English Poetry III: From Tennyson to Whitman.
The Harvard Classics. 1909–14. |
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| 721. Heart’s Compass |
| | | Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882) |
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| SOMETIMES thou seem’st not as thyself alone, | |
| But as the meaning of all things that are; | |
| A breathless wonder, shadowing forth afar | |
| Some heavenly solstice hushed and halcyon; | |
| Whose unstirred lips are music’s visible tone; | 5 |
| Whose eyes the sun-gate of the soul unbar, | |
| Being of its furthest fires oracular— | |
| The evident heart of all life sown and mown. | |
| Even such love is; and is not thy name Love? | |
| Yea, by thy hand the Love-god rends apart | 10 |
| All gathering clouds of Night’s ambiguous art; | |
| Flings them far down, and sets thine eyes above; | |
| And simply, as some gage of flower or glove, | |
| Stakes with a smile the world against thy heart. | |
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