— 33 —
For now the harlot's heart on a new sleeve
Is prankt; and her heart's lord of yesterday
(Spurned from her bed, whose worm-spun silks o'erlay
Such fretwork as that other worm can weave)
Takes in his ears the vanished world's last yell,
And in his flesh the closing teeth of Hell."
This sonnet reads like a passage of Blake's Prophetic Books; the same dim flight of ideas, vaguely expressed in a "fiery tongue" can be found in Blake's Jerusalem, America, Daughters of Albion, or any one of the Prophetic Books we like to open. Apart from this sonnet and a few more, where the same influence is traceable, though not in the same degree, we have to see in Rossetti's exaggerated love for allegory a tendency developed after Blake's example. So we find e.g. in a simple narrative poem like Jenny, dealing with an up to date question, the problem of primitive sin in its crudest and at the same time best-known form, inserted a personification of lust; though very graphic and beautiful in itself, this allegory in which lust, "like a toad in a stone sits from the time the earth was cursed, deaf, blind and alone", seems altogether out of place in this particular kind of poem, dealing with a realistic subject of every-day life.
Far greater is the influence exercised on Rossetti by Blake's lyrical poems. The characteristics of the Songs of Innocence and the Songs of Experience which I pointed out before, can be found in the poems of Rossetti especially in the early ones. However, what Blake found out as it were accidentally and applied half-consciously, has been used by Rossetti systematically, in perfect consciousness of its effect. Therefore Rossetti's poems gain in clearness and construction, but lose in freshness and spontaneity, when compared to Blake's. We find back Blake's naiveté and simple directness of speech in many early poems for example in "The Staff and Scrip"; in the ballad "The white Ship", and in "My Sister's Sleep", a descriptive poem. Best of all this simplicity is exemplified in an admirable termination.
