The Project Gutenberg EBook of The House of Life, by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

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Title: The House of Life

Author: Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Posting Date: April 30, 2009 [EBook #3692] Release Date: January, 2003 First Posted: July 22, 2001

Language: English

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HOUSE OF LIFE ***

Produced by A. Elizabeth Warren

The House of Life

by

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Part I. YOUTH AND CHANGE

INTRODUCTORY SONNET

  A Sonnet is a moment's monument,—
  Memorial from the Soul's eternity
  To one dead deathless hour. Look that it be,
  Whether for lustral rite or dire portent,
  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.

LOVE ENTHRONED

  I marked all kindred Powers the heart finds fair:—
  Truth, with awed lips; and Hope, with eyes upcast;
  And Fame, whose loud wings fan the ashen Past
  To signal-fires, Oblivion's flight to scare;
  And Youth, with still some single golden hair
  Unto his shoulder clinging, since the last
  Embrace wherein two sweet arms held him fast;
  And Life, still wreathing flowers for Death to wear.

  Love's throne was not with these; but far above
  All passionate wind of welcome and farewell
  He sat in breathless bowers they dream not of;
  Though Truth foreknow Love's heart, and Hope foretell,
  And Fame be for Love's sake desirable,
  And Youth be dear, and Life be sweet to Love.

BRIDAL BIRTH

  As when desire, long darkling, dawns, and first
  The mother looks upon the new-born child,
  Even so my Lady stood at gaze and smiled
  When her soul knew at length the Love it nursed.
  Born with her life, creature of poignant thirst
  And exquisite hunger, at her heart Love lay
  Quickening in darkness, till a voice that day
  Cried on him, and the bonds of birth were burst.

  Now, shielded in his wings, our faces yearn
  Together, as his fullgrown feet now range
  The grove, and his warm hands our couch prepare:
  Till to his song our bodiless souls in turn
  Be born his children, when Death's nuptial change
  Leaves us for light the halo of his hair.

REDEMPTION

  O Thou who at Love's hour ecstatically
  Unto my lips dost evermore present
  The body and blood of Love in sacrament;
  Whom I have neared and felt thy breath to be
  The inmost incense of his sanctuary;
  Who without speech hast owned him, and intent
  Upon his will, thy life with mine hast blent,
  And murmured o'er the cup, Remember me!—

  O what from thee the grace, for me the prize,
  And what to Love the glory,—when the whole
  Of the deep stair thou tread'st to the dim shoal
  And weary water of the place of sighs,
  And there dost work deliverance, as thine eyes
  Draw up my prisoned spirit to thy soul!

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,
  The wind of Death's imperishable wing?

HEART'S HOPE

  By what word's power, the key of paths untrod,
  Shall I the difficult deeps of Love explore,
  Till parted waves of Song yield up the shore
  Even as that sea which Israel crossed dry-shod?
  For lo! in some poor rhythmic period,
  Lady, I fain would tell how evermore
  Thy soul I know not from thy body, nor
  Thee from myself, neither our love from God.

  Yea, in God's name, and Love's, and thine, would I
  Draw from one loving heart such evidence
  As to all hearts all things shall signify;
  Tender as dawn's first hill-fire, and intense
  As instantaneous penetrating sense,
  In Spring's birth-hour, of other Springs gone by.

THE KISS

  What smouldering senses in death's sick delay
  Or seizure of malign vicissitude
  Can rob this body of honour, or denude
  This soul of wedding-raiment worn to-day?
  For lo! even now my lady's lips did play
  With these my lips such consonant interlude
  As laurelled Orpheus longed for when he wooed
  The half-drawn hungering face with that last lay.

  I was a child beneath her touch,—a man
  When breast to breast we clung, even I and she,—
  A spirit when her spirit looked through me,—
  A god when all our life-breath met to fan
  Our life-blood, till love's emulous ardours ran,
  Fire within fire, desire in deity.*

*[sic]

NUPTIAL SLEEP

  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.
  Their bosoms sundered, with the opening start
  Of married flowers to either side outspread
  From the knit stem; yet still their mouths, burnt red,
  Fawned on each other where they lay apart.

  Sleep sank them lower than the tide of dreams,
  And their dreams watched them sink, and slid away.
  Slowly their souls swam up again, through gleams
  Of watered light and dull drowned waifs of day;
  Till from some wonder of new woods and streams
  He woke, and wondered more: for there she lay.

SUPREME SURRENDER

  O all the spirits of love that wander by
  Along the love-sown