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 cScTlibris 
 
THE BLESSED DAMOZEL 
 
The poem given here is as it 
 originally appeared in The Germ 
 
Oii^ v_x ^juul 
 
 -//u' . ' 4J/^j>s-€€l^ UL/a/Twy/ 
 
The Crayon Study of the Head of 
 the Blessed Damozel by T>ante 
 Gabriel Rossetti is reproduced 
 by permission of Mr Frederick 
 Hollyer, 
 

THE 
 
 By D. G. Rossetti 
 
 BLESSED 
 
 DAMOZEL 
 
 Introduction 
 
 By W. M. Rossetti 
 
 Decorations 
 
 By W, B. Macdougall 
 
 London 
 
 Duckworth ^ Co. 
 
 Boston 
 
 L. C. Page S^ Company^ Inc. 
 
 1898 
 

 All Rights Reserved 
 
Jn^robttc^ion 
 
 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI, born on 12th May 1828, 
 wrote The Blessed Damozel in the nineteenth year of 
 his age, or before 12th May 1847. The pen or the 
 partiality of a brother is not needed for saying that the poem, 
 if considered simply from the poetical point of view, ranks as 
 highly remarkable among the works of very juvenile writers ; and 
 still more so when we take into account its total unlikeness to any 
 other poem then extant. I at least know of nothing which pre- 
 sents any similar combination of mediaeval devoutness, human 
 passion, and remote yet intimate idealism — an earthly love wearing 
 a spiritual halo so bright and dazzling that the eye hardly dis- 
 tinguishes the point of juncture between the one and the other. 
 In old art I am cognizant of no precedent, and in the art con- 
 temporary with Rossetti's adolescence none. So much be it 
 permitted me to say on the question of personal initiative, or 
 what we call originality. 
 
 I can remember in a general way the time when my brother 
 wrote The Blessed Damozel, but could not myself have fixed 
 the date as being before the completion of his nineteenth year. 
 He himself fixed it, in a letter to Mr Hall Caine (1880 or 1881) 
 which that gentleman has published : " Jenny (in a first form) was 
 written almost as early as The Blessed Damozel^ which I wrote 
 — and have altered little since — when I was eighteen." Mr Caine 
 has also quoted a statement made to him verbally by Rossetti in 
 the autumn of 1881, in connexion with Edgar Poe's Raven, 
 
 'J «,.' <j i ^} A^ 
 
3nftobucfton 
 
 "He remarked that, out of his love of it while still a boy, his 
 own Blessed Damozel originated. 'I saw,' he said, 'that Poe 
 had done the utmost it was possible to do with the grief of the 
 lover on earth ; and so I determined to reverse the conditions, 
 and give utterance to the yearning of the loved one in heaven." 
 The term here, "while still a boy," should be understood 
 with a certain reservation. The Raven was first published in 
 America on 29th January 1845, and Rossetti had probably entered 
 upon his eighteenth year before he saw it. I can still recollect 
 his bringing home some cheap English magazine containing a 
 reprint of the poem, and the zest with which, having already 
 perused it, he re-read it over and over again to the family. 
 
 A letter from Dante Rossetti to his mother, 20th May 1873, 
 has been published, in which he says : " I remember that for the 
 family Hotchpotch^ long and long ago, I first wrote The Blessed 
 Damozel, and also a poem about a portrait. Have you these 
 ancient documents, and could you let me have the same if in 
 my own handwriting.? Not, however, if you set store by them. 
 What is the date thereof?" This so-called Hotchpotch^ or Weekly 
 Efforts^ was a sort of family magazine concocted in our household ; 
 but it seems to have come to an end at a date, 1843, much earlier 
 than that of The Blessed Damozel. There was some later per- 
 formance of the same kind, not yet wholly cancelled from my 
 memory, and that must in reality have been the recipient of the 
 Dainozel and The Portrait. Whether the original manuscript 
 was traced in consequence of the letter here quoted from, and 
 whether it came into my brother's hands, I am unable to say : it 
 has not come into mine — more's the pity. 
 
