Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

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

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882)

Parted Love

WHAT shall be said of this embattled day

And armed occupation of this night

By all thy foes beleaguered,—now when sight

Nor sound denotes the loved one far away?

Of these thy vanquished hours what shalt thou say,—

As every sense to which she dealt delight

Now labours lonely o’er the stark noon-height

To reach the sunset’s desolate disarray?

Stand still, fond fettered wretch! while Memory’s art

Parades the Past before thy face, and lures

Thy spirit to her passionate portraitures:

Till the tempestuous tide-gates flung apart

Flood with wild will the hollows of thy heart,

And thy heart rends thee, and thy body endures.