Poems - Christina Georgina Rossetti

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flame;

      She gorged on bitterness without a name:

      Ah! fool, to choose such part

      Of soul-consuming care!

      Sense failed in the mortal strife:

      Like the watch-tower of a town

      Which an earthquake shatters down,

      Like a lightning-stricken mast,

      Like a wind-uprooted tree

      Spun about,

      Like a foam-topped water-spout

      Cast down headlong in the sea,

      She fell at last;

      Pleasure past and anguish past,

      Is it death or is it life?

       Life out of death.

      That night long Lizzie watched by her,

      Counted her pulse's flagging stir,

      Felt for her breath,

      Held water to her lips, and cooled her face

      With tears and fanning leaves:

      But when the first birds chirped about their eaves,

      And early reapers plodded to the place

      Of golden sheaves,

      And dew-wet grass

      Bowed in the morning winds so brisk to pass,

      And new buds with new day

      Opened of cup-like lilies on the stream,

      Laura awoke as from a dream,

      Laughed in the innocent old way,

      Hugged Lizzie but not twice or thrice;

      Her gleaming locks showed not one thread of gray,

      Her breath was sweet as May,

      And light danced in her eyes.

       Days, weeks, months, years

      Afterwards, when both were wives

      With children of their own;

      Their mother-hearts beset with fears,

      Their lives bound up in tender lives;

      Laura would call the little ones

      And tell them of her early prime,

      Those pleasant days long gone

      Of not-returning time:

      Would talk about the haunted glen,

      The wicked, quaint fruit-merchant men,

      Their fruits like honey to the throat,

      But poison in the blood;

      (Men sell not such in any town;)

      Would tell them how her sister stood

      In deadly peril to do her good,

      And win the fiery antidote:

      Then joining hands to little hands

      Would bid them cling together,

      "For there is no friend like a sister,

      In calm or stormy weather,

      To cheer one on the tedious way,

      To fetch one if one goes astray,

      To lift one if one totters down,

      To strengthen whilst one stands."

      IN THE ROUND TOWER AT JHANSI, June 8, 1857.

      A hundred, a thousand to one; even so;

       Not a hope in the world remained:

      The swarming, howling wretches below

       Gained and gained and gained.

      Skene looked at his pale young wife:--

       "Is the time come?"--"The time is come!"--

      Young, strong, and so full of life:

       The agony struck them dumb.

      Close his arm about her now,

       Close her cheek to his,

      Close the pistol to her brow--

       God forgive them this!

      "Will it hurt much?"--"No, mine own:

       I wish I could bear the pang for both."

      "I wish I could bear the pang alone:

       Courage, dear, I am not loth."

      Kiss and kiss: "It is not pain

       Thus to kiss and die.

      One kiss more."--"And yet one again."--

       "Good by."--"Good by."

      Note.--I retain this little poem, not as historically accurate,

      but as written and published before I heard the supposed

      facts of its first verse contradicted.

       DREAM-LAND.

      Where sunless rivers weep

      Their waves into the deep,

      She sleeps a charmèd sleep:

       Awake her not.

      Led by a single star,

      She came from very far

      To seek where shadows are

       Her pleasant lot.

      She left the rosy morn,

      She left the fields of corn,

      For twilight cold and lorn

       And water springs.

      Through sleep, as through a veil,

      She sees the sky look pale,

      And hears the nightingale

       That sadly sings.

      Rest, rest, a perfect rest

      Shed over brow and breast;

      Her face is toward the west,

       The purple land.

      She cannot see the grain

      Ripening on hill and plain;

      She cannot feel the rain

       Upon her hand.

      Rest, rest, forevermore

      Upon a mossy shore;

      Rest, rest at the heart's core

       Till time shall cease:

      Sleep that no pain shall wake,

      Night that no morn shall break,

      Till joy shall overtake

       Her perfect peace.

       AT HOME.

      When I was dead, my spirit turned

       To seek the much-frequented house

      I passed the door, and saw my friends

       Feasting beneath green orange-boughs;

      From hand to hand they pushed the wine,

       They sucked the pulp of plum and peach;

      They sang, they jested, and they laughed,

       For each was loved of each.

      I listened to their honest chat:

       Said one: "To-morrow we shall be

      Plod

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