 These two statements — the one made by Mr Caine, and the 
 other in Rossetti's letter — appear to be all that can at present 
 be said with any certainty as to the date and genesis of The 
 Blessed Damozel. It may safely be assumed that, as soon as 
 
 vi 
 
jfnftrobucfton 
 
 my brother had done it, he knew that he had produced a good 
 thing, and some few other people knew the same : the work must 
 have confirmed his internal consciousness that he was born a poet. 
 The Blessed Da?iiozel had been preceded by some of his able 
 translations from the Italian and German, and by various original 
 verses absolutely or comparatively weak. It was nearly con- 
 temporary, not only with The Portrait just mentioned and the first 
 beginning of yenny, but also with My Sisters Sleeps Ave, parts 
 of Dante at Verona, of A Last Confession, and of The Bride's 
 Prelude, and the sonnets Retro me Sathana and The Choice. 
 
 The Blessed Damozel was one of the poems which Dante 
 Rossetti sent, about December 1847, to Mr William Bell Scott, 
 then Master of the Government School of Design in Newcastle- 
 on-Tyne. My brother did not as yet know Scott personally ; 
 but, being a great admirer of some of his poems, and not ignorant 
 of his work as an artist, he had entered into correspondence with 
 him, and now sent some of his own productions for consideration. 
 Scott, in his Autobiographical Notes, records: "What was my 
 wonder and perplexity when I found The Blessed Damozel, My 
 Sister's Sleep, and other admirable poems, marshalled under the 
 title of Songs of the Art Catholic!'' This expression "admirable 
 poems " may, by the way, be contrasted with Mr Scott's state- 
 ment, elsewhere in the same book, that the mass of Rossetti's 
 earlier poems, except Jenny and Sister Helen, are " comparatively 
 boyish and worthless." The general title thus adopted by my 
 brother in 1847, Songs of the Art Catholic, is one that he never 
 put into print. It has a juvenile twang, yet is not without its 
 significance. One can perceive that by the word "Art" he 
 meant, not simply and solely poetic art, but a certain association 
 with the tone of pictorial art of the olden days, the days when 
 that art had none other than a Catholic ideal. Not that Rossetti 
 was himself a Catholic, Roman or other ; but he felt the potency 
 
 vii 
 
Jnftobucfton 
 
 of the Catholic spirit in all art, and the kinship of its inspirations 
 to those which were simmering in his own mind. 
 
 Towards the end of February 1 848, Rossetti addressed another 
 literary man not personally known to him, Leigh Hunt, soliciting 
 an opinion upon some of his poems, including The Blessed Damozel. 
 Hunt replied in remarkably kind and encouraging terms, referring 
 to Rossetti's " Dantesque heavens, without any hell to spoil them." 
 This certainly applies to The Blessed Datnozel ; and my brother, 
 in a family letter which has been published, speaks of the poem 
 as being " written in a kind of Gothic manner, which I suppose 
 he is pleased to think belongs to the school of Dante." 
 
 The foregoing details may be of not much moment in them- 
 selves ; but, taken together, they are of some weight as showing 
 how far advanced Rossetti was, long before the " Pr^raphaelite 
 Brotherhood " existed, towards that state of feeling which pro- 
 duced the Brotherhood, and before he had become associated 
 with Millais or Holman Hunt, or even (the earliest of the three, 
 for practical purposes) Madox Brown. He wrote The Blessed 
 Dajiiozel early in 1847 (if not indeed in 1846), and the Prae- 
 raphaelite Brotherhood was not founded until September 1848. 
 He wrote it " in a kind of Gothic manner," and included it with 
 other poems under the general title Songs of the Art Catholic. 
 
 Of the first form of the composition, that which appeared in 
 the family magazine towards 1847, no trace remains, so far as 
 my knowledge extends. The second form is that which was 
 printed in The Germ, and which constitutes our present reprint. 
 To this, therefore, I shall now address myself. 
 
