Page:William Blake in his relation to Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1911).djvu/16

— 16 — I think, that in the other poems of Rossetti where he expresses religious ideas we must see them in the same light as the foregoing. "Would God I knew there were a God to thank, When thanks rise in me" seems to be the true attitude of Rossetti towards religion. However, after the death of his beloved wife, he seems in the yearning after spiritual "consolation to find what he seeks for a while in the doctrines of spiritualism.

Very interesting is his correspondence about this subject, falling in the years 1865—67, and especially the letters of Baron Kirkup who tells of his experiences with different spirits as: Dante, Garibaldi etc., are highly remarkable. They show us that Dante Gabriel Rossetti's "disposition towards believing in the spiritualism was too much rather than too little" (William M. Rossetti) But though we hear of regular spiritual "seances" where Mrs. Marshall and her husband, she a wellknown medium of those days, gave evidence of their connection with the world of spirits, the influence of spiritualism on Rossetti's mind was not of a lasting character. In 1871 he writes: "The Past is over and fled; Named new, we name it the old, Thereof some tale hath been told. But no word comes from the dead ; Whether at all they be, Or whether as bond or free, Or whether they too were we. Or by what spell they have sped." (The Cloud Confines.) Clearly this poem indicates that the consolation Rossetti had found in spiritualism had been temporary, and that he had fallen back into the old disbelief. Still more clearly the same