Books

Poems by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

Boston : Roberts Brothers.
IT will always be a question, we think, whether Mr. Rossetti had not better have painted his poems and written his pictures ; there is so much that is purely sensuous in the former, and so much that is intellectual in the latter. But we do not suppose that those who like his work will let the question mar their enjoyment of either, though they will probably enjoy both in the same kind and degree. It seems a pity, however, for the sake of readers who do not know any of his pictures, that these poems should not have been illustrated by the author’s hand. We should then have had in his volume a proof of the curious fusion of the literary and artistic nature in him. But as it is, though one cannot here see the poetry in the painting, the painting in the poetry is plain enough.
On the whole, except the sonnets, the best poem is “The Blessed Damozel,” and in this the author’s characteristics are very marked. The picture with which it opens is exactly in the spirit of a Pre-Raphaelite painting, with its broad and effective contrasts of color, — yellow, blue, and white.
“The blessed 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
“ 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.”
This is the new Pre-Raphaelite, and here, following, in the lines we have italicized, is the old, as one sees it very often in the fading frescos of mediæval churches. Of course it is very beautifully and very vividly expressed ; and the whole picture is a lovely one.
“ She ceased.
The light thrilled towards her, filled
With angels in strong level flight.
Her eyes prayed, and she smiled.
“ (I saw her smile.) But soon their path
Was vague in distant spheres :
And then she cast her arms along
The golden barriers,
And laid her face between her hands,
And wept. (I heard her tears.)”
In this poem Mr. Rossetti strives for that heart of pure and tender rapture which, it seems to mediæval-minded poets, must have heat in the centre of the Romish mystery, and he is more successful in his effort than Mr. Tennyson in his later yearnings, but not so much so as the latter was when he wrote Sir Galahad. We are conscious, however, of attributing too explicit a feeling to Mr. Rossetti’s poem, which is really a series of mystic and devotional pictures, and scarcely more excgetic than if they had actually been painted. Here are three of the pictures, which are very charming, and take you again and again with ravishing suggestions of the old religious art, but which have no great intellectual merit, and scarcely any independent merit at all, except a luxury of words, that most well-read people can nowadays command : —•
“ And still she bowed herself and stooped
Out of the circling charm ;
Until her bosom must have made
The bar she leaned on warm,
And the lilies lay as if asleep
Along her bended arm.
“ ' Circlewise sit they, with bound locks
And foreheads garlanded ;
Into the fine cloth white like flame
Weaving the golden thread,
To fashion the birth-robes for them
Who are just bom, being dead.
“ ' Herself shall bring us, hand in hand,
To Him round whom all souls
Kneel, the clear-ranged unnumbered heads
Bowed with their aureoles :
And angels meeting us shall sing
To their citherns and citoles.’ ”
for reasons already sufficiently expressed, we think that, after “The Blessed Damozel,” and two or three other strictly pictorial poems, the “ Sonnets for Pictures ” are the best of Mr. Rossetti’s things, though these again are not to be perfectly enjoyed in themselves. Nevertheless, for a July day, we shall never ask a distincter pleasure than we get from this sonnet on Giorgione’s Festa Campeslre, that delicious fable, wherein a Venetian lady and cavalier sit amidst a pastoral landscape, and pause from their own music, to hear the piping of the enigmatical person,—perhaps their embodied love and happiness, — who sits confronting them, clothed in nothing but her own white loveliness. The sonnet is this : —

“A VENETIAN PASTORAL.

BY GIOKGIONA.

(In the Louvre.)