 Before publishing the poem in The Germ, my brother added 
 four stanzas to it. I cannot say with any precision which they 
 were ; but I think it not unlikely that they may have been 
 stanzas 6, 9, 13, and either 14 or 17 — beginning respectively, 
 " It lies from Heaven across the flood — And still she bowed her- 
 
Jnftobucfion 
 
 self, and stooped — We two will stand beside that shrine — We 
 two will lie i' the shadow of" — and "Alas, and though the end 
 were reached," The poem was inserted in No. 2 of The Germ, 
 February 1850. Not many people read it there; but those who 
 did were, I think, unanimous in pronouncing it a very uncommon 
 and a beautiful performance. 
 
 The subsequent publications of The Blessed Damozel were in 
 The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, 1856, and in the volume 
 Poems, 1870. In each of these instances some changes were in- 
 troduced; and even since 1870 the composition, in later re-issues 
 of the Poems, remained not absolutely unaltered. I will here 
 name all those alterations of The Germ version which appear to 
 me worth specifying on the present occasion. Along with these, 
 some few others are notified in the elaborate work which Mr 
 William Sharp brought out in 1882, Dante Gabriel Rossetti ; a 
 Record and a Study. Such other slight changes as he mentions 
 may count as mere details of diction or metre. Rossetti had, 
 from a very early age, a noticeably rich poetic diction, and 
 a fine sense of metre ; but the first was blemished by some 
 youthful mannerisms, and the second did not invariably avoid 
 " quips and cranks " of accentuation, more conformable to Italian 
 than to English prosody. This is what he neatly called (in 
 a letter of 1869) "the impossible intonation of that early 
 epoch." 
 
 Stanza i — 
 
 "Her blue grave eyes were deeper much 
 Than a deep water, even" — 
 
 was changed, in The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, into 
 
 " Her eyes knew more of rest and shade 
 Than waters stilled at even " ; 
 ix 
 
and now stands, 
 
 " Her eyes were deeper than the depth 
 Of waters stilled at even." 
 
 Stanza 7, "But in those tracts," etc., is now entirely omitted. 
 
 Stanza 8 was altered slightly in The Oxford and Cambridge 
 Magazine^ and again in the Poems of 1870 ; but until this latter 
 date inclusive the notion of " games " continued to figure. There 
 is certainly something very funny about the idea of souls in heaven 
 "playing at holy games "(the "holy" disappeared in 1870); as 
 if any such game as battledore and shuttlecock could become any 
 the holier by being played on the margin of the sea of glass 
 mingled with fire, or chess would be hallowed by altering the 
 names of the pieces, all except the bishops. Soon after 1870 
 the "games" were dropped, and "lovers newly met" were very 
 advantageously substituted ; and now (after some other minor yet 
 not uninteresting changes) the lines stand — 
 
 " Around her, lovers, newly met 
 'Mid deathless love's acclaims. 
 Spoke evermore among themselves 
 Their heart-remembered names." 
 
 Stanza 9. " Calm " and " warm " make a " cockney rhyme." 
 In The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine the lines were modified 
 thus — 
 
 " And still she bowed above the vast 
 Waste sea of worlds that swam. 
 Until her bosom must have made 
 The bar she leaned on warm." 
 
 The cockneyism, though shuffled, was not thus corrected. In 
 1870 came — 
 
Jnftobucfion 
 
 " And still she bowed herself, and stooped 
 Out of the circling charm, 
 Until " etc. ; 
 
 and " warm " thus obtained at last a proper rhyme. 
 
 Stanzas lo and 1 1, the latter beginning " I wish that he were 
 come to me." Between these two stanzas, a stanza (for which 
 there is no sort of equivalent in The Germ) was introduced in 
 1856. It contains the phrase (which many readers of the poem 
 will remember) — 
 
 " The curled moon 
 Was like a little feather 
 
 Fluttering far down the gulf" 
 
 In the Poems of 1870 a second stanza also is interpolated here; 
 and it figured, but somewhat further on, in Tbe Oxford and 
 Cambridge Magazine as well. It constitutes one of the lover's 
 parenthetical speeches, beginning : — 
 
 " Ah sweet ! Even now in that bird's song," 
 
 and ending (in the magazine) : — 
 
 " Down all the trembling stair." 
 
