Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

1828-1882

779   The Blessàd Damozel

THE blessàd damozel lean’d out
  From the gold bar of Heaven;
Her eyes were deeper than the depth
  Of waters still’d 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.

Herseem’d she scarce had been a day
  One of God’s choristers;
The wonder was not yet quite gone
  From that still look of hers;
Albeit, to them she left, her day
  Had counted as ten years.

(To one, it is ten years of years.
  ... Yet now, and in this place,
Surely she lean’d o’er me—her hair
  Fell all about my face....
Nothing: the autumn-fall of leaves.
  The whole year sets apace.)

It was the rampart of God’s house
  That she was standing on;
By God built over the sheer depth
  The which is Space begun;
So high, that looking downward thence
  She scarce could see the sun.

It lies in Heaven, across the flood
  Of ether, as a bridge.
Beneath, the tides of day and night
  With flame and darkness ridge
The void, as low as where this earth
  Spins like a fretful midge.

Around her, lovers, newly met
  ’Mid deathless love’s acclaims,
Spoke evermore among themselves
  Their heart-remember’d names;
And the souls mounting up to God
  Went by her like thin flames.

And still she bow’d herself and stoop’d
  Out of the circling charm;
Until her bosom must have made
  The bar she lean’d on warm,
And the lilies lay as if asleep
  Along her bended arm.

From the fix’d place of Heaven she saw
  Time like a pulse shake fierce
Through all the worlds. Her gaze still strove
  Within the gulf to pierce
Its path; and now she spoke as when
  The stars sang in their spheres.

The sun was gone now; the curl’d moon
  Was like a little feather
Fluttering far down the gulf; and now
  She spoke through the still weather.
Her voice was like the voice the stars
  Had when they sang together.

(Ah sweet! Even now, in that bird’s song,
  Strove not her accents there,
Fain to be hearkened? When those bells
  Possess’d the mid-day air,
Strove not her steps to reach my side
  Down all the echoing stair?)

‘I wish that he were come to me:
  For he will come,’ she said.
‘Have I not pray’d in Heaven?—on earth,
  Lord, Lord, has he not pray’d?
Are not two prayers a perfect strength?
  And shall I feel afraid?

‘When round his head the aureole clings,
  And he is clothed in white,
I’ll take his hand and go with him
  To the deep wells of light;
As unto a stream we will step down,
  And bathe there in God’s sight.

‘We two will stand beside that shrine,
  Occult, withheld, untrod,
Whose lamps are stirred continually
  With prayer sent up to God;
And see our old prayers, granted, melt
  Each like a little cloud.

‘We two will lie i’ the shadow of
  That living mystic tree,
Within whose secret growth the Dove
  Is sometimes felt to be,
While every leaf that His plumes touch
  Saith His Name audibly.

‘And I myself will teach to him,
  I myself, lying so,
The songs I sing here; which his voice
  Shall pause in, hush’d and slow,
And find some knowledge at each pause,
  Or some new thing to know.’

(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?)