<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=360599" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Jenny</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Lazy laughing languid Jenny,<br>Fond of a kiss and fond of a guinea,<br>Whose head upon my knee to-night<br>Rests for a while, as if grown light<br>With all our dances and the sound<br>To which the wild tunes spun you round:<br>Fair Jenny mine, the thoughtless queen<br>Of kisses which the blush between<br>Could hardly make much daintier;<br>Whose eyes are as blue skies, whose hair<br>Is countless gold incomparable:<br>Fresh flower, scarce touched with signs that tell<br>Of Love's exuberant hotbed:—Nay,<br>Poor flower left torn since yesterday<br>Until to-morrow leave you bare;<br>Poor handful of bright spring-water<br>Flung in the whirlpool's shrieking face;<br>Poor shameful Jenny, full of grace<br>Thus with your head upon my knee;—<br>Whose person or whose purse may be<br>The lodestar of your reverie?<br>This room of yours, my Jenny, looks<br>A change from mine so full of books,<br>Whose serried ranks hold fast, forsooth,<br>So many captive hours of youth,—<br>The hours they thieve from day and night<br>To make one's cherished work come right,<br>And leave it wrong for all their theft,<br>Even as to-night my work was left:<br>Until I vowed that since my brain<br>And eyes of dancing seemed so fain,<br>My feet should have some dancing too:—<br>And thus it was I met with you.<br>Well, I suppose 'twas hard to part,<br>For here I am. And now, sweetheart,<br>You seem too tired to get to bed.<br>It was a careless life I led<br>When rooms like this were scarce so strange<br>Not long ago. What breeds the change,—<br>The many aims or the few years?<br>Because to-night it all appears<br>Something I do not know again.<br>The cloud's not danced out of my brain—<br>The cloud that made it turn and swim<br>While hour by hour the books grew dim.<br>Why, Jenny, as I watch you there,—<br>For all your wealth of loosened hair,<br>Your silk ungirdled and unlac'd<br>And warm sweets open to the waist,<br>All golden in the lamplight's gleam,—<br>You know not what a book you seem,<br>Half-read by lightning in a dream!<br>How should you know, my Jenny? Nay,<br>And I should be ashamed to say:—<br>Poor beauty, so well worth a kiss!<br>But while my thought runs on like this<br>With wasteful whims more than enough,<br>I wonder what you're thinking of.<br>If of myself you think at all,<br>What is the thought?—conjectural<br>On sorry matters best unsolved?—<br>Or inly is each grace revolved<br>To fit me with a lure?—or (sad<br>To think!) perhaps you're merely glad<br>That I'm not drunk or ruffianly<br>And let you rest upon my knee.<br>For sometimes, were the truth confess'd,<br>You're thankful for a little rest,—<br>Glad from the crush to rest within,<br>From the heart-sickness and the din<br>Where envy's voice at virtue's pitch<br>Mocks you because your gown is rich;<br>And from the pale girl's dumb rebuke,<br>Whose ill-clad grace and toil-worn look<br>Proclaim the strength that keeps her weak,<br>And other nights than yours bespeak;<br>And from the wise unchildish elf,<br>To schoolmate lesser than himself<br>Pointing you out, what thing you are:—<br>Yes, from the daily jeer and jar,<br>From shame and shame's outbraving too,<br>Is rest not sometimes sweet to you?—<br>But most from the hatefulness of man,<br>Who spares not to end what he began,<br>Whose acts are ill and his speech ill,<br>Who, having used you at his will,<br>Thrusts you aside, as when I dine<br>I serve the dishes and the wine.<br>Well, handsome Jenny mine, sit up:<br>I've filled our glasses, let us sup,<br>And do not let me think of you,<br>Lest shame of yours suffice for two.<br>What, still so tired? Well, well then, keep<br>Your head there, so you do not sleep;<br>But that the weariness may pass<br>And leave you merry, take this glass.