 In the volume form, "echoing" has replaced "trembling." 
 Stanza 1 1. 
 
 " Have I not prayed in solemn heaven ? 
 On earth, has he not prayed ? " 
 
 In the volume of Poe?ns these lines are altered thus : — 
 
 " Have I not prayed in heaven.'' on earth, 
 Lord, Lord, has he not prayed .? " 
 
 I scarcely know which phrase is preferable. Perhaps Rossetti 
 considered that the epithet " solemn " had a mannered tone, for he 
 
 xi 
 
3nftobucfion 
 
 cancelled it both from this stanza, and also from stanza 21, "the 
 unnumbered solemn heads," which now stands (but I much question 
 whether it is for the better) "the clear-ranged unnumbered 
 heads." 
 
 Stanza 13. 
 
 " Whose lamps tremble continually 
 With prayer sent up to God ; 
 And where each need, revealed, expects 
 Its patient period." 
 
 In the Poems : — 
 
 " Whose lamps are stirred continually 
 With prayer sent up to God ; 
 And see our old prayers, granted, melt 
 Each like a little cloud." 
 
 As to this I will only say that the original lines appear to me 
 so good that it needed some hardihood in their author to alter 
 them. The image of the "little cloud" counts for something; but 
 it makes a considerable flaw in the rhyming. 
 
 Stanzas 16, 17. 
 These two parenthetical stanzas, spoken by the lover, are highly 
 noticeable. The first of them appears to me beautiful and 
 most effective — the phrase " Alas for lonely heaven ! " being one 
 of the most moving audacities in the poem. The 17th stanza 
 (which in The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine was printed as the 
 nth) is less telling in expression and rhythm, but it introduced 
 an important point, where the lover says of himself: — 
 
 " May the close lips that knew not prayer 
 Praise ever though they would ? " 
 
 This indicates past undevoutness in the lover, or perhaps even 
 a certain degree of unbelief. Rossetti must eventually have con- 
 
 xii 
 
3nftobucfion 
 
 sidered it better to exclude any such idea; and for these two 
 stanzas he substituted in 1870 only one stanza — 
 
 "Alas! We two, we two, thou say'st ! 
 
 Yea, one wast thou with me 
 That once of old. But shall God lift 
 
 To endless unity 
 The soul whose likeness with thy soul 
 
 Was but its love for thee ? " 
 
 Stanza 19: " And bosoms covered " has been altered into 
 " And foreheads garlanded." 
 
 Stanza 22. The last four lines ("To have more blessing," 
 etc.), are somewhat stiff in phrase and sound. In The Oxford 
 and Cambridge Magazine they were changed to — 
 
 " Only to live as once on earth 
 At peace, — only to be 
 As then we were — being as then 
 Together, I and he." 
 
 These lines have since been retained — only that " at peace " 
 has given way to " with love," a clear improvement. 
 
 Stanza 23, " Yea verily when he is come," has been omitted 
 in the volume form. 
 
 From these remarks it will be perceived that, in the general 
 conception — the informing spirit and treatment — of Tbe Blessed 
 Damozel, no change whatever was made ; if only we except that 
 detail (stanza 17) which implied, or might be construed as im- 
 plying, a certain sceptical tendency in the lover, a germ of 
 disunion between himself and his beloved in matters of faith. 
 The poem which appeared to Dante Rossetti good enough for 
 the family magazine in 1847 ^^ 4^ continued up to his death 
 in 1882 to appear to him good enough to stand in the forefront 
 
 xiii 
 
3nftobuc^ion 
 
 of his published work ; heedfully revised indeed on more than 
 one occasion, but not transmuted. 
 
