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Home  »  The Book of Sorrow  »  Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882)

Andrew Macphail, comp. The Book of Sorrow. 1916.

He and I

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882)

WHENCE came his feet into my field, and why?

How is it that he sees it all so drear?

How do I see his seeing, and how hear

The name his bitter silence knows it by?

This was the little fold of separate sky

Whose pasturing clouds in the soul’s atmosphere

Drew living light from one continual year:

How should he find it lifeless? He, or I?

Lo! this new Self now wanders round my field,

With plaints for every flower, and for each tree

A moan, the sighing wind’s auxiliary:

And o’er sweet waters of my life, that yield

Unto his lips no draught but tears unseal’d,

Even in my place he weeps. Even I, not he.