DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI.

(1828-1882.)

DANTE GABRIEL ROSETTI was one of the most remarkable men of the Victorian period of literature. Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti, who in later life modified his several names into Dante Gabriel Rossetti, was the founder of the famous Preraphaelite brotherhood and its apostle for many years, though Ruskin was its chief spokesman and most eloquent expounder. They all tired of it in time.

Rossetti was born in London, May 12, 1828, and in blood was three-fourths Italian and onefourth English, his father being an Italian and his mother half Italian and half English.

He early developed both literary and artistic tastes, and became both poet and painter, showing great genius for both. It is as a poet, however, we are to deal with him here, and as a poet he is entitled to a high rank among his contemporaries. No one can say that in beauty of language or in

vividness of imagination he surpassed Tennyson, or perhaps Browning, but that he was one of the most superb masters of poetry of any age no one will gainsay. His verse is radiant with beauty. No person can read "The Blessed Damozel " without being deeply impressed with the power of Rossetti's genius. This was one of the first of his poems, and long before it was published it was passed around in manuscript and established Rossetti's fame as a poet among his friends. is now not only his best, but probably his bestknown poem:

The blessed damozel leaned out

1;

On the gold bar of heaven
Her eyes were stiller than the depths

Of waters still'd at even;

She had five lilies in her hand,

And the stars in her hair were seven !

Her robes, ungirt from clasp to hem,
No wrought flowers did adorn,
But a white rose of Mary's gift,
For service meetly worn ;
Her hair that lay along her back
Was yellow like ripe corn.

It

Certainly a more beautiful and more sensuous picture was never sketched as in this exquisite Pathos also there is, as when the blessed

poem.

damozel from "the fixed place of heaven" looks

down:

And then she cast her arms along

The golden barriers,

And laid her face between her hands

And wept. (I heard her tears.)

"I heard her tears!" Could anything be more deeply imaginative or more spiritual?

The most finished of Rossetti's poems is that series which he calls "The House of Life,” “a sonnet sequence" containing the story of his love and of all loves. It is a marvelous recital of the poet's love that will hold the reader enthralled by their poetic power and beauty, and yet there is no story in them.

Swinburne in his poetic prose has written of these sonnets in language that cannot be improved:

Their golden affluence of images and jewel-colored words never once disguises the firm outline, the justice and chastity of form. No nakedness could be more harmonious, more consummate in its fleshly sculpture than the imperial array and ornament of this august poetry. Mailed in gold as of the morning and girdled with gems of strange water, the beautiful body as of a carven goddess gleams through them tangible and taintless, without spot or default. There is not a jewel here but it fits, not a beauty but it subserves an end.

It is impossible to add anything to praise so well expressed and so just.

No one until he has read these sensuous sonnets can know the majesty, melody, emotion and loveliness of our language. Rossetti has sounded depths of meaning in our tongue that approaches Shakespeare, and by that token is worthy of remembrance. One cannot quote these sonnets so as to represent the poet faithfully. All must be read together. The radiant "Portrait," the gracious and joyous "Love Letter," the tender

Birthday Bond," the fervent "Day of Love," the delicate "Love's Bauble," the spiritual "The Love-Moon" and the varied beauty of "Broken Music" and "Death-in-Love" must all be taken as a whole and as one poem, as in fact, they are intended to be. Where in all poetry is there a deeper expression of the mere littleness of human life and of its helplessness than in the following:

Is it this sky's vast vault or ocean's sound

That is Life's self and draws my life from me,

And by instinct ineffable decree

Holds my breath quailing on the bitter bound?
Nay, is it life or death, thus thunder crown'd,
That 'mid the tide of all emergency,

Now notes my separate wave, and to what sea
Its difficult eddies labor in the ground?

Oh, what is this that knows the road I came,

The flame-turned cloud, the cloud returned to flame,

The lifted shifted steeps and all the way?
That draws round me at last this wind-warm space,
And in regenerate rapture turns my face

Upon the devious coverts of dismay ?

Shelley himself has never expressed the mighty heart of music more exquisitely than Rossetti has done here.

Rossetti's lyrics all have a superb and musical quality, words that almost sing themselves. “The Song of the Bower" is full of passion and music, and the lines linger in the ear like the whispering of sea shells.

Say, is it day, is it dusk in thy bower,

Thou whom I long for, who longest for me?
Oh, be it light, be it night, 'tis Love's hour,

Love's that is fettered as Love's that is free.

How replete with passion and color the whole poem is! It appeals to the heart and memory of almost every reader.

We cannot describe fully for want of space some of the more passionate of these poems, such as "Jenny," "Sister Helen " and " Eden Bower," They are terrible in their tragical power and effect, unmatched for pathos and beauty, they are indeed masterpieces. One sonnet, however, must be recalled, so full is it of serene beauty and pathos. It is entitled "Raleigh's Cell in the Tower";