C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Amor Mundi
By Christina Georgina Rossetti (18301894)
“O
On the west wind blowing along this valley track?”—
“The down-hill path is easy; come with me an it please ye:
We shall escape the up-hill by never turning back.”
The honey-breathing heather lay to their left and right;
And dear she was to doat on, her swift feet seemed to float on
The air like soft twin pigeons too sportive to alight.
Where blackest clouds hang riven just at the rainy skirt?”—
“Oh, that’s a meteor sent us, a message dumb, portentous,
An undeciphered solemn signal of help or hurt.”
Their scent comes rich and sickly?”—“A scaled and hooded worm.”
“Oh, what’s that in the hollow, so pale I quake to follow?”—
“Oh, that’s a thin dead body which waits the eternal term.”
This beaten way thou beatest I fear is hell’s own track.”—
“Nay, too steep for hill mounting; nay, too late for cost counting:
This downward path is easy, but there’s no turning back.”