Love-Lily

By Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1828–1882 Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Between the hands, between the brows,

Between the lips of Love-Lily,

A spirit is born whose birth endows

My blood with fire to burn through me;

Who breathes upon my gazing eyes,

Who laughs and murmurs in mine ear,

At whose least touch my colour flies,

And whom my life grows faint to hear.

Within the voice, within the heart,

Within the mind of Love-Lily,

A spirit is born who lifts apart

His tremulous wings and looks at me;

Who on my mouth his finger lays,

And shows, while whispering lutes confer,

That Eden of Love's watered ways

Whose winds and spirits worship her.

Brows, hands, and lips, heart, mind, and voice,

Kisses and words of Love-Lily,—

Oh! bid me with your joy rejoice

Till riotous longing rest in me!

Ah! let not hope be still distraught,

But find in her its gracious goal,

Whose speech Truth knows not from her thought

Nor Love her body from her soul.

Biography

Dante Gabriel Rossetti was born 12 May 1828 in London, the second child and eldest son of Italian expatriates. His father, Gabriele Rossetti, was a Dante scholar, who had been exiled from Naples for writing poetry in support of the Neapolitan Constitution of 1819. Rossetti’s mother had trained as a governess and supervised her children's early education. Few Victorian families were as gifted as the Rossettis: the oldest child, . . .

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