<br>Ah! lazy lily hand, more bless'd<br>If ne'er in rings it had been dress'd<br>Nor ever by a glove conceal'd!<br>Behold the lilies of the field,<br>They toil not neither do they spin;<br>(So doth the ancient text begin,—<br>Not of such rest as one of these<br>Can share.) Another rest and ease<br>Along each summer-sated path<br>From its new lord the garden hath,<br>Than that whose spring in blessings ran<br>Which praised the bounteous husbandman,<br>Ere yet, in days of hankering breath,<br>The lilies sickened unto death.<br>What, Jenny, are your lilies dead?<br>Aye, and the snow-white leaves are spread<br>Like winter on the garden-bed.<br>But you had roses left in May,—<br>They were not gone too. Jenny, nay,<br>But must your roses die, and those<br>Their purfled buds that should unclose?<br>Even so; the leaves are curled apart,<br>Still red as from the broken heart,<br>And here's the naked stem of thorns.<br>Nay, nay, mere words. Here nothing warns<br>As yet of winter. Sickness here<br>Or want alone could waken fear,—<br>Nothing but passion wrings a tear.<br>Except when there may rise unsought<br>Haply at times a passing thought<br>Of the old days which seem to be<br>Much older than any history<br>That is written in any book;<br>When she would lie in fields and look<br>Along the ground through the blown grass<br>And wonder where the city was,<br>Far out of sight, whose broil and bale<br>They told her then for a child's tale.<br>Jenny, you know the city now.<br>A child can tell the tale there, how<br>Some things which are not yet enroll'd<br>In market-lists are bought and sold<br>Even till the early Sunday light,<br>When Saturday night is market-night<br>Everywhere, be it dry or wet,<br>And market-night in the Haymarket.<br>Our learned London children know,<br>Poor Jenny, all your pride and woe;<br>Have seen your lifted silken skirt<br>Advertise dainties through the dirt;<br>Have seen your coach-wheels splash rebuke<br>On virtue; and have learned your look<br>When, wealth and health slipped past, you stare<br>Along the streets alone, and there,<br>Round the long park, across the bridge,<br>The cold lamps at the pavement's edge<br>Wind on together and apart,<br>A fiery serpent for your heart.<br>Let the thoughts pass, an empty cloud!<br>Suppose I were to think aloud,—<br>What if to her all this were said?<br>Why, as a volume seldom read<br>Being opened halfway shuts again,<br>So might the pages of her brain<br>Be parted at such words, and thence<br>Close back upon the dusty sense.<br>For is there hue or shape defin'd<br>In Jenny's desecrated mind,<br>Where all contagious currents meet,<br>A Lethe of the middle street?<br>Nay, it reflects not any face,<br>Nor sound is in its sluggish pace,<br>But as they coil those eddies clot,<br>And night and day remember not.<br>Why, Jenny, you're asleep at last!—<br>Asleep, poor Jenny, hard and fast,—<br>So young and soft and tired; so fair,<br>With chin thus nestled in your hair,<br>Mouth quiet, eyelids almost blue<br>As if some sky of dreams shone through!<br>Just as another woman sleeps!<br>Enough to throw one's thoughts in heaps<br>Of doubt and horror,—what to say<br>Or think,—this awful secret sway,<br>The potter's power over the clay!<br>Of the same lump (it has been said)<br>For honour and dishonour made,<br>Two sister vessels. Here is one.<br>My cousin Nell is fond of fun,<br>And fond of dress, and change, and praise,<br>So mere a woman in her ways:<br>And if her sweet eyes rich in youth<br>Are like her lips that tell the truth,<br>My cousin Nell is fond of love.<br>And she's the girl I'm proudest of.<br>Who does not prize her, guard her well?<br>The love of change, in cousin Nell,<br>Shall find the best and hold it dear:<br>The unconquered mirth turn quieter<br>Not through her own, through others' woe:<br>The conscious pride of beauty glow<br>Beside another's pride in her,<br>One little part of all they share.<br>For Love himself shall ripen these<br>In a kind soil to just increase<br>Through years of fertilizing peace.