“ Water, for anguish of the solstice: — nay,
But dip the vessel slowly,—nay, but lean
And hark how at its verge the wave sighs in
Reluctant. Hush ! Beyond all depth away
The heat lies silent at the brink of day :
Now the hand trails upon the viol-string
That sobs, and the brown faces cease to sing,
Sad with the whole of pleasure. Whither stray
Her eyes now, from whose mouth the slim pipes creep
And leave it pouting, while the shadowed grass
Is cool against her naked side ? Let it be : —
Say nothing now unto her lest she weep,
Nor name this ever. Be it as it was, —
Life touching lips with Immortality.”

ft is easy to choose an exquisite picture from these poems at random, like this from the “ Dante at Verona ” : —

“ Through leaves and trellis-work the sun
Left the wine cool within the glass, —
They feasting where no sun could pass :
And when the women, all as one.
Rose up with brightened cheeks to go,
It was a comely thing, we know.”

Or this, from “ A Last Confession,”more perfect, more delicate even, and Iiker an old painting : —

“ I know last night
I dreamed I saw into the garden of God,
Where women walked whose painted images
I have seen with candles round them in the church.
They bent this way and that, one to another,
Playing : and over the long golden hair
Of each there floated like a ring of fire
Which when she stooped stooped with her, and when site rose
Rose with her. Then a breeze flew in among them,
As if a w'indow had been opened in heaven
For God to give his blessing from, before
This world of ours should set : (for in my dream
I thought our world was setting, and the sun
Flared, a spent taper ;) and beneath that gust
The rings of light quivered like forest-leaves.
Then all the blessed maidens who were there
Stood up together, ns it were a voice
That called them ; and they threw their tresses back,
And smote their palms, and all laughed up at once,
For the strong heavenly jov tliey had in them
To hear God bless the world.”

Or this, from the sonnets : —

“BEAUTY AND THE BIRD.

BShe fluted with her mouth as when one sips,
And gently waved her golden head, inclined
1L Outside his cage close to the window-blind ;
Till her fond bird, with little turns and dips,
Piped low to her of sweet companionships.
And when he made an end, some seed took she
And fed him from her tongue, which rosily
Peeped as a piercing bud between her lips.
“ And like the child in Chaucer, on whose tongue
The Blessed Mary laid, when he was dead,
A grain,— who straightway praised her name in song :
Even so, when she, a little lightly red,
Now turned on tne and laughed, I heard the throng
Of inner voices praise her golden head.”
Dramatic power is so closely allied to that of the painter, that one naturally expects it in this charming colorist,—though as to color, the reader will notice that he gets Ills delight only from the positive richness and splendor of each hue, not at all from the subjection of one color to another, or their harmony.
In the poems where the color does not predominate, we see Mr. Rossetti’s weaknesses more plainly. He has numbers of affectations, and they are not all his ovrn. Some of Mr. Browning’s, for example, are pretty clear in “ A Last Confession,” and those of the imitation-old-ballads are the property of the trade. Of course these ballads are the poorest of Mr. Rossetti’s poems, and they arc not fairly characteristic of him. Some of them are very poor indeed, and others are quite idle.
It is a curious thing in a poet whose purity of mind and heart makes such a very strong impression, that his imagination should he so often dominated by character and fact which are quite other than pure. We think there has been more than enough of the Fallen Woman in literature ; we wish that if she cannot be reformed, she might be at least policed out of sight ; and we have a fancy (perhaps an erroneous, perhaps a guilty fancy) that some things, even in “The House of Life,” however right they are, had best be kept out of speech. Otherwise, unless on account of the climate, it appears that clothes and houses are a waste of substance. We do not intend to give an unjustly broad impression of what is only a trait of Mr. Rossetti’s poetry, after all, and we note it quite as much because it is phenomenal and not quite accountable as because it is objectionable. He has a painter’s joy in beauty, and an indifference to what beauty, or whose, it is ; and his celebration of love is chiefly sensuous, hut beauty and love are both most highly honored at their highest by him. Yet here and there, as m the sonnet “Nuptial Sleep,” we feel that we are too few removes from Mr. Whitman’s alarming frankness, and that it is but a step or two from “ turning aside and living with the cattle.”
In most of Mr. Rossetti’s sonnets one is reminded of the best Italian sonneteers, and of our English poets when the Italians were their masters. They are more mystical, however, and more abundant in conceits, than almost any other English sonnets, and recall, most vividly of all, the sonnets of Dante’s Vita Nuova. The fact is particularly felt in such a one as this.

