Page:William Blake in his relation to Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1911).djvu/32

— 32 — Rossetti, who himself uses symbolical colours very often, that Blake here for the reason of symbolism deviates from the natural colouring of his tiger. However Rossetti did not think it necessary to seek for an explanation, convinced as he was, that this explanation, both here and in the aforenamed poem, was given already by the "slight tinge of insanity" which is to be found in Blake's works and more especially in the Prophetic Books. In this madness which Rossetti addicted to Blake we have to see the main reason of the comparatively small influence of the Prophetic Books on Rossetti. Moreover, unlike Blake, Rossetti never loses sight of the public he writes for, always the fancies of his imaginative brain are kept in proper check, remindful as he is of the limitations of the ordinary reader. "Above all ideal personalities", Rossetti writes in a letter probably to Mr. Sharp, "with which the poet must learn to identify himself, there is one supremely real namely that of his reader." This is another reason why we do not find in Rossetti's poetry much of the Prophetic Books; with their violent speech, fleeting ideas, and dark symbolism these are so altogether unfit for the general reader. But though, as a rule, Rossetti is more reserved in the expression of his ideas, yet occasionally we find a sonnet in which the turbulence of sounds, the choice of words, and the far too strong imagery are very Blakean.

Most distinctly this influence of Blake's Prophetic Books can be seen in a sonnet entitled "After the French Liberation of Italy", which sonnet I will quote fully, as it is not generally included in D. G. Rossetti's works. "Lo the twelfth year — the wedding-feast come round With years for months — and lo the babe new-born; Out of the womb's rank furnace cast forlorn, And with contagious effluence seamed and crowned. To hail his birth, what fiery tongues surround Hell's Pentecost — what clamour of all cries That swell from Absalom's scoff to Shinei's, One scornful gamut of tumultuous sound!