Dream-Love Poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Dream-Love

Rating: 3.0


Young Love lies sleeping
In May-time of the year,
Among the lilies,
Lapped in the tender light:
White lambs come grazing,
White doves come building there:
And round about him
The May-bushes are white.

Soft moss the pillow
For oh, a softer cheek;
Broad leaves cast shadow
Upon the heavy eyes:
There wind and waters
Grow lulled and scarcely speak;
There twilight lingers
The longest in the skies.

Young Love lies dreaming;
But who shall tell the dream?
A perfect sunlight
On rustling forest tips;
Or perfect moonlight
Upon a rippling stream;
Or perfect silence,
Or song of cherished lips.

Burn odours round him
To fill the drowsy air;
Weave silent dances
Around him to and fro;
For oh, in waking
The sights are no so fair,
And song and silence
Are not like these below.

Young Love lies dreaming
Till summer days are gone, -
Dreaming and drowsing
Away to perfect sleep:
He sees the beauty
Sun hath not looked upon,
And tastes the fountain
Unutterably deep.

Him perfect music
Doth hush unto his rest,
And through the pauses
The perfect silence calms:
Oh, poor the voices
Of earth from east to west,
And poor earth's stillness
Between her stately palms.

Young Love lies drowsing
Away to poppied death;
Cool shadows deepen
Across the sleeping face:
So fails the summer
With warm delicious breath;
And what hath autumn
To give us in its place?

Draw close the curtains
Of branched evergreen;
Change cannot touch them
With fading fingers sere:
Here first the violets
Perhaps with bud unseen,
And a dove, may be,
Return to nestle here.

COMMENTS OF THE POEM
Kevin Straw 23 July 2009

There is something chilling about the idea of young love sleeping from May till Autumn. As Kimberly Kastner says this poem is 'pretty', but it is the prettiness of the graveyard. One feels, reading this poem, the exhaustion of a society (the Victorian/Edwardian) which, in winning everything, has nowhere now to go but a deathly sleep.

4 4 Reply
Jess Joe 24 July 2006

i loved this, it was amazing and filled with so much passion

2 5 Reply
Ramesh T A 23 July 2010

Soft, gentle, flowery love of dream is really wonderful to dream about!

3 4 Reply
Kimberly Kastner 23 July 2006

Pretty! ! ! !

2 4 Reply
Soumyendu Biswas 23 July 2009

Not until autumn.... The sleep is rather permanent and obviously the result of unnecessary violence.. else the gem of a poem wouldn't have been so melancholic

2 4 Reply
christopher 27 August 2022

This poem was by Christina Georgina Rosetti, not her brother Dante Gabriel Rosetti.

1 0 Reply
* Sunprincess * 27 February 2016

...........wonderfully composed...I'm not sure but perhaps this was a metaphor ★

2 1 Reply
Joseph Poewhit 23 July 2013

Dreaming is a part of love

2 1 Reply
Michael Pruchnicki 23 July 2010

Sometimes I don't know where to start, I says to myself, in the great scheme of things as the world goes by, leaving me and my mates adrift in the universe, know what I mean? Craddock in his usual irrelevant and long-winded way goes on and on, and in the end says we Americans who saved his nation from total destruction in WW2 owe its survival to the USSR and Josef Stalin!

3 7 Reply

Dream-Love by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, is a poem written in the highly idealized pastoral manner about love’s dream world, of summer peace and perfection. Sadly the real world is not like this. There is always a national leader prepared to invade and occupy other countries, defying the Geneva Conventions, while justifying such actions with political propaganda. “The exhaustion of a society (the Victorian/Edwardian) which, in winning everything, has nowhere now to go but a deathly sleep.” No, this society did not win everything, although it created an Empire that once spanned a quarter of the world. Nor did the British Empire sleep, it transformed into a Commonwealth of Nations, which under the resolute leadership of Winston Churchill, inflicted the first military setbacks and defeats upon Nazi Germany. It was Churchill who during The Battle of Britain, on August 26 1940, ordered 81 RAF Hampden bombers to attack Berlin during those dark days of battle, while England stood alone, about to suffer a merciless London Blitz. The nightmare spread into Russia, which halted this Blitzkrieg in Europe, again with resolute leadership courage and determination, while America in a deadly sleep of indifference; slept on nowhere to be seen. This saving grace and legacy of the Victorian era can still be read, because Churchill’s “magnificent oratory survives in a dozen volumes of speeches, among them The Unrelenting Struggle (1942) , The Dawn of Liberation (1945) , and Victory (1946) .”

3 5 Reply
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