Dante Gabriel Rossetti

12 May 1828 – 9 April 1882 / London / England

Last Love [canzone]

Love hath a chamber all of imagery;
And there is one dim nook,
A little storied web wherein my heart
From leaf to leaf is read as in a book.

One part in the middle of the web begun and left unfinished;
a face with ravelled threads falling over it and hiding it. Love says
that the time has come to resume and finish this part of the web,
though much has come between since it was begun.

For the garlands of heaven were all laid by,
And the Daylight sucked at the breasts of a Lie.

The wounded heart and the dying swan
Were side by side
Where the rushes coil with the turn of the tide—
The hart and the swan.

Withinthose eyes the sedulous yearning throe,
And all the evil of my heart
A thousand times forgotten.

Ah if you had been lost for many years,
And from the dead to-day were risen again!
185 Total read