Page:William Blake in his relation to Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1911).djvu/36

— 36 — "Why did you melt your waxen man, Sister Helen? To-day is the third since you began." "The time was long, yet the time ran. Little brother." (O Mother, Mary Mother, Three days to-day between Hell and Heaven!) and the last stanza:

"Ah! what white thing at the door has cross'd, Sister Helen? Ah! what is this that sighs in the frost?" "A soul that's lost as mine is lost, Little brother!" (O Mother, Mary Mother, Lost, lost, all lost, between Hell and Heaven!)

These repetitions of the same words as a burden Rossetti uses with more or less effect in many other poems except the above mentioned. We find it in "Eden Bower", "A Death-Parting", "The Cloud Confines", and several others. I believe to have made sufficiently clear now that we have to see the influence of Blake in the foregoing qualities of Rossetti's poetry. It will, however, have been noticed that like the influence of the philosophy of Blake, the influence of his poetry, though distinct and by no means insignificant, has been of a general kind. Blake's style and metre appealed to Rossetti, but we cannot say that one particular poem of Blake took a stronger hold on Rossetti's imagination than another. A direct influence of Blake's poetry cannot be traced, as far as I can see, in any of Rossetti's poems, a single one excepted. This poem is "The Blessed Damozel." It has been written as a contribution for the Germ, when Rossetti was still in the prime of his youth; it is among the first and at the same time one of the best, if not the very best