Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (12 May 1828 – 10 April 1882) was an English poet, painter and translator.

• I am not as these are, the poet saith
  In youth's pride, and the painter, among men
  At bay, where never pencil comes nor pem
  • from Not As These in The House of Life 1870 kindle ebook ASIN B0082R81E8
• From perfect grief there need not be
  Wisdom or even memory;
  One thing then learned remains to me —
  The woodspurge has a cup of three.
  • The Woodspurge, st. 4 (1870).

• Tell me now in what hidden way is
  Lady Flora the lovely Roman?
  Where's Hipparchia, and where is Thais,
  Neither of them the fairer woman?
  Where is Echo, beheld of no man,
  Only heard on river and mere—
  She whose beauty was more than human?—
  But where are the snows of yester-year?
  • The Ballad of Dead Ladies, st. 1 (1870).

• I have been here before,
  But when or how I cannot tell:
  I know the grass beyond the door,
  The sweet, keen smell,
  The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.
  • Sudden Light, st. 1 (1881).

• If God in his wisdom have brought close
  The day when I must die,
  That day by water or fire or air
  My feet shall fall in the destined snare
  Wherever my road may lie.
  • The King's Tragedy, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

• Still we say as we go,—
  "Strange to think by the way
  Whatever there is to know,
  That shall we know one day."
  • The Cloud Confines, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

• Gather a shell from the strewn beach
  And listen at its lips: they sigh
  The same desire and mystery,
  The echo of the whole sea's speech.
  • The Sea-Limits, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare: "I send thee a shell from the ocean-beach; But listen thou well, for my shell hath speech. Hold to thine ear / And plain thou'lt hear / Tales of ships", Charles Henry Webb, With a Nantucket Shell; The hollow sea-shell, which for years hath stood / On dusty shelves, when held against the ear / Proclaims its stormy parent, and we hear / The faint, far murmur of the breaking flood. / We hear the sea. The Sea? It is the blood / In our own veins, impetuous and near", Eugene Lee-Hamilton, Sonnet. Sea-shell Murmurs'.

• Was it a friend or foe that spread these lies?
  Nay, who but infants question in such wise,
  'T was one of my most intimate enemies.
  • Fragment, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

• If the light is
  It is because God said 'Let there be light.'
  • At Sunrise, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

• Thou fill'st from the wingèd chalice of the soul
  Thy lamp, O Memory, fire-wingèd to its goal.
  • Mnemosyne, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

• The blessed damozel lean'd out
  From the gold bar of Heaven;
  Her eyes were deeper than the depth
  Of waters still'd at even;
  She had three lilies in her hand,
  And the stars in her hair were seven.
  • Stanza 1.

• Around her, lovers, newly met
  'Mid deathless love's acclaims,
  Spoke evermore among themselves
  Their heart-remember'd names;
  And the souls mounting up to God
  Went by her like thin flames.
  • Stanza 7.

• From the fix'd place of Heaven she saw
  Time like a pulse shake fierce
  Through all the worlds. Her gaze still strove
  Within the gulf to pierce
  Its path; and now she spoke as when
  The stars sang in their spheres.

• The sun was gone now; the curl'd moon
  Was like a little feather
  Fluttering far down the gulf; and now
  She spoke through the still weather.
  Her voice was like the voice the stars
  Had when they sang together.

• We two will stand beside that shrine,
  Occult, withheld, untrod,
  Whose lamps are stirr'd continually
  With prayer sent up to God;
  And see our old prayers, granted, melt
  Each like a little cloud.

• We two will lie i' the shadow of
  That living mystic tree
  Within whose secret growth the Dove
  Is sometimes felt to be,
  While every leaf that His plumes touch
  Saith His Name audibly.

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• A Sonnet is a moment's monument,—
  Memorial from the Soul's eternity
  To one dead deathless hour.
  • Introductory Sonnet.

