The golden barriers,

And laid her face between her hands,

And wept (I heard her tears).”

If it be objected that this is too gross a violation of the state in which all tears are wiped away, I answer, first, that there are tears and tears; secondly, that if anthropomorphism is allowable in our realizations of God, à fortiori is it allowable in our realizations of those who, although they are raised above the estate of humanity, are still human. Again, even the angels of Christian art have a prescriptive right to tears, and is it not written, Isai. xxxiii. 7, “Angeli pacis amarè flebunt?”

And now we will say what we have to say of perhaps the most wonderful of all Mr. Rosetti's poems, which somehow, for more reasons than one, suggests itself as a pendant [pg 267] to “The Blessed Damozel.” He has called it “Jenny,” and Jenny is the name—neither French nor Greek will mend the matter—of a young prostitute. We freely confess that there are two or three lines in this poem which we heartily wish Mr. Rosetti had never written; but, take it as it stands, few will be disposed to deny that it is a very real sermon against lust, all the more impressive because it is indirect. The story, such as it is, is this: A man, young but not in his first youth, who has been for some years settling down to a student's life, throws his work aside one evening, and goes off to one of his old haunts. Having spent half the night in dancing, and being smitten with Jenny's youthful beauty, he goes home with her. She, poor thing, utterly tired, falls dead asleep at supper, and he, watching her, falls to moralizing, half cynically, half tenderly, upon innocence and lust and destiny, until at last the pity of it all wholly possesses him and kills every other thought. And so musing till early dawn, till

“Now without, as if some word

Had called upon them that they heard,

The London sparrows far and nigh

Clamor together suddenly,”

he slips some gold pieces into her hair, and goes with the half-expressed hope that, as God has been merciful to him, so he will be merciful to her also.