Tall Troy’s on fire!)
‘Helen knelt at Venus’ shrine
(O Troy town!)
Saying, “A little gift is mine,
A little gift for a heart’s desire.
Hear me speak and make me a sign!
(O Troy’s down,
Tall Troy’s on fire!)”’[97]
And thus through fourteen strophes there constantly recurs, after the first line, ‘O Troy town!’ at the end of the third line, ‘heart’s desire’; and after the fourth line, ‘O Troy’s down, tall Troy’s on fire!’ It is easy to discern what Rossetti wishes. In him there is repeated the mental process which we recognised in Holman Hunt’s picture, The Shadow of the Cross. As by association of ideas, in thinking of Helen at Sparta, he hits upon the idea of the subsequent fate of Troy, so shall the reader, while he sees the young queen in Sparta intoxicated by her own beauty, be simultaneously presented with the picture of the yet distant tragical consequences of her longing desire. But he does not seek to connect these two trains of thought in a rational way. He is ever muttering as he goes, monotonously as in a litany, the mysterious invocations to Troy, while he is relating the visit to the temple of Venus at Sparta. Sollier[98] remarks this peculiarity among persons of feeble intellect. ‘Idiots,’ he says, ‘insert words which have absolutely no connection with the object.’ And further on: ‘Among idiots constant repetition [le rabâchage] grows into a veritable tic.’
In another very famous poem, Eden Bower,[99] which treats of the pre-Adamite woman Lilith, her lover the serpent of Eden, and her revenge on Adam, the litany refrain of ‘Eden Bower’s in flower,’ and ‘And O the Bower and the hour,’ are introduced alternately after the first line in forty-nine strophes. As a matter of course, between these absolutely senseless phrases and the strophe which each interrupts, there is not the remotest connection. They are strung together without any reference to their meaning, but only because they rhyme. It is a startling example of echolalia.
We frequently find this peculiarity of the weak and deranged mind, i.e., echolalia, in Rossetti. Here are a few proofs:
‘So wet she comes to wed’ (Stratton Water).