<br>Of the same lump (as it is said)<br>For honour and dishonour made,<br>Two sister vessels. Here is one.<br>It makes a goblin of the sun.<br>So pure,—so fall'n! How dare to think<br>Of the first common kindred link?<br>Yet, Jenny, till the world shall burn<br>It seems that all things take their turn;<br>And who shall say but this fair tree<br>May need, in changes that may be,<br>Your children's children's charity?<br>Scorned then, no doubt, as you are scorn'd!<br>Shall no man hold his pride forewarn'd<br>Till in the end, the Day of Days,<br>At Judgment, one of his own race,<br>As frail and lost as you, shall rise,—<br>His daughter, with his mother's eyes?<br>How Jenny's clock ticks on the shelf!<br>Might not the dial scorn itself<br>That has such hours to register?<br>Yet as to me, even so to her<br>Are golden sun and silver moon,<br>In daily largesse of earth's boon,<br>Counted for life-coins to one tune.<br>And if, as blindfold fates are toss'd,<br>Through some one man this life be lost,<br>Shall soul not somehow pay for soul?<br>Fair shines the gilded aureole<br>In which our highest painters place<br>Some living woman's simple face.<br>And the stilled features thus descried<br>As Jenny's long throat droops aside,—<br>The shadows where the cheeks are thin,<br>And pure wide curve from ear to chin,—<br>With Raffael's, Leonardo's hand<br>To show them to men's souls, might stand,<br>Whole ages long, the whole world through,<br>For preachings of what God can do.<br>What has man done here? How atone,<br>Great God, for this which man has done?<br>And for the body and soul which by<br>Man's pitiless doom must now comply<br>With lifelong hell, what lullaby<br>Of sweet forgetful second birth<br>Remains? All dark. No sign on earth<br>What measure of God's rest endows<br>The many mansions of his house.<br>If but a woman's heart might see<br>Such erring heart unerringly<br>For once! But that can never be.<br>Like a rose shut in a book<br>In which pure women may not look,<br>For its base pages claim control<br>To crush the flower within the soul;<br>Where through each dead rose-leaf that clings,<br>Pale as transparent Psyche-wings,<br>To the vile text, are traced such things<br>As might make lady's cheek indeed<br>More than a living rose to read;<br>So nought save foolish foulness may<br>Watch with hard eyes the sure decay;<br>And so the life-blood of this rose,<br>Puddled with shameful knowledge, flows<br>Through leaves no chaste hand may unclose:<br>Yet still it keeps such faded show<br>Of when 'twas gathered long ago,<br>That the crushed petals' lovely grain,<br>The sweetness of the sanguine stain,<br>Seen of a woman's eyes, must make<br>Her pitiful heart, so prone to ache,<br>Love roses better for its sake:—<br>Only that this can never be:—<br>Even so unto her sex is she.<br>Yet, Jenny, looking long at you,<br>The woman almost fades from view.<br>A cipher of man's changeless sum<br>Of lust, past, present, and to come,<br>Is left. A riddle that one shrinks<br>To challenge from the scornful sphinx.<br>Like a toad within a stone<br>Seated while Time crumbles on;<br>Which sits there since the earth was curs'd<br>For Man's transgression at the first;<br>Which, living through all centuries,<br>Not once has seen the sun arise;<br>Whose life, to its cold circle charmed,<br>The earth's whole summers have not warmed;<br>Which always—whitherso the stone<br>Be flung—sits there, deaf, blind, alone;—<br>Aye, and shall not be driven out<br>Till that which shuts him round about<br>Break at the very Master's stroke,<br>And the dust thereof vanish as smoke,<br>And the seed of Man vanish as dust:—<br>Even so within this world is Lust.<br>Come, come, what use in thoughts like this?<br>Poor little Jenny, good to kiss,—<br>You'd not believe by what strange roads<br>Thought travels, when your beauty goads<br>A man to-night to think of toads!<br>Jenny, wake up…. Why, there's the dawn!