 My illustrious friend Mr Swinburne wrote to me some while 
 ago that a better service to the memory of my brother as a poet 
 could hardly be rendered than to print the variants in the suc- 
 cessive published forms of his several poems ; for (as he said), 
 while the changes introduced were almost invariably for the better, 
 the older readings were often, from the point of view which had 
 prompted them, so felicitous that few persons except Dante 
 Rossetti (with his insatiable passion for the best) would have had 
 the heart to sacrifice them. I assent to this judgment of the most 
 competent judge living in our country, very great as a critic, if far 
 greater still as a poet ; and I think the present edition of the first 
 printed form of The Blessed Damozel^ and the remarks which are 
 here made to bring out its details, will confirm Mr Swinburne's 
 opinion. 
 
 My brother twice painted The Blessed Damozel as an oil- 
 picture, life-sized. The first instance was for Mr William Graham, 
 than whom he had no more sympathetic commissioning friend. 
 Mr Graham himself suggested the subject, and found that Rossetti 
 had already contemplated painting it. The work was in hand from 
 1873 ^° ^'^77 1 ^'^^ contained in the background several groups 
 of the 
 
 " lovers newly met 
 'Mid deathless love's acclaims," 
 
 all of them in blue drapery. Afterwards, 1879, he painted a 
 second picture of the subject for Mr F. R. Leyland, also a hearty 
 and loving admirer of his work. The two pictures, though par- 
 tially similar, are far from identical in treatment : the second one 
 does not contain any of the background groups. There was also 
 a crayon head of the Damozel for Mr Leyland in 1872, and 
 another for Lord Mount-Temple in 1874; and (if I am not 
 
 xiv 
 
Jnftobuc^ion 
 
 mistaken) a third for Mr L. R. Valpy towards the latter date. 
 I am unable to say from recollection whether any or which of 
 these heads resembled the heads of the Damozel in the oil- 
 pictures : the head that is reproduced in the present volume is 
 wholly different from those in the paintings, though studied from 
 the same model. This was Miss Alexa Wilding, one of Rossetti's 
 frequent and highly valued models for heads. 
 
 In 1895 Mr Byam Shaw exhibited at the Royal Academy a 
 picture from The Blessed Damozel^ bearing the motto, 
 
 "We two, she said, will seek the groves 
 Where the Lady Mary is." 
 
 It is a work of skill and ability, but did not appear to me to 
 be in the same key as the poem — a key in which sentiment and 
 beauty, along with the tone of medicevalism, are prime and in- 
 dispensable qualities. A much less successful attempt — I think, 
 indeed, a distinctly unsuccessful one — had been made in 1886 by 
 an American artist, Mr Kenyon Cox, who published in New York 
 a sumptuous volume of photographed designs, along with the poem. 
 Here I discern not much authentic sentiment or beauty, and no 
 medijEvalism at all. The form of presentment is rather classic 
 than mediseval, and even the classic does not count in it for so 
 much as the life-academy. The designs, however, are those of a 
 very well-qualified and proficient artist ; and on their own showing 
 — though not as being analogous to Rossetti's poem — they deserve 
 no small amount of praise. There may be some other artistic 
 illustrations of The Blessed Damozel ; but either I have no know- 
 ledge of them, or else at the time of my writing they do not recur 
 to my memory. 
 
 The present is the first British reprint of the poem as it stood 
 in The Germ. There was, however, an earlier and private reprint 
 in America. It bears the imprint — " Twenty-five copies privately 
 
 XV 
 
3nftobucflon 
 
 printed for C. L. Williams at the De Vinne Press, MDCCCXCIV." 
 Mr Clarence L. Williams, the gentleman who undertook this re- 
 print, favoured me with a copy. It includes a sonnet, "D.G.R.," 
 written by Mr Edmund Gosse in 1871. 
 
 The Blessed Damozel has often been used for the purpose of 
 public recitations, and I believe that not long ago it was set to 
 music, and performed in public. Of this, however, I cannot speak 
 with certainty. 
 
