Forgotten Poets of a Bygone Age - Dante Gabriel Rossetti
The Blessed Damozel
THE blessed Damozel lean'd out From the gold bar of Heaven: Her blue grave eyes were deeper much Than a deep water, even. She had three lilies in her hand, And the stars in her hair were seven.
Her robe, ungirt from clasp to hem, No wrought flowers did adorn, But a white rose of Mary's gift On the neck meetly worn; And her hair, lying down her back, Was yellow like ripe corn.
Rossetti lived a somewhat troubled life. He was a founder member of the pre-raphaelite brotherhood and had a long and tempestuous love affair with the model and painter Elizabeth [Lizzie) Siddal. A red headed beauty, Lizzie eventually died of a laudanum overdose. One can imagine Rossetti think of her looking down from the gold bar of heaven,
