Page:Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1918.djvu/984

 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 781 Soul's Beauty

UNDER the arch of Life, where love and death, Terror and mystery, guard her shrine, I saw Beauty enthroned, and though her gaze struck awe, I drew it in as simply as my breath. Hers are the eyes which, over and beneath,

The sky and sea bend on thee, which can draw, By sea or sky or woman, to one law, The allotted bondman of her palm and wreath.

This is that Lady Beau-ty, in whose praise

Thy voice and hand shake still, long known to thee By flying hair and fluttering hem, the beat Following her daily of thy heart and feet, How passionately and irretrievably, In what fond flight, how many ways and days'

7<?2 The Choice

THINK thou and act, to-morrow thou shalt die. Outstretched in the sun's warmth upon the shore, Thou say'st. 'Man's measured path is all gone o'er. Up all his years, steeply, with strain and sigh, Man clomb until he touch'd the truth, and I, Even I, am he whom it was destined for.' How should this bc ? Art thou then so much more Than they who sow'd, that thou shouldst reap thereby ?

Nay, come up hither. From this wave-wash'd mound Unto the furthest flood-brim look with me,

Then reach on with thy thought till it be drown'd. Miles and miles distant though the last line be,

And though thy soul sail leagues and leagues beyond, Still, leagues beyond those leagues, there is more sea.

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