another random act

I admit I'm obsessed with the Pre-Raphaelites. Not unhealthily obsessed, like I was in university (when I haunted the Tate Gallery, memorizing every brush stroke, read their biographies like a Bible, visited the Rossetti family grave in Highgate and basically looked at life through PR painted glasses - oh yeah, and with plans to name my firstborn Dante). Still.

I don't know if its the lavishness of their paintings (the colour, the movement, the form), the mythology they drew their inspiration from or (most probably) the ever-present undercurrent of melancholy. They all had it - everyone in the brotherhood, their models, muses and mates.

Now you think I'm going to post a poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, don't you? My Sister's Sleep, perhaps, or The Blessed Damozel? I probably should, mais non. I have opted for his younger sister, Christina, who was once called one of the 19th Century's "greatest odd women." While she was staunchly religious, there are glimpses of the same sensuous observances in many of her poems that her brother and the other PRs captured so magically on canvas. But, again, I'll spare you the lesson. Just read and think and enjoy.

My favourite from her body of works is Song (When I Am Dead My Dearest). This is the one I share with you today:

Song (When I Am Dead My Dearest)
By Christina Rossetti

When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree.
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.

I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on as if in pain.
And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.