LINES WRITTEN IN KENSINGTON GARDENS 1

(From Empedocles in Etna and Other Poems, 1852)

In this lone, open glade I lie,
Screen'd by deep boughs on either hand;
And at its end, to stay the eye,

Those black-crown'd, red-boled pine-trees stand!

1 Kensington Gardens, a beautiful and wonderfully secluded park in the midst of London, west of Hyde Park and not far from Piccadilly. When Arnold wrote his Lines, the beauty and seclusion of the Gardens was increased by many fine old trees.

Birds here make song, each bird has his, Across the girdling city's hum.

How green under the boughs it is!

How thick the tremulous sheep-cries come!
Sometimes a child will cross the glade
To take his nurse his broken toy;
Sometimes a thrush flit overhead
Deep in her unknown day's employ.
Here at my feet what wonders pass,
What endless, active life is here!
What blowing daisies, fragrant grass!
An air-stirr'd forest, fresh and clear.

Scarce fresher is the mountain sod
Where the tired angler lies, stretch'd out,
And, eased of basket and of rod,

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Counts his day's spoil, the spotted trout. 20

In the huge world, which roars hard by,
Be others happy if they can!

But in my helpless cradle I

Was breathed on by the rural Pan.

I on men's impious uproar hurl'd,
Think often, as I hear them rave,
That peace has left the upper world
And now keeps only in the grave.

Yet here is peace for ever new!
When I who watch them am away,
Still all things in this glade go through
The changes of their quiet day,

Then to their happy rest they pass!
The flowers upclose, the birds are fed,
The night comes down upon the grass,
The child sleeps warmly in his bed.
Calm soul of all things! make it mine
To feel, amid the city's jar,
That there abides a peace of thine
Man did not make, and cannot mar.

The will to neither strive nor cry,
The power to feel with others give!
Calm, calm me more! nor let me die
Before I have begun to live.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

1828-1882

THE BLESSED DAMOZEL 1 (Third Version, from Poems, 1870) The blessed2 damozel leaned out From the gold bar of Heaven; Her eyes were deeper than the depth Of waters stilled at even; She had three lilies in her hand.

And the stars in her hair were seven.

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1 Rossetti wrote this poem in his nineteenth year, or in 1847. W. M. Rossetti remarks that The Blessed Damozel "ranks as highly remarkable among the works of juvenile writers," especially when its "total unlikeness to any other poem then extant is taken into account.' It was published in the second number of The Germ, 1850; it appeared next in The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, 1856, and finally in the Poems of 1870.

2 i. e. one of the blest in paradise.

"We two," she said, "will seek the groves
Where the lady Mary is,

With her five handmaidens, whose names 105
Are five sweet symphonies,
Cecily, Gertrude, Magdalen,"

Margaret and Rosalys.

4 This may have been suggested by the Tree of Life (Gen. ii., 9), or by the tree Yggdrasil of the Scandinavian mythology, the tree of existence, which bound together heaven, earth, and hell. In the latter case, it may have been intended to symbolize the mystic union of spiritual existence, as Rossetti represents every leaf, or utmost part, responding in praise to the influence of the Divine Spirit. In Rossetti's picture founded on this poem, "a glimpse is caught (above the figure of the Blessed Damosel) of the groves of paradise, wherein, beneath the shade of the spreading branches of a vast tree, the newly-met lovers embrace and rejoice with each other, on separation over and union made perfect at last." V. Sharp's Rossetti, p. 251.

(From Devotional Pieces)

I watched a rosebud very long

Brought on by dew and sun and shower, Waiting to see the perfect flower; Then, when I thought it should be strong, It opened at the matin hour And fell at even-song.

I watched a nest from day to day,

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A green nest full of pleasant shade,
Wherein three speckled eggs were laid:
But when they should have hatched in May, 10
The two old birds had grown afraid
Or tired, and flew away.

Then in my wrath I broke the bough
That I had tended so with care,
Hoping its scent should fill the air;
I crushed the eggs, not heeding how
Their ancient promise had been fair:
I would have vengeance now.

But the dead branch spoke from the sod,
And the eggs answered me again:
Because we failed dost thou complain?
Is thy wrath just? And what if God,
Who waiteth for thy fruits in vain,
Should also take the rod?

SONNET

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To seek us and to find us, how not save? Comfort us, save us, leave us not alone, Thou Who didst die our death and fill our

grave.