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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,
Aweary with all its wings;
And oh! the song the sea sings
Is dark everlastingly.

Our past is clean forgot,
Our present is and is not,
Our future's a sealed seedplot,
And what betwixt them are we?-

We who say as we go,-
"Strange to think by the way,
Whatever there is to know,

That shall we know one day."

FROM THE HOUSE OF LIFE*
THE SONNET

A Sonnet is a moment's monument,-
Memorial from the Soul's eternity

Of its own arduous fulness reverent:
Carve it in ivory or in ebony,

As Day or Night may rule; and let Time see
Its flowering crest impearled and orient.
A Sonnet is a coin: its face reveals
The Soul,-its converse, to what Power 'tis
due:-

Whether for tribute to the august appeals
Of Life, or dower in Love's high retinue,
It serve; or 'mid the dark wharf's cavernous
breath,

In Charon's palm it pay the toll to Death.

IV. LOVESIGHT

When do I see thee most, beloved one?
When in the light the spirits of mine eyes
Before thy face, their altar, solemnize
The worship of that Love through thee made
known?

Or when in the dusk hours, (we two alone,)
Close-kissed and eloquent of still replies
Thy twilight-hidden glimmering visage lies,
And my soul only sees thy soul its own?
O love, my love! if I no more should see
Thyself, nor on the earth the shadow of thee,
Nor image of thine eyes in any spring,-
How then should sound upon Life's darkening
slope

The ground-whirl of the perished leaves of

Hope,

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So this wing'd hour is dropt to us from above.
Oh! clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower,

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,
Leaning across the water, I and he;
Nor ever did he speak nor looked at me,

But touched his lute wherein was audible
The certain secret thing he had to tell:
Only our mirrored eyes met silently
In the low wave; and that sound came to be
The passionate voice I knew; and my tears fell.
And at their fall, his eyes beneath grew hers;
And with his foot and with his wing-feathers
He swept the spring that watered my heart's
drouth.

Then the dark ripples spread to waving hair,
And as I stooped, her own lips rising there
Bubbled with brimming kisses at my mouth.

II

And now Love sang: but his was such a song,
So meshed with half-remembrance hard to free,
As souls disused in death's sterility

May sing when the new birthday tarries long.
And I was made aware of a dumb throng
That stood aloof, one form by every tree,
All mournful forms, for each was I or she,
The shades of those our days that had no
tongue.

They looked on us, and knew us and were known;

While fast together, alive from the abyss,
Clung the soul-wrung implacable close kiss;
And pity of self through all made broken moan
Which said, "For once, for once, for once
alone!''

And still Love sang, and what he sang was this:

III

"O ye, all ye that walk in Willowwood,
That walk with hollow faces burning white;
What fathom-depth of soul-struck widowhood,
What long, what longer hours, one life-long
night,

Ere ye again, who so in vain have wooed
Your last hope lost, who so in vain invite
Your lips to that their unforgotten food,
Ere ye, ere ye again shall see the light!
Alas! the bitter banks in Willowwood,

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
Meet mine again I know not if Love knows.
Only I know that I leaned low and drank
A long draught from the water where she sank,
Her breath and all her tears and all her soul:
And as I leaned, I know I felt Love's face
Pressed on my neck with moan of pity and
grace,

Till both our heads were in his aureole.

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Whose wave, low down, I did not stoop to CHRISTINA ROSSETTI (1830-1894) drink,

But sat and flung the pebbles from its brink
In sport to send its imaged skies pell-mell,
(And mine own image, had I noted well!)—
Was that my point of turning?—I had thought
The stations of my course should rise unsought,
As altar-stone or ensigned citadel,

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
As here I turn, I'll thank God, hastening,
That the same goal is still on the same track.

LXX. THE HILL SUMMIT

This feast-day of the sun, his altar there
In the broad west has blazed for vesper-song;
And I have loitered in the vale too long
And gaze now a belated worshipper.
Yet may I not forget that I was 'ware,
So journeying, of his face at intervals
Transfigured where the fringed horizon falls,-
A fiery bush with coruscating hair.

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.
Yet for this hour I still may here be stayed
And see the gold air and the silver fade
And the last bird fly into the last light.

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?
Nay, is it Life or Death, thus thunder-crowned,
That 'mid the tide of all emergency

Now notes my separate wave, and to what sea
Its difficult eddies labour in the ground?
Oh! what is this that knows the road I came,
The flame turned cloud, the cloud returned to
flame,

The lifted shifted steeps and all the way?—
That draws round me at last this wind-warm

space,

And in regenerate rapture turns my face
Upon the devious coverts of dismay?

* A musical instrument of one string, hence, unity, harmony here apparently used to symbolize the ultimate merging of separate lives into one Life.

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GOBLIN MARKET*

Morning and evening

Maids heard the goblins cry:
Come buy our orchard fruits,
Come buy, come buy:

Apples and quinces,
Lemons and oranges,
Plump unpecked cherries,
Melons and raspberries,
Bloom-down-cheeked peaches,
Swart-headed mulberries,
Wild free-born cranberries,
Crab-apples, dewberries,
Pine-apples, blackberries,
Apricots, strawberries;-
All ripe together

In summer weather,-
Fair eves that fly;
Morns that pass by,

Come buy, come buy:

Our grapes fresh from the vine,
Pomegranates full and fine,
Dates and sharp bullaces,
Rare pears and greengages,
Damsons and bilberries,
Taste them and try:
Currants and gooseberries,
Bright-fire-like barberries,
Figs to fill your mouth,
Citrons from the South,

Sweet to tongue and sound to eye;
Come buy, come buy.'

Evening by evening

Among the brookside rushes,
Laura bowed her head to hear,
Lizzie veiled her blushes:
Crouching close together
In the cooling weather,

With clasping arms and cautioning lips,
With tingling cheeks and finger tips.
'Lie close,' Laura said,
Pricking up her golden head:

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* 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.

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