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

All the whole world is living without war,
And yet I cannot find out any peace.
O God! that this should be!
O God! what does the earth sustain me for?
My life seems made for other lives' ill-ease:
All men look strange to me;
Nor are the wood-flowers now
As once, when up above
The happy birds in love
Made such sweet verses, going from bough to bough.

And if I come where other gentlemen
Bear arms, or say of love some joyful thing—
Then is my grief most sore,
And all my soul turns round upon me then:
Folk also gaze upon me, whispering,
Because I am not what I was before.
I know not what I am.
I know how wearisome
My life is now become,
And that the days I pass seem all the same.

I think that I shall die; yea, death begins;
Though 'tis no set-down sickness that I have,
Nor are my pains set down.
But to wear raiment seems a burden since
This came, nor ever any food I crave;
Not any cure is known
To me, nor unto whom
I might commend my case:
This evil therefore stays
Still where it is, and hope can find no room.

I know that it must certainly be Love:
No other Lord, being thus set over me,
Had judged me to this curse;
With such high hand he rules, sitting above,
That of myself he takes two parts in fee,
Only the third being hers.
Yet if through service I
Be justified with God,
He shall remove this load,
Because my heart with inmost love doth sigh.

Gentle my lady, after I am gone,
There will not come another, it may be,
To show thee love like mine:
For nothing can I do, neither have done,
Except what proves that I belong to thee
And am a thing of thine.
Be it not said that I
Despaired and perished, then;
But pour thy grace, like rain,
On him who is burned up, yea, visibly.