Echo

Come to me in the silence of the night;
   Come in the speaking silence of a dream;
Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright
   As sunlight on a stream;
      Come back in tears,
O memory, hope, love of finished years.

O dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet,
   Whose wakening should have been in Paradise,
Where souls brimful of love abide and meet;
   Where thirsting longing eyes
      Watch the slow door
That opening, letting in, lets out no more.

Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live
   My very life again though cold in death:
Come back to me in dreams, that I may give
   Pulse for pulse, breath for breath:
      Speak low, lean low,
As long ago, my love, how long ago!


Christina Rossetti

Sovente il sole

Sovente il sole
Risplende in cielo
Più bello e vago
Se oscura nube
Già l'offusco.

E il mar tranquillo
Quasi senza onda
Talor si scorge,
Se ria procella
Pria lo turbo.

Often the sun beams in the sky
With greater beauty and allure
After the dark clouds, which had dimmed it before, have cleared.

And the calm peaceful sea
Is seen with almost no waves
After the passing of a terrible storm which had agitated it before.

 

Love, strong as Death, is dead

Love, strong as Death, is dead.
Come, let us make his bed
Among the dying flowers:
A green turf at his head;
And a stone at his feet,
Whereon we may sit
In the quiet evening hours.

He was born in the Spring,
And died before the harvesting:
On the last warm summer day
He left us; he would not stay
For Autumn twilight cold and grey.
Sit we by his grave, and sing
He is gone away.

To few chords and sad and low
Sing we so:
Be our eyes fixed on the grass
Shadow-veiled as the years pass
While we think of all that was
In the long ago.


Christina Rossetti sob o pseudónimo Ellen Alleyn