<br>And there's an early waggon drawn<br>To market, and some sheep that jog<br>Bleating before a barking dog;<br>And the old streets come peering through<br>Another night that London knew;<br>And all as ghostlike as the lamps.<br>So on the wings of day decamps<br>My last night's frolic. Glooms begin<br>To shiver off as lights creep in<br>Past the gauze curtains half drawn-to,<br>And the lamp's doubled shade grows blue,—<br>Your lamp, my Jenny, kept alight,<br>Like a wise virgin's, all one night!<br>And in the alcove coolly spread<br>Glimmers with dawn your empty bed;<br>And yonder your fair face I see<br>Reflected lying on my knee,<br>Where teems with first foreshadowings<br>Your pier-glass scrawled with diamond rings:<br>And on your bosom all night worn<br>Yesterday's rose now droops forlorn,<br>But dies not yet this summer morn.<br>And now without, as if some word<br>Had called upon them that they heard,<br>The London sparrows far and nigh<br>Clamour together suddenly;<br>And Jenny's cage-bird grown awake<br>Here in their song his part must take,<br>Because here too the day doth break.<br>And somehow in myself the dawn<br>Among stirred clouds and veils withdrawn<br>Strikes greyly on her. Let her sleep.<br>But will it wake her if I heap<br>These cushions thus beneath her head<br>Where my knee was? No,—there's your bed,<br>My Jenny, while you dream. And there<br>I lay among your golden hair,<br>Perhaps the subject of your dreams,<br>These golden coins.<br>For still one deems<br>That Jenny's flattering sleep confers<br>New magic on the magic purse,—<br>Grim web, how clogged with shrivelled flies!<br>Between the threads fine fumes arise<br>And shape their pictures in the brain.<br>There roll no streets in glare and rain,<br>Nor flagrant man-swine whets his tusk;<br>But delicately sighs in musk<br>The homage of the dim boudoir;<br>Or like a palpitating star<br>Thrilled into song, the opera-night<br>Breathes faint in the quick pulse of light;<br>Or at the carriage-window shine<br>Rich wares for choice; or, free to dine,<br>Whirls through its hour of health (divine<br>For her) the concourse of the Park.<br>And though in the discounted dark<br>Her functions there and here are one,<br>Beneath the lamps and in the sun<br>There reigns at least the acknowledged belle<br>Apparelled beyond parallel.<br>Ah Jenny, yes, we know your dreams.<br>For even the Paphian Venus seems<br>A goddess o'er the realms of love,<br>When silver-shrined in shadowy grove:<br>Aye, or let offerings nicely plac'd<br>But hide Priapus to the waist,<br>And whoso looks on him shall see<br>An eligible deity.<br>Why, Jenny, waking here alone<br>May help you to remember one,<br>Though all the memory's long outworn<br>Of many a double-pillowed morn.<br>I think I see you when you wake,<br>And rub your eyes for me, and shake<br>My gold, in rising, from your hair,<br>A Danaë for a moment there.<br>Jenny, my love rang true! for still<br>Love at first sight is vague, until<br>That tinkling makes him audible.<br>And must I mock you to the last,<br>Ashamed of my own shame,—aghast<br>Because some thoughts not born amiss<br>Rose at a poor fair face like this?<br>Well, of such thoughts so much I know:<br>In my life, as in hers, they show,<br>By a far gleam which I may near,<br>A dark path I can strive to clear.<br>Only one kiss. Good-bye, my dear.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Dante+Gabriel+Rossetti">Dante Gabriel Rossetti</a><div class=q> <img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share"> <script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=360599" data-title="Jenny de Dante Gabriel Rossetti" data-description="Lazy laughing languid Jenny, Fond of a kiss and fond of a guinea, Whose head upon my knee to-night Rests for a while, as if grown light With all our dances and the sound To which the wild tunes spun you round: Fair Jenny mine, the thoughtless quee..."></div> </div> </div>

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