Than that whose spring in blessings ran Which praised the bounteous husbandman,0 farmer Ere yet, in days of hankering breath,
110 The lilies sickened unto death.
What, Jenny, are your lilies dead?
Aye, and the snow-white leaves are spread
Like winter on the garden-bed.
But you had roses left in May,?
ii5 They were not gone too. Jenny, nay,
But must your roses die, and those
Their purfled6 buds that should unclose?
Even so; the leaves are curled apart,
Still red as from the broken heart,
120 And here's the naked stem of thorns.
Nay, nay, mere words. Here nothing warns
As yet of winter. Sickness here
Or want alone could waken fear,?
Nothing but passion wrings a tear.
125 Except when there may rise unsought
Haply at times a passing thought
Of the old days which seem to be
Much older than any history
That is written in any book;
130 When she would lie in fields and look Along the ground through the blown grass
And wonder where the city was, Far out of sight, whose broil and bale0 turmoil and evil They told her then for a child's tale.
135
Jenny, you know the city now.
A child can tell the tale there, how
Some things which are not yet enroll'd
In market-lists are bought and sold
Even till the early Sunday light,
5. Matthew 6.28. 6. With a decorative edging.
.
1452 / DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
140 When Saturday night is market-night
Everywhere, be it dry or wet,
And market-night in the Haymarket.7
Our learned London children know,
Poor Jenny, all your pride and woe;
145 Have seen your lifted silken skirt
Advertise dainties through the dirt;
Have seen your coach-wheels splash rebuke
On virtue; and have learned your look
When, wealth and health slipped past, you stare
150 Along the streets alone, and there, Round the long park, across the bridge,
The cold lamps at the pavement's edge
Wind on together and apart,
A fiery serpent for your heart.
Let the thoughts pass, an empty cloud I
Suppose I were to think aloud,?
What if to her all this were said?