• At length their long kiss severed, with sweet smart:
  And as the last slow sudden drops are shed
  From sparkling eaves when all the storm has fled,
  So singly flagged the pulses of each heart.
  • Nuptial Sleep.

• Beauty like hers is genius.
  • Genius in Beauty.

• Even as the moon grows queenlier in mid-space
  When the sky darkens, and her cloud-rapt car
  Thrills with intenser radiance from afar,—
  So lambent, lady, beams thy sovereign grace
  When the drear soul desires thee.
  • Gracious Moonlight.

• And Love, our light at night and shade at noon,
  Lulls us to rest with songs, and turns away
  All shafts of shelterless tumultuous day.
  • Heart's Haven.

• Each hour until we meet is as a bird
  That wings from far his gradual way along
  The rustling covert of my soul.
  • Winged Hours.

• Sometimes thou seem'st not as thyself alone,
  But as the meaning of all things that are.
  • Heart's Compass.

• Look in my face; my name is Might-have-been;
  I am also called No-more, Too-late, Farewell.
  • A Superscription. Compare: "My name is might have been; my name is never was; my name's forgotten", Courtney Love (with Hole), "Celebrity Skin".

• When all desire at last and all regret
  Go hand in hand to death, and all is vain,
  What shall assuage the unforgotten pain
  And teach the unforgetful to forget?
  • Newborn Death.

I

• Eat thou and drink; to-morrow thou shalt die.
  Surely the earth, that's wise being very old,
  Needs not our help. Then loose me, love, and hold
  Thy sultry hair up from my face; that I
  May pour for thee this golden wine, brim-high,
  Till round the glass thy fingers glow like gold.
  We'll drown all hours: thy song, while hours are toll'd,
  Shall leap, as fountains veil the changing sky.

• Now kiss, and think that there are really those,
  My own high-bosom'd beauty, who increase
  Vain gold, vain lore, and yet might choose our way!
  Through many years they toil; then on a day
  They die not, — for their life was death, — but cease;
  And round their narrow lips the mould falls close.

II

• Watch thou and fear; to-morrow thou shalt die.

• Now while we speak, the sun speeds forth: can I
  Or thou assure him of his goal? God's breath
  Even at this moment haply quickeneth
  The air to a flame; till spirits, always nigh
  Though screen'd and hid, shall walk the daylight here.

III

• Think thou and act; to-morrow thou shalt die
  Outstretch'd in the sun's warmth upon the shore,
  Thou say'st: "Man's measur'd path is all gone o'er:
  Up all his years, steeply, with strain and sigh,
  Man clomb until he touch'd the truth; and I,
  Even I, am he whom it was destin'd for."
  How should this be? Art thou then so much more
  Than they who sow'd, that thou shouldst reap thereby?

• Nay, come up hither. From this wave-wash'd mound
  Unto the furthest flood-brim look with me;
  Then reach on with thy thought till it be drown'd.
  Miles and miles distant though the last line be,
  And though thy soul sail leagues and leagues beyond,—
  Still, leagues beyond those leagues, there is more sea.

• Rossetti makes the remark somewhere, bitterly but with great truth, that the worst moment for the atheist is when he is really thankful and has nobody to thank.
  • G. K. Chesterton in St. Francis of Assisi (1923), p. 88; "The worst moment for the atheist is when he is really thankful and has nobody to thank" has now become widely quoted as a statement of Rossetti, but without citation of a source, and there seems to be no publication of such a statement earlier than this one of Chesterton, which could be in some ways erroneous, as he himself does not cite a source.

• Dante Gabriel Rosetti
  Buried all of his libretti,
  Thought the matter over—then
  Went and dug them up again.
  • Dorothy Parker in "A Pig's-Eye View of Literature" from Sunset Gun (1927)

• Works by Dante Gabriel Rossetti at Project Gutenberg
• The Complete Writings and Pictures of Dante Gabriel Rossetti