— 19 —
"And as I wrought, while all above
And all around was fragrant air,
In the sick burthen of my love
It seemed each sun-thrilled blossom there
Beat like a heart among the leaves."[1]
In other poems the sense of sadness becomes oppressive in its very intensity, as in the opening stanzas of "The Bride's Prelude". I believe that here Rossetti goes further than Blake in painting the influence of surroundings. The years full of sorrow, the woeful waiting, the secret sin of the bride make the air of her chamber so very close. A kind of dim horror seems to be exhaled by the heavy hangings and curtains, as if the thoughts full of sin and remorse had passed over in them.
"And even in shade was gleam enough
To shut out full repose
From the bride's 'tiring chamber, which
Was like the inner altar-niche
Whose dimness worship had made rich"[2]
(and the next two stanzas).
The same feelings we find expressed in the ballad "the Staff and Scrip" where the room of the queen is described:
"The queen sat idle by her loom:
She heard the arras stir.
And looked up sadly: through the room
The sweetness sickened her
Of musk and myrrh."[3]
Though Dante Gabriel Rossetti in the last two examples works out a special idea of Blake in detail, he nearly always adopts his theories in a general sense, especially in the works of his youth. In his later sonnets and pictures he penetrates deeper into them. Probably the part which he took in the
- ↑ Rossetti D. G., The collected works. ed. by W. M. Rossetti. London 1906, Vol. I, 240.
- ↑ ibid. I, 35.
- ↑ ibid. I, 75.
