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

I am afar, but near thee is my heart;
Only soliciting
That this long absence seem not ill to thee:
For, if thou knew'st what pain and evil smart
The lack of thy sweet countenance can bring,
Thou wouldst remember me compassionately.
Even as my case, the stag's is wont to be,
Which, thinking to escape
His death, escaping whence the pack gives cry,
Is wounded and doth die.
So, in my spirit imagining thy shape,
I would fly Death, and Death o'ermasters me.

I am o'erpower'd of Death when, telling o'er
Thy beauties in my thought,
I seem to have that which I have not: then
I am as he who in each meteor,
Dazzled and wildered, sees the thing he sought.
In suchwise Love deals with me among men:—
Thee whom I have not, yet who dost sustain
My life, he bringeth in his arms to me
Full oft,—yet I approach not unto thee.
Ah! if we be not joined i'the very flesh,
It cannot last but I indeed shall die
By burden of this love that weigheth so.
As an o'erladen bough, while yet 'tis fresh,
Breaks, and itself and fruit are lost thereby—
So shall I, love, be lost, alas for woe!

478

And, if this slay indeed that thus doth rive
My heart, how then shall I be comforted?
Thou, as a lioness
Her cub, in sore distress
Might'st toil to bring me out of death alive:
But couldst thou raise me up, if I were dead?

Oh! but an' if thou wouldst, I were more glad
Of death than life,—thus kept
From thee and the true life thy face can bring.
So in nowise could death be harsh or bad;
But it should seem to me that I had slept
And was awakened with thy summoning.
Yet, sith the hope thereof is a vain thing,
I, in fast fealty,
Can like the Assassin be,
Who, to be subject to his lord in all,
Goes and accepts his death and has no heed:
Even as he doth so could I do indeed.
Nevertheless, this one memorial—
The last—I send thee, for Love orders it.
He, this last once, wills that thus much be writ
In prayer that it may fall 'twixt thee and me
After the manner of
Two birds that feast their love
Even unto anguish, till, if neither quit
The other, one must perish utterly.

Alluding to the Syrian tribe of Assassins, whose chief was the Old Man of the Mountain.