Poems (Rossetti, 1901)/An Old-World Thicket

by Christina Georgina Rossetti

AN OLD-WORLD THICKET.

. . . "Una selva oscura."—Dante.

AWAKE or sleeping (for I know not which)
 I was or was not mazed within a wood
Where every mother-bird brought up her brood
 Safe in some leafy niche
Of oak or ash, of cypress or of beech,

Of silvery aspen trembling delicately,
 Of plane or warmer-tinted sycomore,
 Of elm that dies in secret from the core,
  Of ivy weak and free,
 Of pines, of all green lofty things that be.

Such birds they seemed as challenged each desire;
 Like spots of azure heaven upon the wing,
 Like downy emeralds that alight and sing,
  Like actual coals on fire,
 Like anything they seemed, and everything.

Such mirth they made, such warblings and such chat
 With tongue of music in a well-tuned beak,
 They seemed to speak more wisdom than we speak,
  To make our music flat
 And all our subtlest reasonings wild or weak.

Their meat was nought but flowers like butterflies,
 With berries coral-coloured or like gold;
 Their drink was only dew, which blossoms hold
  Deep where the honey lies;
Their wings and tails were lit by sparkling eyes.

The shade wherein they revelled was a shade
 That danced and twinkled to the unseen sun;
 Branches and leaves cast shadows one by one,
  And all their shadows swayed
In breaths of air that rustled and that played.

A sound of waters neither rose nor sank,
 And spread a sense of freshness through the air;
 It seemed not here or there, but everywhere,
  As if the whole earth drank,
Root fathom deep and strawberry on its bank.

But I who saw such things as I have said,
 Was overdone with utter weariness;
 And walked in care, as one whom fears oppress,
  Because above his head
Death hangs, or damage, or the dearth of bread.

Each sore defeat of my defeated life
 Faced and outfaced me in that bitter hour;
 And turned to yearning palsy all my power,
  And all my peace to strife,
Self stabbing self with keen lack-pity knife.

Sweetness of beauty moved me to despair,
 Stung me to anger by its mere content,
 Made me all lonely on that way I went,
  Piled care upon my care,
Brimmed full my cup, and stripped me empty and bare:

For all that was but showed what all was not,
 But gave clear proof of what might never be;
 Making more destitute my poverty,
  And yet more blank my lot,
 And me much sadder by its jubilee.

Therefore I sat me down: for wherefore walk?
 And closed mine eyes: for wherefore see or hear?
 Alas, I had no shutter to mine ear,
  And could not shun the talk
 Of all rejoicing creatures far or near.

Without my will I hearkened and I heard
 (Asleep or waking, for I know not which),
 Till note by note the music changed its pitch;
  Bird ceased to answer bird,
And every wind sighed softly if it stirred.

The drip of widening waters seemed to weep,
 All fountains sobbed and gurgled as they sprang,
Somewhere a cataract cried out in its leap
  Sheer down a headlong steep;
 High over all cloud-thunders gave a clang.

Such universal sound of lamentation
 I heard and felt, fain not to feel or hear;
 Nought else there seemed but anguish far and near;
  Nought else but all creation
 Moaning and groaning wrung by pain or fear,

Shuddering in the misery of its doom:
 My heart then rose a rebel against light,
 Scouring all earth and heaven and depth and height,
  Ingathering wrath and gloom,
 Ingathering wrath to wrath and night to night.

Ah me, the bitterness of such revolt,
 All impotent, all hateful, and all hate,
That kicks and breaks itself against the bolt
  Of an imprisoning fate,
 And vainly shakes, and cannot shake the gate.

Agony to agony, deep called to deep,
 Out of the deep I called of my desire;
 My strength was weakness and my heart was fire;
  Mine eyes that would not weep
Or sleep, scaled height and depth, and could not sleep;

The eyes, I mean, of my rebellious soul,
 For still my bodily eyes were closed and dark:
 A random thing I seemed without a mark,
  Racing without a goal,
 Adrift upon life's sea without an ark.

More leaden than the actual self of lead
 Outer and inner darkness weighed on me.
 The tide of anger ebbed. Then fierce and free
  Surged full above my head
 The moaning tide of helpless misery.

Why should I breathe, whose breath was but a sigh?
 Why should I live, who drew such painful breath?
Oh weary work, the unanswerable why!—
  Yet I, why should I die,
 Who had no hope in life, no hope in death?

Grasses and mosses and the fallen leaf
 Make peaceful bed for an indefinite term;
 But underneath the grass there gnaws a worm—
  Haply, there gnaws a grief—
Both, haply always; not, as now, so brief.

The pleasure I remember, it is past;
 The pain I feel, is passing passing by;
 Thus all the world is passing, and thus I:
  All things that cannot last
 Have grown familiar, and are born to die.

And being familiar, have so long been borne
 That habit trains us not to break but bend:
Mourning grows natural to us who mourn
  In foresight of an end,
 But that which ends not who shall brave or mend?

Surely the ripe fruits tremble on their bough,
 They cling and linger trembling till they drop:
I, trembling, cling to dying life; for how
  Face the perpetual Now?
 Birthless and deathless, void of start or stop,

Void of repentance, void of hope and fear,
 Of possibility, alternative,
 Of all that ever made us bear to live
  From night to morning here,
 Of promise even which has no gift to give.

The wood, and every creature of the wood,
 Seemed mourning with me in an undertone;
 Soft scattered chirpings and a windy moan,
  Trees rustling where they stood
And shivered, showed compassion for my mood.

Rage to despair; and now despair had turned
 Back to self-pity and mere weariness,
With yearnings like a smouldering fire that burned,
  And might grow more or less,
 And might die out or wax to white excess.

Without, within me, music seemed to be;
 Something not music, yet most musical,
Silence and sound in heavenly harmony;
  At length a pattering fall
 Of feet, a bell, and bleatings, broke through all.

Then I looked up. The wood lay in a glow
 From golden sunset and from ruddy sky;
 The sun had stooped to earth though once so high
  Had stooped to earth, in slow
Warm dying loveliness brought near and low.

Each water drop made answer to the light,
 Lit up a spark and showed the sun his face;
 Soft purple shadows paved the grassy space
  And crept from height to height,
 From height to loftier height crept up apace.

While opposite the sun a gazing moon
 Put on his glory for her coronet,
Kindling her luminous coldness to its noon,
  As his great splendour set;
 One only star made up her train as yet

Each twig was tipped with gold, each leaf was edged
 And veined with gold from the gold-flooded west;
Each mother-bird, and mate-bird, and unfledged
  Nestling, and curious nest,
 Displayed a gilded moss or beak or breast.

And filing peacefully between the trees,
 Having the moon behind them, and the sun
Full in their meek mild faces, walked at ease
  A homeward flock, at peace
 With one another and with every one.

A patriarchal ram with tinkling bell
 Led all his kin sometimes one browsing sheep
 Hung back a moment, or one lamb would leap
  And frolic in a dell;
Yet still they kept together, journeying well,

And bleating, one or other, many or few,
 Journeying together toward the sunlit west;
 Mild face by face, and woolly breast by breast,
  Patient, sun-brightened too,
 Still journeying toward the sunset and their rest.