Love-Lily

Love-Lily

Original Text
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Poems (Boston: Roberts Bros., 1870), pp. 237-38. PR 5240 E70 ROBA.
1Between the hands, between the brows,
2    Between the lips of Love-Lily,
3A spirit is born whose birth endows
4    My blood with fire to burn through me;
5Who breathes upon my gazing eyes,
6    Who laughs and murmurs in mine ear,
7At whose least touch my colour flies,
8    And whom my life grows faint to hear.
9Within the voice, within the heart,
10    Within the mind of Love-Lily,
11A spirit is born who lifts apart
12    His tremulous wings and looks at me;
13Who on my mouth his finger lays,
14    And shows, while whispering lutes confer,
15That Eden of Love's watered ways
16    Whose winds and spirits worship her.
17Brows, hands, and lips, heart, mind, and voice,
18    Kisses and words of Love-Lily,--
19Oh! bid me with your joy rejoice
20    Till riotous longing rest in me!
21Ah! let not hope be still distraught,
22    But find in her its gracious goal,
23Whose speech Truth knows not from her thought
24    Nor Love her body from her soul.
Publication Start Year
1870
RPO poem Editors
W. J. Alexander; William Hall Clawson
RPO Edition
RP (1916), p. 417; RPO 1997.
Rhyme