314 THE BLESSED DAMOZEL. It was the rampart of God's House By God built over the sheer depth So high, that looking downward thence It lies in Heaven, across the flood Beneath, the tides of day and night The void, as low as where this earth Around her, lovers newly met Mid deathless love's acclaims And still she bowed herself and stooped Until her bosom must have made The bar she leaned on warm, And the lilies lay as half asleep From the fixed place of Heaven she saw Time like a pulse shake fierce Through all the worlds. Her gaze still strove Within the gulf to pierce Its path; and now she spoke as when The stars sang in their spheres. THE BLESSED DAMOZEL. The sun was gone now; the curled moon Fluttering far down the gulf; and now (Ah sweet! Even now, in that bird's song, Fain to be hearkened? When those bells Strove not her steps to reach my side "I wish that he were come to me, Are not two prayers a perfect strength? "When round his head the aureole clings, I'll take his hand and go with him We will step down as to a stream, "We two will stand beside that shrine, Whose lamps are stirred continually And see our old prayers, granted, melt 315 316 THE BLESSED DAMOZEL. "We two will lie i' the shadow of That living mystic tree Within whose secret growth the Dove While every leaf that His plumes touch "And I myself will teach to him, The songs I sing here; which his voice (Alas! We two, we two, thou say'st! That once of old. But shall God lift To endless unity The soul whose likeness with thy soul "We two," she said, "will seek the groves Where the lady Mary is, With her five hand-maidens, whose names Cecily, Gertrude, Magdalen, "Circlewise sit they, with bound locks And foreheads garlanded; Into the fine cloth white like flame To fashion the birth-robes for them THE BLESSED DAMOZEL. 317 "He shall fear, haply, and be dumb: Then will I lay my cheek To his, and tell about our love, "Herself shall bring us, hand in hand, Kneel, the clear-ranged unnumbered heads And angels meeting us shall sing "There will I ask of Christ the Lord She gazed and listened and then said, "All this is when he comes." She ceased. (I saw her smile.) But soon their path The golden barriers, And laid her face between her hands, And wept. (I heard her tears.) D. G. Rossetti. 318 THE SEA LIMITS. THE SEA LIMITS. CONSIDER the sea's listless chime; Is the sea's end: our sight may pass No quiet, which is death's,—it hath Listen alone beside the sea, Listen alone among the woods; Hark where the murmurs of thronged men Still the one voice of wave and tree. Gather a shell from the strown beach D. G. Rossetti. |