Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. IV. The Nineteenth Century: Wordsworth to Rossetti

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882)

The Monochord

(Written during music)

IS it this sky’s vast vault or ocean’s sound

That is Life’s self and draws my life from me,

And by instinct ineffable decree

Holds my breath quailing on the bitter bound?

Nay, is it Life or Death, thus thunder-crown’d,

That ’mid the tide of all emergency

Now notes my separate wave, and to what sea

Its difficult eddies labour in the ground?

Oh! what is this that knows the road I came,

The flame turned cloud, the cloud returned to flame,

The lifted shifted steeps and all the way?—

That draws round me at last this wind-warm space,

And in regenerate rapture turns my face

Upon the devious coverts of dismay?