CHRISTINA ROSSETTI (1830-1894)
DREAM LAND
1 Where sunless rivers weep
2 Their waves into the deep,
3 She sleeps a charmed sleep:
4 Awake her not.
5 Led by a single star,
6 She came from very far
7 To seek where shadows are
8 Her pleasant lot.
9 She left the rosy morn,
10 She left the fields of corn,
11 For twilight cold and lorn
12 And water springs.
13 Through sleep, as through a veil,
14 She sees the sky look pale,
15 And hears the nightingale
16 That sadly sings.
17 Rest, rest, a perfect rest
18 Shed over brow and breast;
19 Her face is toward the west,
20 The purple land.
21 She cannot see the grain
22 Ripening on hill and plain;
23 She cannot feel the rain
24 Upon her hand.
25 Rest, rest, for evermore
26 Upon a mossy shore;
27 Rest, rest at the heart's core
28 Till time shall cease:
29 Sleep that no pain shall wake;
30 Night that no morn shall break
31 Till joy shall overtake
32 Her perfect peace.
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William Yeats
Where my books go
All the words that I utter,
And all the words that I write,
Must spread out their wings untiring,
And never rest in their flight,
Till they come where your sad, sad heart is,
And sing to you in the night,
Beyond where the waters are moving,
Storm-darken'd or starry bright.
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Christina Rossetti
Remember
REMEMBER me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go, yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you plann'd:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.
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I doubt you will want this one, but I'm putting it because it is awful and beautiful.
Rupert Brooke
Dust
When the white flame in us is gone,
And we that lost the world's delight
Stiffen in darkness, left alone
To crumble in our separate night;
When your swift hair is quiet in death,
And through the lips corruption thrust
Has stilled the labour of my breath --
When we are dust, when we are dust! --
Not dead, not undesirous yet,
Still sentient, still unsatisfied,
We'll ride the air, and shine, and flit,
Around the places where we died,
And dance as dust before the sun,
And light of foot, and unconfined,
Hurry from road to road, and run
About the errands of the wind.
And every mote, on earth or air,
Will speed and gleam, down later days,
And like a secret pilgrim fare
By eager and invisible ways,
Nor ever rest, nor ever lie,
Till, beyond thinking, out of view,
One mote of all the dust that's I
Shall meet one atom that was you.
Then in some garden hushed from wind,
Warm in a sunset's afterglow,
The lovers in the flowers will find
A sweet and strange unquiet grow
Upon the peace; and, past desiring,
So high a beauty in the air,
And such a light, and such a quiring,
And such a radiant ecstasy there,
They'll know not if it's fire, or dew,
Or out of earth, or in the height,
Singing, or flame, or scent, or hue,
Or two that pass, in light, to light,
Out of the garden, higher, higher. . . .
But in that instant they shall learn
The shattering ecstasy of our fire,
And the weak passionless hearts will burn
And faint in that amazing glow,
Until the darkness close above;
And they will know -- poor fools, they'll know! --
One moment, what it is to love.
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