Pre-Raphaelite and other Poets. Lafcadio Hearn

The songs I sing here; which his voice

       Shall pause in, hushed and slow,

       And find some knowledge at each pause,

       Or some new thing to know."

       (Alas! we two, we two, thou say'st!

       Yea, one wast thou with me

       That once of old. But shall God lift

       To endless unity

       The soul whose likeness with thy soul

       Was but its love for thee?)

      It is the lover who now speaks, commenting upon the imagined words of the beloved in heaven. Endless unity here has a double meaning, signifying at once the mystical union of the soul with God, and the reunion forever of lovers separated by death. The lover doubts whether he can be found worthy to enter heaven, because his only likeness to the beloved was in his love for her; that is to say, his merit was not so much in being good as in loving good in another.

      "We two," she said, "will seek the groves

       Where the lady Mary is,

       With her fine handmaidens, whose names

       Are five sweet symphonies,

       Cecily, Gertrude, Magdalen,

       Margaret, and Rosalys.

      Notice the mediæval method of speaking of the mother of God as "the lady Mary"; such would have been the form of address for a princess or queen in those times. So King Arthur's wife, in the old romance, is called the lady Guinevere. Symphonies here has only the simplest meaning of a sweet sound, not of a combination of sounds; but the use of the word nevertheless implies to a delicate ear that the five names make harmony with each other. They are names of saints, but also favourite names given to daughters of great families as Christian names. The picture is simply that of the lady of a great castle, surrounded by her waiting women, engaged in weaving and sewing.

      "Circlewise sit they, with bound locks

       And foreheads garlanded;

       Into the fine cloth white like flame

       Weaving the golden thread,

       To fashion the birth-robes for them

       Who are just born, being dead.

      With bound locks means only with the hair tied up, not flowing loose, as was usual in figures of saints and angels. They are weaving garments for new souls received into heaven, just as mothers might weave cloth for a child soon to be born. The description of the luminous white cloth might be compared with descriptions in Revelation. Being dead. Christianity, like the Oriental religions, calls death a rebirth; but the doctrinal idea is entirely different. You will remember that the Greeks represented the soul under the form of a butterfly. Christianity approaches the Greek fancy by considering the human body as a sort of caterpillar, which enters the pupa-state at death; the soul is like the butterfly leaving the chrysalis. So far everything is easy to understand; but this rebirth of the soul is only half a rebirth in the Christian sense. The body is also to be born again at a later day. At present there are only souls in heaven; but after the judgment day the same bodies which they used to have during life are to be given back to them. Therefore Rossetti is not referring here to rebirth except in the sense of spiritual rebirth, as Christ used it, in saying "Ye must be born again"—that is, obtain new hearts, new feelings. What in Oriental poetry would represent a fact of belief, here represents only the symbol of a belief, a belief of a totally different kind.

      "He shall fear, haply, and be dumb:

       Then will I lay my cheek

       To his, and tell about our love,

       Not once abashed or weak:

       And the dear Mother will approve

       My pride, and let me speak.

       "Herself shall bring us, hand in hand,

       To Him round whom all souls

       Kneel, the clear-ranged unnumbered heads

       Bowed with their aureoles:

       And angels meeting us shall sing

       To their citherns and citoles.

       "There will I ask of Christ the Lord

       Thus much for him and me:—

       Only to live as once on earth

       With Love, only to be,

       As then awhile, forever now

       Together, I and he."

      The Damozel's idea is that her lover will be ashamed and afraid to speak to the mother of God when he is introduced to her; but she will not be afraid to say how much she loves her lover, and she will cause the lady Mary to bring them both into the presence of God himself, identified here rather with the Son than with the Father. Citherns and citoles. Both words are derived from the Latin cithara, a harp, and both refer to long obsolete kinds of stringed instruments used during the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries.

      She gazed and listened and then said,

       Less sad of speech than mild—

       "All this is when he comes." She ceased.

       The light thrilled toward her, filled

       With angels in strong level flight.

       Her eyes prayed, and she smiled.

       (I saw her smile.) But soon their path

       Was vague in distant spheres:

       And then she cast her arms along

       The golden barriers,

       And laid her face between her hands,

       And wept. (I heard her tears.)

      In these beautiful lines we are reminded of the special duty of angels, from which they take their name, "messenger"—the duty of communicating between earth and heaven and bringing the souls of the dead to paradise. The Damozel, waiting and watching for her lover, imagines, whenever she sees the angels coming from the direction of the human world, that her lover may be coming with them. At last she sees a band of angels flying straight toward her through the luminous ether, which shivers and flashes before their coming. "Her eyes prayed," that is, expressed the prayerful desire that it might be her beloved; and she feels almost sure that it is. Then comes her disappointment, for the angels pass out of sight in another direction, and she cries—even in heaven. At least her lover imagines that he saw and heard her weeping.

      The use of the word Damozel needs a little more explanation, that you may understand the great art with which the poem was arranged. The Old French damoisel (later damoiseau) signified a young lad of noble birth or knightly parentage, employed in a noble house as page or squire. Originally there was no feminine form; but afterwards the form damoselle came into use, signifying a young lady in the corresponding capacity. Thus Rossetti in choosing the old English form damozel selected perhaps the only possible word which could exactly express the position of the Damozel in heaven, as well as the mediæval conception of that heaven. Our English word "damsel," so common in the Bible, is a much later form than damozel. There was, however, a Middle English form spelled almost like the form used by Rossetti, except that there was an "s" instead of a "z."

      Now you will better see the meaning of Rossetti's mysticism. When you make religion love, without ceasing to be religious, and make love religion, without ceasing to be human and sensuous, in the good sense of the word, then you have made a form of mysticism. The blending in Rossetti is very remarkable, and has made this particular poem the most famous thing which he wrote. We have here a picture of heaven, with all its mysteries and splendours, suspended over an ocean of ether, through which souls are passing like an upward showering of fire; and all this is spiritual enough. But the Damozel, with her yellow hair, and her bosom making warm what she leans upon, is very human; and her thoughts are not of the immaterial kind. The suggestions about bathing together, about embracing, cheek against cheek, and about being able to love in