem, William M. Rossetti, Christina's brother, writes: "I have more than once heard Christina say that she did not mean anything profound by this fairy tale-it is not a moral apologue consistently carried out in detail. Still the incidents are suggestive, and different minds may be likely to read different messages into them." remarks further that the central point of the story, read merely as a story, is often missed. Lizzie's service to her sister lies in procuring for her a second taste of the goblin fruits, such as those who have once tasted them ever afterward long for, and pine away with longing, but which the goblins themselves will not voluntarily accord. |