Blessed Damozel British Literature 19 th century PDF

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Summary

The Blassed DamozelAbout authorThe English painter and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) was a cofounder of the PreRaphaelite Brotherhood. His works show an impassioned, mystic imagination in strong contrast to the banal sentimentality of contemporary Victorian art.Born on May 12, 1828, of Ang...

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The Blassed Damozel

About author

The English painter and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) was a cofounder of the PreRaphaelite Brotherhood. His works show an impassioned, mystic imagination in strong contrast to the banal sentimentality of contemporary Victorian art.

Born on May 12, 1828, of Anglo-Italian parentage, Dante Gabriel Rossetti was steeped throughout childhood in the atmosphere of medieval Italy, which became a major source of his subject matter and artistic inspiration. After 2 years in the Royal Academy schools he worked briefly under Ford Madox Brown in 1848.

Shortly after Rossetti joined William Holman Hunt’s studio later that year, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was formed, in Hunt’s words, “to do battle against the frivolous art of the day.” An association of artists so varied in artistic style, technique, and expressive spirit as the PreRaphaelites could not long survive, and it was principally owing to Rossetti’s forceful, almost hypnotic personality that the Brotherhood held together long enough to achieve the critical and popular recognition necessary for the success of its crusade.

His Paintings

Rossetti did not have the natural technical proficiency that is evident in the minute detail and brilliant color of a typical Pre-Raphaelite painting, and his early oil paintings, the Girlhood of Mary Virgin (1849) and the Ecce Ancilla Domini (1850), were produced only at the expense of great technical effort. In the less demanding medium of watercolor, however, Rossetti clearly revealed his intense, compressed imaginative power. The series of small watercolors of the 1850s culminates in such masterpieces as Dante’s Dream (1856) and the Wedding of St. George and the Princess Sabra (1857), characteristic products of Rossetti’s inflamed sensibility, with typically irrational perspective and lighting, glowing color, and forceful figures.

In almost all his paintings of the 1850s Rossetti used Elizabeth Siddal as his model. Discovered in a hatshop in 1850, she was adopted by the Brotherhood as their ideal of feminine beauty. In 1852 she became exclusively Rossetti’s model, and in 1860 his wife. Beset by growing melancholy, she committed suicide 2 years later. Rossetti buried a manuscript of his poems in her coffin, a characteristically dramatic gesture which he later regretted. Beata Beatrix (1863), a posthumous portrait of Elizabeth Siddal, the Beatrice to his Dante, is one of Rossetti’s most deeply felt paintings: it is his last masterpiece and the first in a series of symbolical female portraits, which declined gradually in quality as his interest in painting decreased.

His Poetry

Although early in his career poetry was for Rossetti simply a relaxation from painting, later on writing gradually became more important to him, and in 1871 he wrote to Ford Madox Brown, “I wish one could live by writing poetry. I think I’d see painting d——d if I could… .” In 1861 he published his translations from Dante and other early Italian poets, reflecting the medieval preoccupations of his finest paintings. In 1869 the manuscript of his early poems was recovered from his wife's coffin and published the next year.

Rossetti’s early poems under strong Pre-Raphaelite influence, such as “The Blessed Damozel”

(1850; subsequently revised) and “The Portrait,” have a sensitive innocence and a strong mystical passion paralleled by his paintings of the 1850s. As his interest in painting declined, Rossetti’s poetic craftsmanship improved, until in his latest works, such as “Rose Mary” and “The White Ship” (both included in Ballads and Sonnets,1881), his use of richly colored word textures achieves a sumptuous grandeur of expression and sentiment.

At his death on April 9, 1882, Rossetti had reached a position of artistic prominence, and his spirit was a significant influence on the cultural developments of the late 19th century. Although his technique was not always the equal of his powerful feeling, his imaginative genius earned him a place in the ranks of English visionary artists

THE BLESSÈD Damozel lean’d out o From the gold bar of Heaven: Her blue grave eyes were deeper much Than a deep water, even. She had three lilies in her hand,

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And the stars in her hair were seven.

Her robe, ungirt from clasp to hem, No wrought flowers did adorn, But a white rose of Mary’s gift On the neck meetly worn;

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And her hair, lying down her back, Was yellow like ripe corn.

Herseem’d she scarce had been a day One of God’s choristers; The wonder was not yet quite gone From that still look of hers; Albeit, to them she left, her day Had counted as ten years.

(To one it is ten years of years:

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… Yet now, here in this place, Surely she lean’d o’er me,—her hair Fell all about my face…

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Nothing: the Autumn-fall of leaves. The whole year sets apace.)

It was the terrace of God’s house

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That she was standing on,— By God built over the sheer depth In which Space is begun; So high, that looking downward thence, She scarce could see the sun.

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It lies from Heaven across the flood Of ether, as a bridge. Beneath, the tides of day and night With flame and darkness ridge The void, as low as where this earth Spins like a fretful midge.

But in those tracts, with her, it was The peace of utter light And silence. For no breeze may stir

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Along the steady flight

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Of seraphim; no echo there, Beyond all depth or height.

Heard hardly, some of her new friends, Playing at holy games, Spake, gentle-mouth’d, among themselves,

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Their virginal chaste names; And the souls, mounting up to God, Went by her like thin flames.

And still she bow’d herself, and stoop’d Into the vast waste calm;

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Till her bosom’s pressure must have made The bar she lean’d on warm, And the lilies lay as if asleep Along her bended arm.

From the fixt lull of Heaven, she saw Time, like a pulse, shake fierce Through all the worlds. Her gaze still strove, In that steep gulf, to pierce The swarm; and then she spoke, as when

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The stars sang in their spheres.

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‘I wish that he were come to me, For he will come,’ she said.

