The Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti :: :: University of Virginia Library

Now, when I heard the sudden dreadful voice
Wake thus within to cruel utterance,
Whereby the very heart of hearts did fail,
My spirit might not any more rejoice,
But fell from its courageous pride at once,
And turned to fly, where flight may not avail.
Then slowly 'gan some strength to re-inhale
The trembling life which heard that whisper speak,
And had conceived the sense with sore travail;
Till in the mouth it murmured, very weak,
Saying: “Youth, wealth, and beauty, these have I:
O Death! remit thy claim,—I would not die.”

Small sign of pity in that aspect dwells
Which then had scattered all my life abroad
Till there was comfort with no single sense:
And yet almost in piteous syllables,
When I had ceased to speak, this answer flow'd:
“Behold what path is spread before thee hence;
Thy life has all but a day's permanence.
And is it for the sake of youth there seems
In loss of human years such sore offence?
Nay, look unto the end of youthful dreams.
What present glory does thy hope possess,
That shall not yield ashes and bitterness?”

But, when I looked on Death made visible,
From my heart's sojourn brought before mine eyes,
And holding in her hand my grievous sin,
I seemed to see my countenance, that fell,
Shake like a shadow: my heart uttered cries,
And my soul wept the curse that lay therein.
Then Death: “Thus much thine urgent prayer shall win:—
I grant thee the brief interval of youth
At natural pity's strong soliciting.”
And I (because I knew that moment's ruth
But left my life to groan for a frail space)
Fell in the dust upon my weeping face.

So, when she saw me thus abashed and dumb,
In loftier words she weighed her argument,
That new and strange it was to hear her speak;
Saying: “The path thy fears withhold thee from
Is thy best path. To folly be not shent,
Nor shrink from me because thy flesh is weak,
Thou seest how man is sore confused, and eke
How ruinous Chance makes havoc of his life,
And grief is in the joys that he doth seek;
Nor ever pauses the perpetual strife
'Twixt fear and rage; until beneath the sun
His perfect anguish be fulfilled and done.”

“O Death! thou art so dark and difficult,
That never human creature might attain
By his own will to pierce thy secret sense;
Because, foreshadowing thy dread result,

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He may not put his trust in heart or brain,
Nor power avails him, nor intelligence.
Behold how cruelly thou takest hence
These forms so beautiful and dignified,
And chain'st them in thy shadow chill and dense,
And forcest them in narrow graves to hide;
With pitiless hate subduing still to thee
The strength of man and woman's delicacy.”

“Not for thy fear the less I come at last,
For this thy tremor, for thy painful sweat.
Take therefore thought to leave (for lo! I call)
Kinsfolk and comrades, all thou didst hold fast,—
Thy father and thy mother,—to forget
All these thy brethren, sisters, children, all.
Cast sight and hearing from thee; let hope fall;
Leave every sense and thy whole intellect,
These things wherein thy life made festival:
For I have wrought thee to such strange effect
That thou hast no more power to dwell with these
As living man. Let pass thy soul in peace.”

Yea, Lord. O thou, the Builder of the spheres,
Who, making me, didst shape me, of thy grace,
In thine own image and high counterpart;
Do thou subdue my spirit, long perverse,
To weep within thy will a certain space,
Ere yet thy thunder come to rive my heart.
Set in my hand some sign of what thou art,
Lord God, and suffer me to seek out Christ,—
Weeping, to seek Him in thy ways apart;
Until my sorrow have at length suffic'd
In some accepted instant to atone
For sins of thought, for stubborn evil done.

Dishevelled and in tears, go, song of mine,
To break the hardness of the heart of man:
Say how his life began
From dust, and in that dust doth sink supine:
Yet, say, the unerring spirit of grief shall guide
His soul, being purified,
To seek its Maker at the heavenly shrine.