Dante Gabriel Rossetti Quotes

Sometimes thou seem'st not as thyself alone, But as the meaning of all things that are.

Look in my face; my name is Might-have-been; I am also call'd No-more, Too-late, Farewell

The worst moment for the atheist is when he is really thankful and has nobody to thank.

Places that are empty of you are empty of life.

The blessed 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.

A Sonnet is a moment's monument,— Memorial from the Soul's eternity To one dead deathless hour.

I have been here before, But when or how I cannot tell: I know the grass beyond the door, The sweet keen smell, The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.

Love, which is quickly kindled in the gentle heart, seized this man for the fair form that was taken from me, the manner still hurts me. Love which absolves no beloved one from loving, seized me so strongly with his charm that, as thou seest, it does not leave me yet

Sudden Light I have been here before, But when or how I cannot tell: I know the grass beyond the door, The sweet keen smell, The sighing sound, the lights around the shore. You have been mine before,— How long ago I may not know: But just when at that swallow's soar Your neck turn'd so, Some veil did fall,—I knew it all of yore. Has this been thus before? And shall not thus time's eddying flight Still with our lives our love restore In death's despite, And day and night yield one delight once more?

Her enchanted hair was the first gold, and still she sits, young while the earth is old.

Oh how the family affections combat Within this heart, and each hour flings a bomb at My burning soul! Neither from owl nor from bat Can peace be gained until I clasp my wombat.

L'amor che muove il sole e l'altre stelle

In Britain, chinoiserie was eclipsed by the medievalism of Sir Walter Scott and the Gothic Revival, while in Europe japonisme would be chinoiserie's successor. Japonisme never compelled the general middle-class British taste as did the indigenous medieval style. Nonetheless, through extensive importations to Britain of Japanese art and artifacts, notably by the shop Liberty's of London, as well as through the artists James McNeill Whistler and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the architect E.W. Godwin, and the writer Oscar Wilde, the Japanese style of decoration was known in Britain well before 1894.

The Stealthy School of Criticism.

What man has bent o’er his son’s sleep, to brood How that face shall watch his when cold it lies? Or thought, as his own mother kiss’d his eyes, Of what her kiss was when his father woo’d? —Dante Gabriel Rossetti, The House of Life

I marked all kindred Powers the heart finds fair:-- Truth, with awed lips; and Hope, with eyes upcast; And Fame, whose loud wings fan the ashen Past To signal-fires, Oblivion's flight to scare; And Youth, with still some single golden hair Unto his shoulder clinging, since the last Embrace wherein two sweet arms held him fast; And Life, still wreathing flowers for Death to wear. Love's throne was not with these; but far above All passionate wind of welcome and farewell

Can peace be gained until I clasp my wombat?

The hours I spent in this anachronistic, bibliophile, Anglophile retreat were in surreal contrast to the shrieking horror show that was being enacted in the rest of the city. I never felt this more acutely than when, having maneuvered the old boy down the spiral staircase for a rare out-of-doors lunch the next day—terrified of letting him slip and tumble—I got him back upstairs again. He invited me back for even more readings the following morning but I had to decline. I pleaded truthfully that I was booked on a plane for Chile. 'I am so sorry,' said this courteous old genius. 'But may I then offer you a gift in return for your company?' I naturally protested with all the energy of an English middle-class upbringing: couldn't hear of such a thing; pleasure and privilege all mine; no question of accepting any present. He stilled my burblings with an upraised finger. 'You will remember,' he said, 'the lines I will now speak. You will always remember them.' And he then recited the following: What man has bent o'er his son's sleep, to brood How that face shall watch his when cold it lies? Or thought, as his own mother kissed his eyes, Of what her kiss was when his father wooed? The title (Sonnet XXIX of Dante Gabriel Rossetti)—'Inclusiveness'—may sound a trifle sickly but the enfolded thought recurred to me more than once after I became a father and Borges was quite right: I have never had to remind myself of the words. I was mumbling my thanks when he said, again with utter composure: 'While you are in Chile do you plan a call on General Pinochet?' I replied with what I hoped was equivalent aplomb that I had no such intention. 'A pity,' came the response. 'He is a true gentleman. He was recently kind enough to award me a literary prize.' It wasn't the ideal note on which to bid Borges farewell, but it was an excellent illustration of something else I was becoming used to noticing—that in contrast or corollary to what Colin MacCabe had said to me in Lisbon, sometimes it was also the right people who took the wrong line.

What is the sorriest thing that enters Hell? None of the sins,—but this and that fair deed Which a soul's sin at length could supersede. These yet are virgins, whom death's timely knell Might once have sainted; whom the fiends compel Together now, in snake-bound shuddering sheaves Of anguish, while the scorching bridegroom leaves Their refuse maidenhood abominable. Night sucks them down, the garbage of the pit, Whose names, half entered in the book of Life, Were God's desire at noon. And as their hair And eyes sink last, the Torturer deigns no whit To gaze, but, yearning, waits his worthier wife, The Sin still blithe on earth that sent them there.

The hour which might have been yet might not be, Which man's and woman's heart conceived and bore Yet whereof life was barren,—on what shore Bides it the breaking of Time's weary sea? Bondchild of all consummate joys set free, It somewhere sighs and serves, and mute before The house of Love, hears through the echoing door His hours elect in choral consonancy. But lo! what wedded souls now hand in hand Together tread at last the immortal strand With eyes where burning memory lights love home? Lo! how the little outcast hour has turned And leaped to them and in their faces yearned:— 'I am your child: O parents, ye have come!

