Dante Gabriel Rossetti

RE'S a female bard, grim as a fakier,
Who daily grows shakier and shakier

IS Soul fared forth (as from the deep
The father-songster plies the hour-long quest),
To feed his soul-brood hungering in the nest;
But his warm Heart, the mother-bird,

Because our talk was of the
And moon-track of the journeying face of Fate,
Her tremulous kisses faltered at love's
And her eyes dreamed against a distant goal:

The
Piled deep below the screening apple-branch They lie with bitter apples in their hands:
And some are only ancient bones that blanch,
And some had ships that last year's wind did launch,

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

By what word's power, the key of paths untrod,
Shall I the difficult deeps of Love explore,
Till parted waves of Song yield up the
Even as that sea which Israel crossed dryshod

In whomsoe'er, since Poesy began,
A Poet most of all men we may scan,
Burns of all poets is the most a Man