‘Have I not pray’d in solemn Heaven? On earth, has he not pray’d? Are not two prayers a perfect strength?

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And shall I feel afraid?

‘When round his head the aureole clings, And he is clothed in white, I’ll take his hand, and go with him To the deep wells of light, And we will step down as to a stream And bathe there in God’s sight.

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‘We two will stand beside that shrine, Occult, withheld, untrod, Whose lamps tremble continually With prayer sent up to God; And where each need, reveal’d, expects Its patient period.

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‘We two will lie i’ the shadow of That living mystic tree

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Within whose secret growth the Dove Sometimes is felt to be, While every leaf that His plumes touch Saith His name audibly.

‘And I myself will teach to him,—

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I myself, lying so,— The songs I sing here; which his mouth Shall pause in, hush’d and slow, Finding some knowledge at each pause, And some new thing to know.’

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(Alas! To her wise simple mind These things were all but known Before: they trembled on her sense,— Her voice had caught their tone. Alas for lonely Heaven! Alas For life wrung out alone!

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Alas, and though the end were reach’d?… Was thy part understood Or borne in trust? And for her sake Shall this too be found good?—

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May the close lips that knew not prayer Praise ever, though they would?)

‘We two,’ she said, ‘will seek the groves Where the lady Mary is, With her five handmaidens, whose names

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Are five sweet symphonies:— Cecily, Gertrude, Magdalen, Margaret and Rosalys.

‘Circle-wise sit they, with bound locks And bosoms coverèd;

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Into the fine cloth, white like flame, Weaving the golden thread, To fashion the birth-robes for them Who are just born, being dead.

‘He shall fear, haply, and be dumb. Then I will lay my cheek

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To his, and tell about our love, Not once abash’d or weak: And the dear Mother will approve My pride, and let me speak.

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‘Herself shall bring us, hand in hand, To Him round whom all souls Kneel—the unnumber’d solemn heads Bow’d with their aureoles: And Angels, meeting us, shall sing

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To their citherns and citoles.

‘There will I ask of Christ the Lord Thus much for him and me:— To have more blessing than on earth In nowise; but to be

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As then we were,—being as then At peace. Yea, verily.

‘Yea, verily; when he is come We will do thus and thus: Till this my vigil seem quite strange

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And almost fabulous; We two will live at once, one life; And peace shall be with us.’

She gazed, and listen’d, and then said, Less sad of speech than mild,—

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‘All this is when he comes.’ She ceased: The light thrill’d past her, fill’d With Angels, in strong level lapse. Her eyes pray’d, and she smiled.

(I saw her smile.) But soon their flight

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Was vague ’mid the poised spheres. And then she cast her arms along The golden barriers, And laid her face between her hands, And wept. (I heard her tears.)

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Summary

‘The Blessed Damozel’ by Dante Gabriel Rossetti is a traditional ballad that alternates it’s meter between iambic tetrameter, made of four beats per line, and iambic trimeter, containing three unstressed

followed by stressed, beats per line. Each stanza pf the poem is a sestet, meaning that it contains six lines. Additionally, Rossetti maintains the rhyme scheme of ABCBDB throughout the piece.

“The Blessed Damozel” by Dante Gabriel Rossetti is a ballad that is dedicated to the love between a woman trapped in heaven and a man stuck on Earth.

The poem begins with the speaker describing a woman who, leaning out from heaven, can be seen holding lilies in her hands. She is breathtakingly beautiful but also melancholy. It soon becomes clear that she left someone on Earth. There is a lover, who’s lines are written in first person and contained within parenthesis, that is heartbroken by her departure. They pine for one another across the extraordinarily vast expanse between the “ramparts” of “God’s house,” on which she is leaning, and Earth.

The damsel, sounding like bird song, speaks out loud for all to hear. She describes the love that the two share and how soon, because they have both prayed for it, they will be reunited. God will bring them together.

Once her beloved arrives in heaven she will show him all there is to see. They will meet the Virgin Mary and she will introduce them to Christ who will bless their love. The two will be able to finally live in the peace and solitude they did not get to experience on Earth. Unfortunately this is just a dream and after returning to reality the damsel breaks down crying once more at their separation.

Another summary

The poem is about a young woman who has died and is now waiting and yearning for her beloved to join her in heaven.

The first stanza sets the scene and describes a young woman (a damsel) leaning over the fence of heaven, looking down.

In the second stanza, the woman’s appearance is described as wearing simple clothing and her blonde her open.

The third stanza establishes that the woman has been dead for ten years, even though for her it has felt as one single day in heaven.

The fourth stanza introduces the first-person narrator whose speech is always set in brackets. He remembers the woman and feels watched by her.

Stanzas five and six describe the place the woman is staying in, the house of God in heaven, which lies far above the sun.

In stanzas seven to ten the woman is still standing on her spot, waiting and watching as the loved ones of countless other dead people join them in heaven, while she stays put, leaning over the fence, until she finally begins to speak.

In stanza eleven the narrator is speaking again, implying that the woman is waiting for him. Stanzas twelve to sixteen is the direct speech of the woman, lamenting the long wait. She is addressing God directly, asking if they have prayed enough for her beloved to join her in heaven and describes how she will help him settle in and learn the ways of heaven.

In stanza seventeen the narrator is speaking again, this time confirming that the woman is speaking about him and that he is her beloved.

In stanzas eighteen to twenty-two the woman is speaking again, saying how she will seek out the blessing of Mary for her beloved. She describes Mary and her maids and is confident that Mary will give her approval and bring her before Christ where the woman can ask to be reunited with the narrator.

The last two stanzas describe the woman standing again at her spot, waiting and hoping for the day they will be reunited. While she is hopeful at first, it soon becomes apparent that their reunion is unlikely and the poem closes with the narrator stating that he can hear the woman’s tears....