Does the road wind up-hill all the way?
Yes, to the very end.
Will the day's journey take the whole long day?
From morn to night, my friend.
But is there for the night a resting-place,
A roof for when the slow dark hours begin?
May not the darkness hide it from my face?
You cannot miss that inn.
Shall I meet other wayfarers at night,
Those who have gone before?
Then must I knock, or call when just in sight?
They will not keep you standing at that door.
Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak?
Of labour you shall find the sum.
Will there be beds for me and all who seek?
Yea, beds for all who come.
But this bitterness is not enduring. From the first, even in what we may
call her Pagan days, the sense of responsibility and deliberate choice
had been hers. We venture to quote the noble allegory, "A Triad,"
omitted, in some vigorous revulsion of spirit, from her later writings:
Three sang of love together, one with lips
Crimson, with cheeks and bosom in a glow,
Flushed to the yellow hair and finger tips;
And one there sang who, soft and smooth as snow,
Bloomed like a tinted hyacinth at a show;
And one was blue with famine after love,
Who, like a harpstring snapped, rang harsh and low
The burden of what those were singing of.
One shamed herself in love; one temperately
Grew gross in soulless love, a sluggish wife;
One famished, died for love. Thus two of three
Took death for love, and won him after strife.
One droned in sweetness like a fattened bee;
All on the threshold, yet all short of life.
Into the service, then, of her religion, Miss Rossetti brought all the
passionate fervour of her unsatisfied heart, all her intense enthusiasm
after art, and passed steadily, we believe, to the forefront of all
English religious poetry. She had not, perhaps, the curious felicity of
George Herbert, but, on the other hand, she had the balanced simplicity
that stepped clear of his elaborate conceit, the desperate euphuism of
Crashaw, and even the pathetic refinement of Henry Vaughan. Again, her
passionate imagery put her ahead of the soft beauty of Keble, too apt to
degenerate into a honied domesticity; above the pensive richness of
Charles Wesley, whose Puritan outlook made his hand unsure; above even
the divine ardour of Newman, whose technical dogmatism and paucity of
human experience limited his range. With Miss Rossetti it was as the
strong man armed, in the Gospel parable. When the stronger victor came,
the spoil was annexed, and the ancient pride of defence was applied by a
more dexterous hand. Can there be found in the rank of English religious
poetry two more majestic lyrics than