The Blessed Damozel / D.G. Rossetti

"The Blessed Damozel" is perhaps the best known poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti as well as the title of some of his best known paintings.

The Blessed Damozel
THE BLESSED 1 damozel lean’d out From the gold bar of Heaven; Her eyes were deeper than the depth Of waters still’d at even; She had three lilies in her hand, 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, For service meetly worn; Her hair that lay along 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 quiet 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.	…Yet now, and in this place,	 Surely she lean’d o’er me—her hair	 Fell all about my face….	Nothing: the autumn-fall of leaves.	  The whole year sets apace.) It was the rampart of God’s house That she was standing on: By God built over the sheer depth The which is Space begun; So high, that looking downward thence She scarce could see the sun. It lies in 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. Around her, lovers, newly met ’Mid deathless love’s acclaims, Spoke evermore among themselves Their heart-remember’d names; And the souls mounting up to God Went by her like thin flames. And still she bow’d herself and stoop’d Out of the circling charm; Until her bosom must have made The bar she lean’d on warm, And the lilies lay as if asleep Along her bended arm. From the fix’d place of Heaven she saw Time like a pulse shake fierce Through all the worlds. Her gaze still strove Within the gulf to pierce Its path; and now she spoke as when The stars sand in their spheres. The sun was gone now; the curl’d moon Was like a little feather Fluttering far down the gulf; and now She spoke through the still weather. Her voice was like the voice the stars Had when they sang together. (Ah sweet! Even now, in that bird’s song,	 Strove not her accents there,	Fain to be hearken’d? When those bells	  Possess’d the mid-day air,	Strove not her steps to reach my side	  Down all the echoing stair?) “I wish that he were come to me, For he will come,” she said. “Have I not pray’d in Heaven?—on earth, Lord, Lord, has he not pray’d? Are not two prayers a perfect strength? And shall I feel afraid? “When round his head the aureole clings, And he is cloth’d in white, I ’ll take his hand and go with him To the deep wells of light; As unto a stream we will step down, And bathe there in God’s sight. “We two will lie i’ the shadow of Occult, withheld, untrod, Whose lamps are stirr’d continually With prayer sent up to God; And see our old prayers, granted, melt Each like a little cloud. “We two will lie i’ the shadow of That living mystic tree Within whose secret growth the Dove Is sometimes felt to be, While every leaf that His plumes touch Saith His Name audibly. “And I myself will teach to him, I myself, lying so, The songs I sing here; which his voice Shall pause in, hush’d and slow, And find some knowledge at each pause, Or some new thing to know.” (Alas! we two, we two, thou say’st!	 Yea, one wast thou with me	That once of old. But shall God lift	  To endless unity	        The soul whose likeness with thy soul	  Was but its love for thee?) “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. “Circlewise sit they, with bound locks And foreheads garlanded; 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 will I lay my cheek 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. “Herself shall bring us, hand in hand, To Him round whom all souls Kneel, the clear-ranged unnumber’d heads Bow’d with their aureoles: And angels meeting us shall sing To their citherns and citoles. “There will I ask of Christ the Lord Thus much for him and me:— Only to live as once on earth With Love,—only to be, As then awhile, forever now Together, I and he.” She gazed and listen’d and then said, Less sad of speech than mild,— “All this is when he comes.” She ceas’d. The light thrill’d towards her, fill’d With angels in strong level flight. Her eyes pray’d, and she smil’d (I saw her smile.) But soon their path Was vague in distant spheres: And then she cast her arms along The golden barriers, And laid her face between her hands, And wept. (I heard her tears.)

Poem
The poem was first published in 1850 in the Pre-Raphaelite journal The Germ. Rossetti subsequently revised the poem twice and republished it in 1856, 1870 and 1873.

The poem was partially inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's poem "The Raven", with its depiction of a lover grieving on Earth over the death of his loved one. Rossetti chose to represent the situation in reverse. The poem describes the damozel observing her lover from heaven, and her unfulfilled yearning for their reunion in heaven.

The poem also was the inspiration for Claude Debussy's La Damoiselle élue (1888), a cantata for two soloists, female choir, and orchestra.

The first 4 stanzas of the poem are inscribed on the frame of the painting.

Paintings
The Blessed Damozel is the only one of Rossetti's paired pictures and poems in which the poem was completed first. Friends and patrons repeatedly urged Rossetti to illustrate his most famous poem, and he finally accepted a commission from William Graham in February 1871. After the work was completed Graham requested a predella, the lower part of the painting, on December 31, 1877. His total cost was £1157. Alexa Wilding modelled the damozel in Paradise, Wilfred John Hawtrey modelled the child–angel, and the probable model for the left–hand angel was May Morris. Another, later version is in the Lady Lever Art Gallery.

Frederick Richards Leyland commissioned eighteen paintings from Rossetti, not counting unfulfilled commissions. Soon after Leyland acquired his first Rossetti painting, he and Rossetti explored the idea of a Rossetti triptych, which was eventually formed with Mnemosyne, an 1879 replica of The Blessed Damozel painted by Rossetti himself, and Proserpine. Three additional Rossetti paintings were then hung in Leyland's drawing room, all of which Leyland called "stunners."

In popular culture
Several pieces of music were based on the poem, including those for orchestra by Debussy, Granville Bantock (1891), Edgar Bainton (1907), Ernest Farrar (1907); for piano by Arnold Bax (1906); for string quartet by Benjamin Burrows (1927); and a 1928 choral by Julius Harrison. A 2007 modern popular song of the same name by Tangerine Dream appears on their album Madcap's Flaming Duty.