Who told my mother of my shame,
Who told my father of my dear?
Oh who but Maude, my sister Maude,
Who lurked to spy and peer.
Cold he lies, as cold as stone,
With his clotted curls about his face:
The comeliest corpse in all the world,
And worthy of a queen’s embrace.
You might have spared his soul, sister,
Have spared my soul, your own soul too:
Though I had not been born at all,
He’d never have looked at you.
My father may sleep in Paradise,
My mother at Heaven-gate:
But sister Maude shall get no sleep
Either early or late.
My father may wear a golden gown,
My mother a crown may win;
If my dear and I knocked at Heaven-gate
Perhaps they’d let us in:
But sister Maude, O sister Maude,
Bide _you_ with death and sin.
But it is for the personal poems that this volume will be prized most
dearly by certain readers.
Mr. W. M. Rossetti speaks of “the very wide and exceedingly strong
outburst of eulogy” of his sister which appeared in the public press
after her death. Yet that outburst was far from giving adequate
expression to what was felt by some of her readers—those between whom and
herself there was a bond of sympathy so sacred and so deep as to be
something like a religion. It is not merely that she was the
acknowledged queen in that world (outside the arena called “the literary
world”) where poetry is “its own exceeding great reward,” but to other
readers of a different kind altogether—readers who, drawing the deepest
delight from such poetry as specially appeals to them, never read any
other, and have but small knowledge of poetry as a fine art—her verse
was, perhaps, more precious still. They feel that at every page of her
writing the beautiful poetry is only the outcome of a life whose almost
unexampled beauty fascinates them.
Although Christina Rossetti had more of what is called the
unconsciousness of poetic inspiration than any other poet of her time,
the writing of poetry was not by any means the chief business of her
life. She was too thorough a poet for that. No one felt so deeply as
she that poetic art is only at the best the imperfect body in which
dwells the poetic soul. No one felt so deeply as she that as the notes
of the nightingale are but the involuntary expression of the bird’s
emotion, and, again, as the perfume of the violet is but the flower’s
natural breath, so it is and must be with the song of the very poet, and
that, therefore, to write beautifully is in a deep and true sense to live
beautifully. In the volume before us, as in all her previously published
writings, we see at its best what Christianity is as the motive power of
poetry. The Christian idea is essentially feminine, and of this feminine
quality Christina Rossetti’s poetry is full.
In motive power the difference between classic and Christian poetry must
needs be very great. But whatever may be said in favour of one as
against the other, this at least cannot be controverted, that the history
of literature shows no human development so beautiful as the ideal
Christian woman of our own day. She is unique, indeed. Men of science
tell us that among all the fossilized plants we find none of the lovely
family of the rose, and in the same way we should search in vain through
the entire human record for anything so beautiful as that kind of
Christian lady to whom self-abnegation is not only the first of duties,
but the first of joys. Yet, no doubt, the Christian idea must needs be
more or less flavoured by each personality through which it is expressed.
With regard to Christina Rossetti, while upon herself Christian dogma
imposed infinite obligations—obligations which could never be evaded by
her without the risk of all the penalties fulminated by all
believers—there was in the order of things a sort of ether of universal
charity for all others. She would lament, of course, the lapses of every
soul, but for these there was a forgiveness which her own lapses could
never claim. There was, to be sure, a sweet egotism in this. It was
very fascinating, however. This feeling explains what seems somewhat to
puzzle the editor, especially in the poem called ‘The End of the First
Part,’ written April 18th, 1849, of which he says, “‘Tears for guilt’ is
in reference to Christina a very exaggerated phrase”:—