‘‘LOVE’S BAWBLES-

“ I stood where Love in brimming armfuls bore
Slight wanton flowers and foolish toys of fruit :
And round him ladies thronged in warm pursuit,
Fingered and lipped and proffered thestrange store :
And from one hand the petal and the core
Savored of sleep ; and cluster and curled shoot
Seemed from another hand like shame’s salute,—
Gifts that I felt my cheek was blushing for.
“ At last Love bade my Lady give the same:
And as I looked, the dew was Tight thereon ;
And as I took them, at her touch they shone
With inmost heaven-hue of the heart of flame.
And then Love said: ‘ Lo ! when the hand is hers,
Follies of love are love’s true ministers,’”
But the meaning is not often so plain as it is here, and there is a vexing obscurity in the greater part of Mr. Rossetti’s poems, which some other peculiarities of his make us doubt whether it is quite worth while to explore. We find in him a love fur rank, lush, palpitating, bleeding, and dripping words, which we think does not mark the finest sense of expression ; and yet, when he has himself well under control, no one can say a thing more subtly, as this little poem may witness.

‘‘THE WOODSPURGE.

“ The wind flapped loose, the wind was still,
Shaken out dead from tree and hill:
I had walked on at the wind’s will, —
I sat now, for the wind was still. ”
“ Between my knees my forehead was, —
My lips, drawn in, said not Alas !
My hair was over in the grass,
My naked ears heard the day pass.
“ My eyes, wide open, had the run
Of some ten weeds to fix upon ;
Among those few, out of the sun,
The woodspurge flowered, three cups in one.
“ From perfect grief there need not be
Wisdom or even memory :
One thing then learnt remains to me, —
The woodspurge has a cup of three.”
Here, also, is an idea, now rather common in literature, finely suggested : —

“SUDDEN LIGHT.

“ 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.
“ You have been mine before, —
How long ago I may not know :
But just when at that swallow’s soar
Your neck turned so,
Some veil did fall, — I knew it all of yore.”

And here is this poetry of the nerves still more skilfully caught: —

“ This is her picture as she was :
It seems a thing to wonder on,
As though mine image in the glass
Should tarry when myself am gone.
“ In painting her I shrined her face
Mid mystic trees, where light falls in
Hardly at all; a covert place
Where you might think to find a din
Of doubtful talk, and a live flame
Wandering, and many a shape whose name
Not itself knoweth, and old dew,
And your own footsteps meeting you,
And all things going as they came.”
But then you see he is always better as a painter: —
“ Watch we his steps. He comes upon
The women at their palm-playing.
The conduits round the gardens sing
And meet in scoops of milk-white stone,
Where wearied damsels rest and hold
Their hands in the wet spurt of gold.”
Of the longer poems in the volume, after “The Blessed Damozel,” comes, we suppose in point of merit, the by-no-meansblessed damozel “Jenny,” though we praise it reluctantly. “Dante at Verona” makes no very impressive figure, and “The Burden of Nineveh” rests heavily upon the reader.
Have we been saying, on the whole, that we think Mr. Rossetti no great poet ? Let us say, then, that we think him, on the whole, a very pleasing one to read once at least: — whether twice, or thrice, or indefinitely, we do not know, for we write from tlie first impression, and not without our modest misgivings botli of tlie praise and blame we have bestowed. The book is a very characteristic one, —we are not sure that it is very genuine. Yet it has many charms, and at eighteen, if you are of one sex, or at twenty-two if of the other, you might wish to be parted from it only in death. The trouble is, you cannot always be eighteen or twenty-two.
In some respects, the comparison is a strained and unfair one, but we feel that Mr. Rossetti the poet is to such a poet as Keats what Mr. Rossetti the painter is to such a painter as Giorgione.