And again take Wilde's "Madonna Mia"—
"I stood by the unvintageable sea
Till the wet waves drenched face and hair with spray,
The long red fires of the dying day
Burned in the west; the wind piped drearily;
And to the land the clamorous gulls did flee:
'Alas!' I cried, 'my life is full of pain,
And who can garner fruit or golden grain,
From these waste fields which travail ceaselessly!'
My nets gaped wide with many a break and flaw
Nathless I threw them as my final cast
Into the sea, and waited for the end.
When lo! a sudden glory! and I saw
From the black waters of my tortured past
The argent splendour of white limbs ascend!"
and compare it with Rossetti's "Venetian Pastoral" and "Mary's Girlhood," and we can almost imagine that the painter was holding up pictures to inspire the young poet.
"Red underlip drawn in for fear of love
And white throat, whiter than the silvered dove,"
might almost have been written by Rossetti himself.
More characteristically original are the lines—
"I saw
From the black waters of my tortured past
The argent splendour of white limbs ascend,"
from the "Vita Nuova," though one cannot fail to perceive a faint Baudelairian note.
"Where behind lattice window scarlet wrought and gilt
Some brown-limbed girl did weave thee tapestry,"
at once reminds us of the Rossetti influence.