Page:William Blake in his relation to Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1911).djvu/21

— 21 — of the other Praeraphaelites; this holds good in particular for his picture „Ecce Ancilla Domini". The eyes of the madonna seem full of kept-back tears, they plead for a deeper, warmer humanity than is conceivable with the pure Praeraphaelitic conception. This mysticism finds utterance, and this is very Blakean, in allegory and symbolism. From his early years we possess e.g. a very dark symbolical sonnet "The Vase of Life" . Human life is figured as a vase, sculptured with a bas-relief, representing a young man running a race, which he wins. A certain man of genius does not like others to crowd round the vase, he masters its imaged significance. He fills it with the rapid and ardent experiences of his career and at last it will hold its ashes. (William M. Rossetti).

In many of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's later sonnets we find again Blake's theory of "states". However, while Blake in personifying his states gave them names and even a feminine part, their weaker or better self, called "emanation", and with these imaginative beings created new myths, Dante Gabriel Rossetti does not go so far in the personification of his moods (Stimmungen). But though individual names do not occur for "states" yet we find that in many sonnets of Rossetti Blake's "states" or their "emanations" are put before our eyes. All of his sonnets are written, as Rossetti testifies in a letter to Mr. Sharp, "on some basis of special momentary emotion". For instance in the sonnet "He and I" we have to see a personified mood. It exhibits the surprise when a man finds out that he is no longer himself, no longer youthful and buoyant; how it is that he is old and dejected Lo! this new Self now wanders round my field. With plaints for every flower, and for each tree A moan," and he weeps o'er sweet waters of my life, that yield Unto his lips no draught, but tears unseal'd. Even in my place he weeps. Even I, not he".