Dante Gabriel Rossetti Quotes

Unto the man of yearning thought And aspiration, to do nought Is in itself almost an act.

Sleepless with cold commemorative eyes.

Look in my face; my name is Might-have-been; I am also called No-more, Too-late, Farewell.

When vain desire at last and vain regret Go hand in hand to death, and all is vain, What shall assuage the unforgotten pain And teach the unforgetful to forget?

Give honour unto Luke Evangelist; For he it was (the aged legends say) Who first taught Art to fold her hands and pray.

I do not see them here; but after death God knows I know the faces I shall see, Each one a murdered self, with low last breath. ‘I am thyself,-what hast thou done to me?’ ‘And I-and I-thyself,’ (lo! each one saith,) ‘And thou thyself to all eternity!’

They die not,-for their life was death,-but cease; And round their narrow lips the mould falls close.

Lo! as that youth’s eyes burned at thine, so went Thy spell through him, and left his straight neck bent And round his heart one strangling golden hair.

’Tis visible silence, still as the hour-glass.

A sonnet is a moment’s monument,-Memorial from the Soul’s eternity To one dead deathless hour.

I have been here before, But when or how I cannot tell: I know the grass beyond the door, The sweet keen smell, The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.

‘We two,’ she said, ‘will seek the groves Where the lady Mary is, With her five handmaidens, whose names Are five sweet symphonies, Cecily, Gertrude, Magdalen, Margaret and Rosalys.’

And the souls mounting up to God Went by her like thin flames.

As low as where this earth Spins like a fretful midge.

Her hair that lay along her back Was yellow like ripe corn.

The blessed damozel leaned out From the gold bar of Heaven; Her eyes were deeper than the depth Of waters stilled at even; She had three lilies in her hand, And the stars in her hair were seven.