 As to published translations, I know of two in particular, but 
 must no doubt from time to time have seen some others. There 
 is a French translation by Gabriel Sarrazin, La Damoiselle Benie, 
 included in his volume Poetes Modernes de P Angleterre^ 1885. It 
 is only a little abridged, two or three stanzas being omitted. This 
 translation, following the French practice of several years past, is 
 in choice prose, and is a good one. An Italian translation is La 
 Fanciulla Beata^ by Ettore Ciccotti, 1893. It was delivered as 
 illustrating a discourse upon Rossetti, in which some remarks of 
 Max Nordau were contested ; for this learned author, in his book 
 on Degeneration^ has dissected the Daraozel with a scalpel un- 
 sparingly, and I conceive not always judiciously, applied. Signor 
 Ciccotti's rendering is in verse, but not the same metre as the 
 original : it seems to me to be a moderate success, not wholly 
 exempt from misunderstandings of the English text. I know 
 another Italian translator of certain poems by Rossetti (Sister 
 Helen, Staff and Scrip, &c.) who, were he to undertake The 
 Blessed Damozel, might be expected to prove both more literal 
 and more literary than Signor Ciccotti — indeed, remarkable as 
 entering into the finer shades of meaning in the original. This 
 is my son-in-law, Signor Antonio Agresti of Florence, whose 
 other translations show great skill and success. They are not 
 unlikely to be published pretty soon in Florence. 
 
 It would be easy to cite eulogistic verdicts on The Blessed 
 
 xvi 
 
^n^tobucfton 
 
 Da?nozel, delivered by William Morris and some others of the 
 men best entitled to pronounce. I will, however, not enter upon 
 this line of comment : and in fact The Blessed Damozel has never 
 wanted for fervent admirers among poetic readers. There are 
 some persons who look with aversion upon Dante Rossetti and all 
 his doings : but, if we go outside this circle, into that other circle 
 where he is valued at all, we find that for few of his performances 
 is he more valued than for The Blessed Damozel. It was the 
 brightest jewel in the circlet of his youth ; and none that he 
 added in his prime has bedimmed its lustre, or (to use a more 
 colloquial expression) has "taken the shine out of it." 
 
 W. M. ROSSETTI. 
 
 London, February 1898. 
 
 xvn 
 
I 
 
 A 
 
 The blessed Damozel leaned out 
 From the gold bar of Heaven : 
 
 Her blue grave eyes were deeper much 
 Than a deep water, even. 
 
 She had three lilies in her hand, 
 
 And the stars in her hair were seven. 
 
 
 ^M 
 
 I^^S 
 
THE 
 gi%ST VE%SE 
 
 i 
 
THE 
 SECOND VEIiSE 
 
 ^ 
 
h'0 
 
 ^..-^^ 
 
 ^e^^ 
 
 II 
 
 \ 
 
 Her robe, ungirt from clasp to hem, 
 No wrought flowers did adorn, 
 
 But a white rose of Mary's gift 
 On the neck meetly worn ; 
 
 And her hair, lying down 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 her's ; 
 Albeit to them she left, her day 
 
 Had counted as ten years. 
 
 
 r^j^^ 
 
 
THE 
 THI1iT> VE'RSE 
 
 \ 
 
THE 
 FOURTH VEIiSE 
 
 i 
 

 (To one it is ten years of years : 
 ♦ . . Yet now, here 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.) 
 
V 
 
 It was the terrace of God^s house 
 That she was standing on — 
 
 By God built over the sheer depth 
 In which Space is begun ; 
 
 So high, that looking downward thence, 
 She could scarce see the sun. 
 
 ;*»»i»: 
 
 
 r-Sl- 
 
 ^ 
 
THE 
 3TFTH VE%SE 
 
 \ 
 
THE 
 SIXTH VE%SE 
 
 ^ 
 
"^m 
 
 \ VI 
 
 I It lies from Heaven across the flood 
 
 Of ether, as a bridge. 
 I Beneath, the tides of day and night 
 j With flame and blackness ridge 
 
 I The void, as low as where this earth 
 
 Spins like a fretful midge. 
 
