"I was subject to the emperor my father, and bred under him, who was the most proper person living to put me out of conceit with pride, and to convince me that it is possible to live in a palace without the ceremony of guards, without richness and distinction of habit, without torches, statues, or such other marks of royalty and state; and that a prince may shrink himself almost into the figure of a private gentleman, and yet act, nevertheless, with all the force and majesty of his character when the common weal requires it." The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, Bk. I.

Birds here make song, each bird has his,
Across the girdling city's hum.
How green under the boughs it is!

How thick the tremulous sheep-cries come!
Sometimes a child will cross the glade
To take his nurse his broken toy;
Sometimes a thrush flit overhead
Deep in her unknown day's employ.
Here at my feet what wonders pass,
What endless, active life is here!
What blowing daisies, fragrant grass!
An air-stirr'd forest, fresh and clear.

Scarce fresher is the mountain sod
Where the tired angler lies, stretch'd out,
And, eased of basket and of rod,

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Counts his day's spoil, the spotted trout. 20

In the huge world, which roars hard by,
Be others happy if they can!

But in my helpless cradle I

Was breathed on by the rural Pan.
I on men's impious uproar hurl'd,
Think often, as I hear them rave,
That peace has left the upper world
And now keeps only in the grave.

Yet here is peace for ever new!
When I who watch them am away,
Still all things in this glade go through
The changes of their quiet day,

Then to their happy rest they pass!
The flowers upclose, the birds are fed,
The night comes down upon the grass,
The child sleeps warmly in his bed.
Calm soul of all things! make it mine
To feel, amid the city's jar,
That there abides a peace of thine
Man did not make, and cannot mar.
The will to neither strive nor cry,
The power to feel with others give!
Calm, calm me more! nor let me die
Before I have begun to live.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

1828-1882

THE BLESSED DAMOZEL1 (Third Version, from Poems, 1870) The blessed2 damozel leaned out From the gold bar of Heaven; Her eyes were deeper than the depth Of waters stilled at even; She had three lilies in her hand.

And the stars in her hair were seven.

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335

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1 Rossetti wrote this poem in his nineteenth year, or in 1847. W. M. Rossetti remarks that The Blessed Damozel "ranks as highly remarkable among the works of juvenile writers," especially when its "total unlikeness to any other poem then extant is taken into account.' It was published in the second number of The Germ, 1850; it appeared next in The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, 1856, and finally in the Poems of 1870. 2i. e. one of the blest in paradise.

Her robe ungirt from clasp to hem, No wrought flowers did adorn, But a white rose of Mary's gift,

For service meetly worn;

Her hair that lay along her back

Was yellow like ripe corn.

Herseemed she scarce had been a day

One of God's choristers;

The wonder was not yet quite gone
From that still look of hers;

Albeit, to them she left, her day
Had counted as ten years.

(To one, it is ten years of years.
Yet now, and in this place,

Surely she leaned o'er me her hair
Fell all about my face.
Nothing: the autumn fall of leaves.
The whole year sets apace).

It was the rampart of God's house
That she was standing on;

By God built over the sheer depth
The which is Space begun;

So high, that looking downward thence
She scarce could see the sun.

It lies in Heaven, across the flood
Of ether, as a bridge.

Beneath, the tides of day and night

With flame and darkness ridge

The void, as low as where this earth Spins like a fretful midge.

Around her, lovers, newly met

'Mid deathless love's acclaims,

Spoke evermore among themselves Their heart-remembered names;

Shall pause in, hushed and slow,

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And find some knowledge at each pause,

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And the souls mounting up to God Went by her like thin flames.

Or some new thing to know."

(Alas! We two, we two, thou say'st!

And still she bowed herself and stooped Out of the circling charm;

Yea, one wast thou with me

That once of old. But shall God lift

Until her bosom must have made

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The bar she leaned on warm,

To endless unity

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And the lilies lay as if asleep

The soul whose likeness with thy soul Was but its love for thee?)

Along her bended arm.

"We two," she said, "will seek the groves
Where the lady Mary is,

With her five handmaidens, whose names
Are five sweet symphonies,
Cecily, Gertrude, Magdalen,
Margaret and Rosalys.

This may have been suggested by the Tree of Life (Gen. ii., 9), or by the tree Yggdrasil of the Scandinavian mythology, the tree of existence, which bound together heaven, earth, and hell. In the latter case, it may have been intended to symbolize the mystic union of spirites! existence, as Rossetti represents every leaf, or utmost part responding in praise to the influence of the Divine Spint In Rossetti's picture founded on this poem, "a glim is caught (above the figure of the Blessed Damosel of the groves of paradise, wherein, beneath the shade of the spreading branches of a vast tree, the newly-met lovers embrace and rejoice with each other, on separation over and union made perfect at last." V. Sharp's Russe p. 251.

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Consider the sea's listless chime:
Time's self it is, made audible-
The murmur of the earth's own shell.
Secret continuance sublime

Is the sea's end: our sight may pass No furlong further. Since time was, This sound hath told the lapse of time.

No quiet, which is death's,-it hath
The mournfulness of ancient life,
Enduring always at dull strife.
As the world's heart of rest and wrath,
Its painful pulse is in the sands.
Last utterly, the whole sky stands,
Gray and not known, along its path.

Listen alone beside the sea,

Listen alone among the woods;
Those voices of twin solitudes

SILENT NOON

(From, The House of Life, in Ballads and Sonnets, 1881)

Your hands lie open in the long fresh grass,The finger-points look through like rosy blooms:

Your eyes smile peace. The pasture gleams and glooms

'Neath billowing skies that scatter and amass. All round our nest, far as the eye can pass,

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Are golden kingcup-fields with silver edge Where the cow-parsley skirts the hawthornhedge.

'Tis visible silence, still as the hour-glass.

Shall I meet other wayfarers at night?
Those who have gone before.

Then must I knock, or call when just in sight They will not keep you standing at the door.

Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak?
Of labour you shall find the sum.

Will there be beds for me and all who seek? 15
Yea, beds for all who come.

SYMBOLS

(From Devotional Pieces)

I watched a rosebud very long

Brought on by dew and sun and shower,
Waiting to see the perfect flower;
Then, when I thought it should be strong,
It opened at the matin hour
And fell at even-song.

I watched a nest from day to day,
A green nest full of pleasant shade,
Wherein three speckled eggs were laid:
But when they should have hatched in May,
The two old birds had grown afraid
Or tired, and flew away.

Then in my wrath I broke the bough
That I had tended so with care,
Hoping its scent should fill the air;
I crushed the eggs, not heeding how
Their ancient promise had been fair:
I would have vengeance now.

But the dead branch spoke from the sod,
And the eggs answered me again:
Because we failed dost thou complain?
Is thy wrath just? And what if God,
Who waiteth for thy fruits in vain,
Should also take the rod?

SONNET

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(From "Monna Innominata," in A Pageant and Other Poems, 1881)

Thou Who didst make and knowest whereof we are made,

Oh bear in mind our dust and nothingness, Our wordless tearless dumbness of distress Bear Thou in mind the burden Thou hast is i Upon us, and our feebleness unstayed

Except Thou stay us: for the long long race Which stretches far and far before our face Thou knowest,-remember Thou whereof we are made.

If making makes us Thine, then Thine we are: And if redemption, we are twice Thine own: If once Thou didst come down from heave