When from bed she rises clothed from neck to ankle Pure from the night, and splendid for the day. Mother of the dews, dark eye-lash'd twilight, Rounding on thy breast sings the dew-delighted skylark, All the girls are out with their baskets for the primrose; Springs in her bosom for odours and for colour, Covert and the nightingale; she knows not why. Kerchief'd head and chin she darts between her tulips, She is forth to cheer a neighbour lacking mirth. Prim little scholars are the flowers of her garden, Train'd to stand in rows, and asking if they please. I might love them well but for loving more the wild ones: O my wild ones! they tell me more than these. You, my wild one, you tell of honied field-rose, Violet, blushing eglantine in life; and even as they, They by the wayside are earnest of your goodness, You are of life's, on the banks that line the way. Peering at her chamber the white crowns the red rose, Yellow with birdfoot-trefoil are the grass-glades; This I may know: her dressing and undressing Such a change of light shows as when the skies in sport Shift from cloud to moonlight; or edging over thunder Slips a ray of sun; or sweeping into port White sails furl; or on the ocean borders White sails lean along the waves leaping green. Visions of her shower before me, but from eyesight Guarded she would be like the sun were she seen. Front door and back of the moss'd old farmhouse Swarms, and the blackbird's mellow fluting notes Cool was the woodside; cool as her white dairy Keeping sweet the cream-pan; and there the boys from school, Cricketing below, rush'd brown and red with sunshine; O the dark translucence of the deep-eyed cool! Spying from the farm, herself she fetch'd a pitcher Said, "I will kiss you": she laugh'd and lean'd her cheek. Doves of the fir-wood walling high our red roof Through the long noon coo, crooning through the coo. Loose droop the leaves, and down the sleepy roadway Sometimes pipes a chaffinch; loose droops the blue. Cows flap a slow tail knee-deep in the river, Breathless, given up to sun and gnat and fly. O the golden sheaf, the rustling treasure-armful! Nodding! O the girdle slack about the waist! Slain are the poppies that shot their random scarlet Quick amid the wheat-ears: wound about the waist, Gather'd, see these brides of Earth one blush of ripeness! O the nutbrown tresses nodding interlaced! Large and smoky red the sun's cold disk drops, Clipp'd by naked hills, on violet shaded snow: Eastward large and still lights up a bower of moonrise, Here may life on death or death on life be painted. Gossips count her faults; they scour a narrow chamber Plucks at my heart and leads me by the ear. Faults she had once as she learn'd to run and tumbled: Yet, good gossips, beauty that makes holy Earth and air, may have faults from head to feet. Hither she comes; she comes to me; she lingers, Deepens her brown eyebrows, while in new surprise High rise the lashes in wonder of a stranger; Yet am I the light and living of her eyes. Something friends have told her fills her heart to brimming, Nets her in her blushes, and wounds her, and tames. Sure of her haven, O like a dove alighting, Arms up, she dropp'd: our souls were in our names. Soon will she lie like a white frost sunrise. Yellow oats and brown wheat, barley pale as rye, Swift with the to-morrow, green-wing'd Spring! Soft new beech-leaves, up to beamy April Spreading bough on bough a primrose mountain, you Lucid in the moon, raise lilies to the skyfields, Youngest green transfused in silver shining through: Borne to me by dreams when dawn is at my eyelids: Could I find a place to be alone with heaven, I would speak my heart out: heaven is my need. Every woodland tree is flushing like the dogwood, Flashing like the whitebeam, swaying like the reed. Flushing like the dogwood crimson in October; Streaming like the flag-reed South-west blown; Flashing as in gusts the sudden-lighted whitebeam: All seem to know what is for heaven alone. CHRISTINA ROSSETTI [1830-1894] SONG WHEN I am dead, my dearest, I shall not see the shadows, And dreaming through the twilight That doth not rise nor set, Haply I may remember, And haply may forget. UP-HILL DOES the road wind up-hill all the way? Yes, to the very end. Will the day's journey take the whole long day? From morn to night, my friend. But is there for the night a resting-place? A roof for when the slow dark hours begin. May not the darkness hide it from my face? You cannot miss that inn. 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 that door. |