"Now did you mark a falcon,
Sister dear, sister dear,
Flying toward my window
In the morning cool and clear?
With jingling bells about her neck.
But what beneath her wing?
It may have been a ribbon,
Or it may have been a ring."
"I marked a falcon swooping
At the break of day;
And for your love, my sister dove,
I 'frayed the thief away."
"Or did you spy a ruddy hound,
Sister fair and tall,
Went snuffing round my garden bound,
Or crouched by my bower wall.
With a silken leash about his neck;
But in his mouth may be
A chain of gold and silver links,
Or a letter writ to me?"
"I heard a hound, highborn sister,
Stood baying at the moon;
I rose and drove him from your wall,
Lest you should wake too soon."
"Or did you meet a pretty page,
Sat swinging on the gate;
Sat whistling, whistling like a bird--
Or may be slept too late--
With eaglets broidered on his cap,
And eaglets on his glove?
If you had turned his pockets out,
You had found some pledge of love."
"I met him at this daybreak,
Scarce the east was red;
Lest the creaking gate should anger you,
I packed him off to bed."
"Oh patience, sister. Did you see
A young man tall and strong,
Swift-footed to uphold the right
And to uproot the wrong,
Come home across the desolate sea
To woo me for his wife?
And in his heart my heart is locked,
And in his life my life."
"I met a nameless man, sister.
Who loitered round our door;
I said: 'Her husband loves her much.
And yet she loves him more.'"
"Fie, sister, fie; a wicked lie,
A lie, a wicked lie.
I have none other love but him,
Nor will have till I die;
And you have turned him from our door,
And stabbed him with a lie.
I will go seek him through the world
In sorrow till I die."
"Go seek in sorrow, sister,
And find in sorrow too;
If thus you shame our father's name,
My curse go forth with you."
But such writings, exquisite as they are, are but the outworks and
bastions of the inner life. One could almost wish that Christina
Rossetti were further removed by time and space, and were passed beyond
the region of letters, biographies, and personal memoirs, which before
long will possibly begin "to tear her heart before the crowd." Nowadays,
in the excessive zest for personal information, which received such
shameful incentives from Carlyle, and still more shameless encouragement
from his biographers, we may thank God, as Tennyson did, that there are
yet poets of whom we know as little as we know of Shakespeare, about
whom even the utmost diligence of researchers has disinterred but a
handful of sordid and humiliating facts.
But Miss Rossetti's poems are so passionately human a document as to set
one tracing by a sort of inevitable instinct the secrets of a buoyant
and tender soul, sharpened and refined by blow after blow of harsh
discipline. The same autobiographical savour haunts all her work as
haunted the eager dramas of Charlotte Bronte, the first of women-writers
of every age. Step by step it reveals itself, the sad and stately
development of this august soul. The first tremulous outlook upon the
intolerable loveliness of life, the fantastic melancholy of youth, the
deep desire of love, the drawing nearer of the veiled star,
disappointment, disillusionment, the over-powering rush of the
melancholy, that had waited like a beast in ambush for moments of
lassitude and reaction. Then was the crisis: would the wounded life
creep on on a broken wing, or would the spiritual vitality suffice to
fill the intolerable void? It did suffice; and the strength of the
character that thus found repose was attested by the rational and
temperate form of faith that ministered to the failing soul.
At such a moment the sensuous spirit is apt to slide into the luxurious
self-surrender that Roman Catholicism permits. To me, indeed, it is a
matter of profound surprise that Miss Rossetti did not fall into this
temptation; but just as she had, with instinctive moderation, chosen the
cool and temperate landscape of her adopted country, so the National
Church of England, with its decorous moderation, its liberal generosity,
its refined ardour, was the chosen home of this austere spirit. The
other danger to be feared was that of a bitter renunciation of old
delights, a sojourn in the wilderness of some arid and fantastic
pietism. An elder sister of Miss Rossetti's indeed sought the elaborate
seclusion of a religious house; and had D. G. Rossetti--to use the
uncouth Puritan phrase--"found religion," there is no doubt that he too
would have reverted to the Church of his fathers. But Miss Rossetti
became, as Mr. Edmund Gosse has, in a penetrating criticism in the
_Century Magazine_ (June 1893) pointed out, the poetess, not of
Protestantism, but of Anglicanism.
We must retrace our steps for a moment, and touch first on Miss
Rossetti's love lyrics. Very occasionally she allowed herself, in the
early days, to speak of love with the generous abandon of an ardent
spirit, as in the exquisite lyric where she still lingers in the
pictorial splendours of the pre-Raphaelite school.