Poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

The House of Life. Sonnet 21. Love-Sweetness

Sweet dimness of her loosened hair's downfall
About thy face; her sweet hands round thy head
In gracious fostering union garlanded;
Her tremulous smiles; her glances' sweet recall
Of love; her murmuring sighs memorial;
Her mouth's culled sweetness by thy kisses shed
On cheeks and neck and eyelids, and so led
Back to her mouth which answers there for all:--

What sweeter than these things, except the thing
In lacking which all these would lose their sweet:--
The confident heart's still fervour; the swift beat
And soft subsidence of the spirit's wing,
Then when it feels, in cloud-girt wayfaring,
The breath of kindred plumes against its feet?

1. The House of Life. Sonnet 90. «Retro Me, Sathana!»
2. Johannes Ronge
3. At Issue
4. Ashore at Dover
5. To Thomas Woolner

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