Ye who have passed Death's haggard hills; and ye Whom trees that knew your sires shall cease to know And still stand silent:--is it all a show,-- A wisp that laughs upon the wall?

How many children could say their home hosted the humblest and highest at the same time, on any given evening invaded by expatriates their father never hesitated to invite in? Through the back door he welcomed a bookseller, organ grinder, biscuit maker, vagrant macaroni man, and one called Galli who thought he was Christ. Through the front, disgraced Italian counts and generals made as officious entrances as a small house on Charlotte Street afforded.

One day in the country was worth a month in town and better than Christmas, her birthday, or even Papa saying she was like the moon risen at the full.

From the fixed lull of Heaven she saw Time like a pulse shake fierce Through all the worlds.

Sleep sank them lower than the tide of dreams, And their dreams watched them sink, and slid away.

[...] y que dijo con música memorable Dante Gabriel Rossetti: I have been here before, But when or how I cannot tell [...]

Sudden Light I have been here before, But when or how I cannot tell: I know the grass beyond the door, The sweet keen smell, The sighing sound, the lights around the shore. You have been mine before,— How long ago I may not know: But just when at that swallow's soar Your neck turned so, Some veil did fall,—I knew it all of yore. Has this been thus before? And shall not thus time's eddying flight Still with our lives our love restore In death's despite, And day and night yield one delight once more?

Everyone looks like they’ve just stepped out of a Dante Gabriel Rossetti painting that he never got around to finishing because even he knew it was too over the top. It

People who dream in broad daylight learn about things which are never revealed to those who dream at night.   Dante Gabriel Rossetti

As a self-confessed Pre-Raphaelite - a term that by the 1880s was interchangeable with ‘Aesthete’ - Constance was carrying a torch whose flame had ben lit in the 1850s by a group of women associated with the founding Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood painters. Women such as Elizabeth Siddal and Jane Morris, the wives respectively of the painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the poet, designer and socialist William Morris, had modelled for the Pre-Raphaelite artists, wearing loose, flowing gowns. But it was not just their depiction on canvas that sparked a new fashion among an intellectual elite. Off canvas these women also establised new liberties for women that some twenty years later were still only just being taken up by a wider female population. They pioneered new kinds of dresses, with sleeves either sewn on at the shoulder, rather than below it, or puffed and loose. While the rest of the female Victorian populace had to go about with their arms pinned to their bodies in tight, unmoving sheaths, the Pre-Raphaelite women could move their arms freely, to paint or pose or simply be comfortable. The Pre-Raphaelite girls also did away with the huge, bell-shaped crinoline skirts, held out by hoops and cages strapped on to the female undercarriage. They dispensed with tight corsets that pinched waists into hourglasses, as well as the bonnets and intricate hairstyles that added layer upon layer to a lady’s daily toilette. Their ‘Aesthetic’ dress, as it became known, was more than just a fashion; it was a statement. In seeking comfort for women it also spoke of a desire for liberation that went beyond physical ease. It was also a statement about female creative expression, which in itself was aligned to broader feminist issues. The original Pre-Raphaelite sisterhood lived unconventionally with artists, worked at their own artistic projects and became famous in the process. Those women who were Aesthetic dress in their wake tended to believe that women should have the right to a career and ultimately be enfranchised with the vote. […] And so Constance, with ‘her ugly dresses’, her schooling and her college friends, was already in some small degree a young woman going her own way. Moving away from the middle-class conventions of the past, where women were schooled by governesses at home, would dress in a particular manner and be chaperoned, Constance was already modern.

Fold me fast, O God-snake of Eden! (Sing Eden Bower!) What more prize than love to impel thee? Grip and lip my limbs as I tell thee! ... Lo! sweet Snake, the travail and treasure,---

He held out his hand. “Dante Gabriel Rossetti,” he said. “You will have heard of me.” Jo shook his hand and frowned. “No, but you obviously think I should have.” At his crestfallen expression, she smiled. Everyone had heard of Rossetti.

Drat verse, And steam, and Paris, and the fins of Time!

A translator ought to be faithful, but is not bound down to being literal.

Much of this pattern of thought finds its echo in the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood – who were young enough to be Carlyle’s sons. The ‘brotherhood’ began in 1848 at 83 Gower Street, when a group of art students vowed ‘to produce thoroughly good pictures and statues’. Of the original seven, three members of the PRB – Dante Gabriel Rossetti, aged twenty, John Everett Millais, aged nineteen, and William Holman Hunt, aged twenty-one – went on to be famous artists. Other painters whom we think of as ‘Pre-Raphaelite’ – such as Ford Madox Brown himself – never in fact joined the Brotherhood, which was never a very tightly knit guild, and which dissolved with the years. One sees the way in which these

Similarly, the Pre-Raphaelites specifically chose models who suffered from the disease, such as Elizabeth Siddal, who became Dante Gabriele Rossetti’s favorite model and then his wife, and Jane Burden, whom William Morris frequently painted and later married. This tubercular aesthetic persisted into the early twentieth century in the gossamer frames, pale faces, and swanlike necks of the women in Amedeo Modigliani’s portraits.