Page:The Fleshly school of poetry - Buchanan - 1872.djvu/76

 entire. Sonnet XXVIII., or "Still-born Love," will doubtless suggest to Mr. Rossetti's admirers other similar themes, and we shall speedily have poetry on "Love's Cross-birth" and "Love's Anæsthetics." Sonnets XXIX., XXX., and XXXI., Mr. Rossetti particularly challenges me to impeach; and I may at once admit that they are not nasty, though very, very silly.In Sonnet XXXII., however, we get back to the old imagery:—

"Even as the thistledown from pathsides dead Glean'd by a girl in autumns of her youth, Which one new year makes soft her marriage bed."

Mr. Rossetti is never so great as on "kisses" and "beds." In spite of euphuisms without end, we get nothing very spicy till we come to Sonnet XXXIX., one of those which Mr. Rossetti calls immaculate. Here, not content with picturing "Vain Virtues" as Virgins writhing in Hell, he describes the Fire as the Bridegroom, and pursues the metaphor to the very pit of beastliness:—

"Virgins whom the fiends compel Together now, in snake-bound shuddering sheaves Of anguish, while the scorching Bridegroom leaves Their refuse maidenhood (!) abominable!"

There are ten sonnets to come, but must I quote from them? Surely I have quoted already ad nauseam. After the sonnets comes "Love-Lily," which I have already given in full; then "First Love Remembered;" then "Plighted Promise," a lyric which I am bound to copy, as it has never been equalled since the famous

of the "Rejected Addresses:"—