English Poetry at the Poetry Monster. Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Poem A Sea-Spell.

Poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

A Sea-Spell

 (For one of his own pictures)

Her lute hangs shadowed in the apple-tree,
While flashing fingers weave the sweet-strung spell
Between its chords; and as the wild notes swell,
The sea-bird for those branches leaves the sea.
But to what sound her listening ear stoops she?
What netherworld gulf-whispers doth she hear,
In answering echoes from what planisphere,
Along the wind, along the estuary?
She sinks into her spell: and when full soon
Her lips move and she soars into her song,
What creatures of the midmost main shall throng
In furrowed self-clouds to the summoning rune,
Till he, the fated mariner, hears her cry,
And up her rock, bare breasted, comes to die? 

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s other poems:

1. The House of Life. Sonnet 17. Beauty’s Pageant
2. The House of Life. Sonnet 35. The Lamp’s Shrine
3. The House of Life. Sonnet 21. Love-Sweetness
4. The House of Life. Sonnet 50. Willowwood – 2
5. The Staff and Scrip

The Last Poems

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