“Into the fine cloth, white like flame,
Weaving the golden thread
To fashion the birth-robes for them
Who are just born, being dead.”
We hardly think that this poem of Mr. Rosetti's strikes a single false chord even to Catholic ears. The utmost that can be said is that the blessed soul is too absorbed by her longing for her earthly love. But then the heaven of theology is an assemblage of paradoxes which faith alone can knit together; and, in its entirety, wholly without the realm of art. In this poem we have one aspect of the life of the blessed, “securus quidem sibi sed nostri solicitus,” as S. Bernard says, presented to us most vividly in the only colors an artist's pencil can command—those of earthly love. But this love is serene and pure, and, despite its intensity, free from all pain and impatience. The passion is supplied by the refrain in the earthly lover's heart, as in his touching commentary upon the confidence of her “we two” will do thus and thus when he comes:
“Alas! we two, we two, thou sayst!
Yea, one wast thou with me
That once of old. But shall God lift
To endless unity
The soul whose likeness with thy soul