 >;'V' " ■ 
 
 i^i^ 
 
( 
 
 T\>^X^ 
 
 <r7 
 
 • 
 
 
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 u.^ 
 
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 ■ \ 
 
 / 
 
 <-: 
 
 IJI But in those tracts^ with her^ it was 
 
 ^H 1 
 
 r 
 
 
 IH The peace of utter light 
 
 H ^r^ 
 
 
 « 
 
 IH And silence. For no breeze may stii 
 
 ■ ILCS! 
 
 f) 
 
 • 
 
 im Along the steady flight 
 
 ^H ^^'^^^^ 
 
 
 y| Of seraphim; no echo there^ 
 
 ^H ^' 
 
 
 
 H Beyond all depth or height. 
 
 1 / 
 
 / 
 
 • 
 
 H^R^!^7^] 
 
 c 
 
 I 
 
 1 
 
 
 m 
 
 g»m 
 
 V 
 
 /I 
 
 ( 
 
 
 fu" 
 
 
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 V) 
 
 % 
 
THE 
 SEVENTH VE%SE 
 
 ^ 
 
 m 
 
THE 
 EIGHTH VE%SE 
 
 i 
 
rncw tpcnds,v>tiev 
 
 VIII 
 
 Heard 
 
 Playing 
 Spake, gentIe-mouthe(t among themselves, 
 
 Their virginal chaste names ; 
 And the souls, mounting up to God, 
 
 Went by her like thin flames. 
 
 ^MU^^U 
 
 
 
IX 
 
 And still she bowed herself , and stooped 
 
 Into the^ast waste calm ; 
 6i^^iII her bosom's pressure must have made 
 
 The bar she leaned on warm. 
 And the lilies lay as if asleep 
 
 Along her bended arm. 
 
 J>^ 
 
 p-^:-.© 
 
 ro'.v.p 
 
 [ij 
 
 •o bo 
 
THE 
 iNJNTH VE%SE 
 
 } 
 
THE 
 TENTH VEIiSE 
 
 } 
 
wQ^CLC^ 
 
 wcee.ciy 
 
 X 
 
 From the fixt lull of heaven^ she saw 
 
 Time^ like a pulse, shake fierce 
 Through all the worlds. Her gaze still strove, 
 
 In that steep gulph, to pierce 
 The swarm : and then she spake, as when 
 
 The stars sang in their spheres. 
 
 Mm 
 
V/V/V^'VX' 
 
 ^^tk^^Ska 
 
 XI 
 
 '' I wish that he were come to me, 
 
 For he will come," she said. 
 
 ** Have I not prayed in solemn heaven ? 
 
 On earth, has he not prayed ? 
 Are not two prayers a perfect strength ? 
 
 And shall I feel afraid ? 
 
THE 
 ELEVENTH VE^SE 
 
 ^ 
 
THE 
 ^TWELFTH VE%SE 
 
 i 
 
JliV\ 
 
 fWy^ •'^^*^>^ ""^W^ 
 
 ■^^jr^^^^-^^g^ 
 
 
 i*f_ rVRAm 
 
 \ -_4t«r — 
 
 «v 
 
 \i/ 
 
 1 
 
 xJ/* 
 
 ■;iv 
 
 • 
 
 XII 
 
 ''When round his head the aureole clings, 
 
 And he is clothed in white, 
 V\\ take his hand, and go with him 
 
 To the deep wells of light, 
 And we will step down as to a stream 
 
 And bathe there in God's sight. 
 
 
 v'/ 1 
 
 j^jt^^^n 
 
 / ,\ 
 
 • . 
 
 i 
 
 /1\ 
 
 J. A./ 
 
 : \ • //A^ 
 
 w 
 
 /r 
 
 » • • « 
 
 ■ ^'>i 
 
 /. 
 / 
 
 P 
 
 m 
 
 
 
 • 
 
 / . 
 
 ..G 
 
 pi 
 
m 
 
 XIII 
 
 " Wc two will stand beside that shrine. 
 
