To Dante Gabriel Rossetti:
Calmly, thy royal robe of death around thee, Thou Bleekest, and weeping brethren round thee stand-- Gently they placed, ere yet G.o.d"s angel crown"d thee, My lily in thy hand!
I never knew thee living, O my brother!
But on thy breast my lily of love now lies; And by that token, we shall know each other, When G.o.d"s voice saith "Arise!"
"Can you understand me?" he asked abruptly, alluding to the thickness of his utterance.
"Perfectly."
"Nurse Abrey cannot: what a good creature she is!"
That night we telegraphed to Mr. Marshall, to Mr. W. M. Rossetti, and Mr. Watts, and wrote next morning to Mr. Shields, Mr. Scott, and Mr.
Madox Brown. It had been found by the resident medical man, Dr. Harris, that in Rossetti"s case kidney disease had supervened. His dear mother and I sat up until early morning with him, and when we left him his sister took our place and remained with him the whole of that and subsequent nights. He sat up in bed most of the time and said a sort of stupefaction had removed all pain. He crooned over odd lines of poetry.
"My own verses torment me," he said. Then he half-sang, half-recited, s.n.a.t.c.hes from one of Iago"s songs in _Oth.e.l.lo_. "Strange things," he murmured, "to come into one"s head at such a moment." I told him his brother and Mr. Watts would be with him to-morrow. "Then you really think that I am dying? At _last_ you think so; but _I_ was right from the first."
Next day, Good Friday, the friends named did come, and weak as he was, he was much cheered by their presence. The following day Mr. Marshall arrived.
That gentleman recognised the alarming position of affairs, but he was not without hope. He administered a sort of hot bath, and on Sunday morning Rossetti was perceptibly brighter. Mr. Shields had now arrived, and one after one of his friends, including Mr. Leyland, who was at the time staying at Ramsgate, and made frequent calls, visited him in his room and found him able to listen and sometimes to talk. In the evening the nurse gave a cheering report of his condition, and encouraged by such prospects, Mr. Watts, Mr. Shields, and myself, gave way to good spirits, and retired to an adjoining room. About nine o"clock Mr.
Watts left us, and returning in a short time, said he had been in the sickroom, and had had some talk with Rossetti, and found him cheerful.
An instant afterwards we heard a scream, followed by a loud rapping at our door. We hurried into Rossetti"s room and found him in convulsions.
Mr. Watts raised him on one side, whilst I raised him on the other; his mother, sister, and brother, were immediately present (Mr. Shields had fled away for the doctor); there were a few moments of suspense, and then we saw him die in our arms. Mrs. William Rossetti arrived from Manchester at this moment.
Thus on Easter Day Rossetti died. It was hard to realise that he was actually dead; but so it was, and the dreadful fact had at last come upon us with a horrible suddenness. Of the business of the next few days I need say nothing. I went up to London in the interval between the death and burial, and the old house at Chelsea, which, to my mind, in my time had always been desolate, was now more than ever so, that the man who had been its vitalising spirit lay dead eighty miles away by the side of the sea. It was decided to bury the poet in the churchyard of Birchington. The funeral, which was a private one, was attended by relatives and personal friends only, with one or two well-wishers from London.
Next day we saw most of the friends away by train, and, some days later, Mr. Watts was with myself the last to leave. I thought we two were drawn the closer each to each from the loss of him by whom we were brought together. We walked one morning to the churchyard and found the grave, which nestles under the south-west porch, strewn with flowers.
The church is an ancient and quaint early Gothic edifice, somewhat rejuvenated however, but with ivy creeping over its walls. The prospect to the north is of sea only: a broad sweep of landscape so flat and so featureless that the great sea dominates it. As we stood there, with the rumble of the rolling waters borne to us from the sh.o.r.e, we felt that though we had little dreamed that we should lay Rossetti in his last sleep here, no other place could be quite so fit. It was, indeed, the resting-place for a poet. In this bed, of all others, he must at length, after weary years of sleeplessness, sleep the only sleep that is deep and will endure. Thinking of the incidents which I have in this chapter tried to record, my mind reverted to a touching sonnet which the friend by my side had just printed; and then, for the first time, I was struck by its extraordinary applicability to him whom we had laid below. In its printed form it was addressed to Heine, and ran:
Thou knew"st that island far away and lone Whose sh.o.r.es are as a harp, where billows break In spray of music and the breezes shake O"er spicy seas a woof of colour and tone, While that sweet music echoes like a moan In the island"s heart, and sighs around the lake Where, watching fearfully a watchful snake, A damsel weeps upon her emerald throne.
Life"s ocean, breaking round thy senses" sh.o.r.e, Struck golden song as from the strand of day: For us the joy, for thee the fell foe lay-- Pain"s blinking snake around the fair isle"s core, Turning to sighs the enchanted sounds that play Around thy lovely island evermore.
"How strangely appropriate it is," I said, "to Rossetti, and now I remember how deeply he was moved on reading it."
"He guessed its secret; I addressed it, for disguise, to Heine, to whom it was sadly inapplicable. I meant it for _him_."
THE END.