Hardly ourselves we fought through, But thou would'st not alone If, in the paths of the world, 120 125 130 See! In the rocks of the world A feeble, wavering line. Where are they tending? - A God Marshaled them, gave them their goal. 175 Ah, but the way is so long! Years they have been in the wild! Sore thirst plagues them, the rocks, 180 185 Die one by one in the waste. Then, in such hour of need 140 145 Ye alight in our van! at your voice, Panic, despair, flee away. In the noble and great who are gone; By former ages, who else— Is the race of men whom I see Not like the men of the crowd 155 Who all round me to-day Bluster or cringe, and make life Hideous, and arid, and vile; DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI (1828-1882) Although as a very young boy Rossetti showed a talent for versifying, he attained distinction first as a painter. After spending five years at King's College School and in art academies in London, he became a pupil of Ford Madox Brown, and later joined Holman Hunt, Millais, and others, in that revival of mystical interpretation and detailed elaboration in painting commonly called the Pre-Raphaelite movement. No considerable part of Rossetti's poems appeared in print before the publication of Poems, in 1870. The following year Robert Buchanan, in an article entitled The Fleshly School in Poetry, savagely attacked the alleged immorality of Rossetti's poems. Although Rossetti stoutly resisted the assault, it aggravated the mental depression which had begun with the death of his wife, and which persisted until his death. The last ten years of his life were tragically clouded by mental weakness and by the habit of taking chloral. Even during this period, however, creative flashes of his mind resulted in both poems and paintings of great beauty. Poems (1870), Dante and His Circle (1874), and Ballads and Sonnets (1881) contain substantially all of Rossetti's poetry. The volume of 1881 brought out The King's Tragedy, and added sonnets to complete the House of Life, the first sonnets of which had appeared in 1870. Rossetti's only imaginative work in prose is Hand and Soul (1850). His poetry, often subtly mystical in thought, has been called, significantly, 'painter's poetry,' from its delicate picturesqueness and visual beauty. |