 Occult, withheld, untrod. 
 Whose lamps tremble continually 
 
 With prayer sent up to God ; 
 And where each need, revealed, expects 
 
 Its patient period. 
 
 r\ x:i 
 
 /:\ 
 
\ THE 
 <THI1(rEENTH VE^SE 
 
 ^ 
 
THE 
 g'OUIO^ENTH VE%SE 
 
 i 
 
m 
 
 si;i 
 
 mm 
 
 XIV 
 
 " We two will lie i* the shadow of 
 
 That living mystic tree 
 Within whose secret growth the Dove 
 
 Sometimes is felt to be, 
 While every leaf that His plumes touch 
 
 Saith His name audibly. 
 
 yo^O>OvO^O^.OvO^,OvO»>Ot>OfwO^:O^.Of^o^.OvCl^o>CKO^o^O^O»■0>^ 
 
XV 
 
 " And I myself will teach to him — 
 
 I myself, lying so, — 
 The songs I sing here ; which his mouth 
 
 Shall pause in, hushed and slow. 
 Finding some knowledge at each pause 
 
 And some new thing to know/* 
 
 wMi 
 
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THE 
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THE 
 SIXTEENTH VEI^SE 
 
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 S7 V' 
 
 
 XVI 
 
 (Alas ! to her wise simple mind 
 
 These things were all but known 
 Before : they trembled on her scnse,- 
 
 Her voice had caught their tone. 
 Alas for lonely Heaven I Alas 
 
 For life wrung out alone ! 
 
 
XVII 
 Alas, and though the end were reached? . . . 
 
 Was thy part understood 
 Or borne in trust ? And for her sake 
 
 Shall this too be found good ? — 
 May the close lips that knew not prayer 
 
 Praise ever, though they would ?) 
 
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I THE 
 SEVENTEENTH VE%SE 
 
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THE 
 EIGHTEENTH VE%SE 
 
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k-f_l_»_»_»_l_l-t^l-l_t,l,^_».^_J_».l.l.^ 
 
 XVIII 
 
 "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. 
 

 t — # — * 
 
 XIX 
 
 '' Circle-wise sit they, with bound locks 
 
 And bosoms covered ; 
 Into the fine cloth, white like flame, 
 
 Weaving the golden thread. 
 To fashion the birth-robes for them 
 
 Who arc just born, being dead. 
 
 /"-^-^-^-t-^t — %-• — % — I —♦—t — t~t 
 
THE 
 NINETEENTH VEIiSE 
 
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THE 
 
 TWENTIETH VE^SE 
 
 i 
 
He shall fear haply, and be dumb. 
 
 Then I will lay my cheek 
 To his, and tell about our love, 
 
 Not once abashed or weak : 
 And the dear Mother will approve 
 
 My pride, and let me speak. 
 
XXI 
 
 " Herself shall bring us, hand in hand, 
 To Him round whom all souls 
 
 Kneel — the unnumbered solemn heads 
 Bowed with their aureoles : 
 
 And Angels, meeting us, shall sing 
 To their citherns and citolcs. 
 
 
 
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THE 
 TWENTY-^IRST VEIiSE 
 
 ^ 
 
THE 
 TWENTY-SECOND VE'^SE 
 
 ^ 
 
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 xxn 
 
 ** There will I ask of Christ the Lord 
 Thus much for him and me : — 
 
 To have more blessing than on earth 
 In nowise ; but to be 
 
 As then we were, — being as then 
 At peace. Yea, verily. 
 
 
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THE 
 TWENTY-THIRD VE^SE 
 
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THE 
 TWENTY-FOURTH VE^iSE 
 
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XXIV K 
 She gazed, and listened, and then said, 
 
 Less sad of speech than mild ; 
 ** All this is when he comes/^ She ceased 
 
 The light thrilled past her, filled 
 With Angels, in strong level lapse. 
 
 Her eyes prayed, and she smiled. 
 
 ^^^S^ 
 
XXV X 
 
 (I saw her smile.) But soon their flight 
 Was vague ^mid the poised spheres. 
 
 And then she cast her arms along 
 The golden barriers, 
 
 And laid her face between her hands, 
 And wept. (I heard her tears.) 
 
 mml 
 
 
''' '•'7732'"' *'•'** 
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 UNIVERSITY OF CAUFORNIA UBRARY 
 
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