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The Kissed Mouth
2. The Apparition of Elizabeth Siddal
b. This Loving Hand
[Rossetti and Lizzie]

R:

Not in my body was my life at all
But in this lady's lips and hands and eyes

L:

Look on yourself without me, and recall
The waste remembrance and forlorn surmise

R:

This loving hand, once warm and capable
Of earnest grasping — Now lies deep and cold
And from the icy silence of the tomb,
It haunts my days and chills my dreaming nights

How I could wish my own heart dry of blood
So in your veins red life might stream again,

L:

And thou be conscience-­calmed — see here it is —
I hold it towards you.

R:

Mid change and changeless night that holds its breath,
Lies all that golden hair undimm'd in death.

L:

I lay not alone, for your verses were there,
But the grave was reopened and they rose again.
I lie there without them, compelled to remain
A corpse in a coffin with golden hair.

 

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Notes and Sources   

a fool in the forest

  • The personal & cultural web journal of George M. Wallace, an attorney practicing in Pasadena, California.
    An Index of Enthusiasms.

Epigraphs

  • A fool, a fool! I met a fool i' the
        forest,
    A motley fool; a miserable world!
    As I do live by food, I met a fool
    Who laid him down and bask'd him
        in the sun,
    And rail'd on Lady Fortune in good
        terms,
    In good set terms and yet a motley
        fool.

    As You Like It,
    Act II, Scene 7


    L'homme y passe à travers des
        forêts de symboles
    Qui l'observent avec des regards
        familiers.

    Les Fleurs du Mal,
    “Correspondances”


    [T]here is almost no subject-matter, and what little one can disentangle is foolish....
    One would call the style verbose, except that by definition verbosity is the use of words in excess of the occasion, and there seems to be no occasion.

    Yvor Winters,
    Forms of Discovery, Ch. 7

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