lyrical poetry - OUDL Home

ARNOLD AND PRE-RAPHAELITE GROUPAnd the souls mounting up to GodWent by her like thin flames.From the fixed place of Heaven she sawTime like a pulse shake fierceThrough all the worlds.In My Sister's Sleep the same kind of intense effect issecured by more homely but equally vivid details:Without, there was a cold moon up,Of winter radiance sheer and thin ;The hollow halo it was inWas like an icy crystal cup.Through the small room, with subtle soundOf flame, by vents the fireshine droveAnd reddened. In its dim alcoveThe mirror shed a clearness round.Our mother rose from where she sat:Her needles, as she laid them down,Met'lightly, and her silken gownSettled : no other noise than that.I do not know that Rossetti wrote any poems that givemore the effect of something new and surprising thanthese, except the two in which he revived the intensedevotional mood of mediaeval Catholicism, World'sWorth and Ave, both much elaborated in revisions,the latter at some cost. For over-elaboration was oneeffect of Rossetti's devotion to his art, and to my mindmost of the ballads to which I have referred at theoutset suffer from it; and so notably do the sonnetsin The House of Life. For the supernatural and thedevotional were not the only moods which Rossettirecaptured from Italian poetry and painting. In the105