but counteracting this impression is an emphasis on parted lips and voluptuous curves suggesting a more earthly kind of ecstasy. Similar combinations of spirituality and physicality, or mind and body, are to be found in many of Rossetti's poems. For instance, the central figure of 'The Blessed Damozel' (1850), a poem begun when Bossetti was eighteen and was heavily influenced by the work of Dante Alighieri, leans upon 'the gold bar of heaven' and makes it 'warm' with her bosom. In jenny (1870), another work started in Bossetti's early adulthood, a male speaker muses about the life and thoughts of the young prostitute whose head rests upon his knee as she sleeps: his speculations thus replace, or stand in for, more overt sexual acts between them. And The House of Life (1870), his sonnet sequence, undertakes to explore the relationship of spirit to body in love. Some Victorian readers found little Dante-like spirituality in The House of Life; the critic Bobert Buchanan, for example, saw only lewd sensuality, and his 1871 pamphlet, 'The Fleshly School of Poetry,' treated Bossetti's poetry to the most severe abuse. Buchanan's attack hurt the poet profoundly and contributed to the recurring bouts of nervous depression from which he suffered in the remaining years of his life.
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THE BLESSED DAMOZEL / 1443
Rossetti and his artist friends called women such as Jane Morris 'stunners.' The epithet can also be applied to Rossetti's poetry, especially his later writings. In his maturity he used stunning polysyllabic diction to convey opulence and density. Earlier poems such as 'My Sister's Sleep' (1850) are usually much less elaborate in manner and reflect the original aesthetic values of the Pre-Raphaelite movement in which Rossetti played a central and founding role. In 1848 a group of young artists and writers came together in what they called the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. The most prominent members were painters, notably John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt, and Rossetti. Their principal object was to reform English painting by repudiating the established academic style in favor of a revival of the simplicity and pure colors of pre-Renaissance art. Because each artist preferred to develop his own individual manner, the Brotherhood did not cohere for more than a few years. Rossetti grew away from the Pre-Raphaelite manner and his early choice of religious subjects, cultivating instead a more richly ornate style of painting. In both the early and the late phases of his art, however, many have viewed him as essentially a poet in his painting and a painter in his poetry. 'Colour and meter,' he once said, 'these are the true patents of nobility in painting and poetry, taking precedence of all intellectual claims.'
For images of some Rossetti paintings, see 'The Painterly Image in Poetry' at Norton Literature Online.
The Blessed Damozel1
The blessed damozel leaned out From the gold bar of heaven; Her eyes were deeper than the depth Of waters stilled at even; 5 She had three lilies in her hand, And the stars in her hair were seven.
ioHer robe, ungirt from clasp to hem, No wrought flowers did adorn, But a white rose of Mary's gift, For service meetly' Her hair that lay along her back Was yellow like ripe corn.0 worn; fittingly grain 15Herseemed2 she scarce had been a day One of God's choristers; The wonder was not yet quite gone From that still look of hers; Albeit, to them she left, her day Had counted as ten years. 20(To one it is ten years of years. .. . Yet now, and in this place, Surely she leaned o'er me?her hair
Fell all about my face. . . .
1. A poetic version of 'damsel,' signifying a young mined to reverse the conditions, and give utterance unmarried lady. Rossetti once explained that to the yearning of the loved one in heaven.' The 'Blessed Damozel' is related to Edgar Allan Poe's thoughts of the damozel's still-living lover appear 'The Raven' (1845), a poem he admired. 'I saw In the poem in parentheses. that Poe had done the utmost it was possible to do 2. It seemed to her. with the grief of the lover on earth, and so I deter
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1444 / DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
Nothing: the autumn-fall of leaves. The whole year sets apace.)
25 It was the rampart of God's house That she was standing on; By God built over the sheer depth The which is Space begun; So high, that looking downward thence 30 She scarce could see the sun.
It lies in heaven, across the flood Of ether, as a bridge. Beneath the tides of day and night With flame and darkness ridge 35 The void, as low as where this earth Spins like a fretful midge.
Around her, lovers, newly met 'Mid deathless love's acclaims,
Spoke evermore among themselves 40 Their heart-remembered names; And the souls mounting up to God
Went by her like thin flames.
And stilj she bowed herself and stooped Out of the circling charm; 45 Until her bosom must have made The bar she leaned on warm,
A detail from The Blessed Damozel (1875-78). In the second phase of his painting career, Rossetti turned from the religious and literary subjects of his early work (see, for instance, his illustration for 'The Lady of Shalott,' p. 1118) to huge sensual portraits of women, often designed as companion pieces to his poems. For another example of Rossetti's visual art, see the frontispiece he drew for his sister Christina's first volume of poems, p. 1470.
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THE BLESSED DAMOZEL / 1445
And the lilies lay as if asleep
Along her bended arm. From the fixed place of heaven she saw
50 Time like a pulse shake fierce
Through all the worlds. Her gaze still strove
Within the gulf to pierce
Its path; and now she spoke as when
The stars sang in their spheres. 55 The sun was gone now; the curled moon
Was like a little feather
