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Hardly ourselves we fought through,
Stripped, without friends, as we are.
Friends, companions, and train,
The avalanche swept from our side.

But thou would'st not alone
Be saved, my father! alone
Conquer and come to thy goal,
Leaving the rest in the wild.
We were weary, and we
Fearful, and we in our march
Fain to drop down and to die.
Still thou turnedst, and still
Beckonedst the trembler, and still
Gavest the weary, thy hand.

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See! In the rocks of the world
Marches the host of mankind,

A feeble, wavering line.

Where are they tending? - A God

Marshaled them, gave them their goal. 175 Ah, but the way is so long!

Years they have been in the wild!

Sore thirst plagues them, the rocks,
Rising all round, overawe;

Factions divide them, their host
Threatens to break, to dissolve.

- Ah, keep, keep them combined!
Else, of the myriads who fill
That army, not one shall arrive;

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DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI (1828-1882)

Although as a very young boy Rossetti showed a talent for versifying, he attained distinction first as a painter. After spending five years at King's College School and in art academies in London, he became a pupil of Ford Madox Brown, and later joined Holman Hunt, Millais, and others, in that revival of mystical interpretation and detailed elaboration in painting commonly called the Pre-Raphaelite movement. No considerable part of Rossetti's poems appeared in print before the publication of Poems, in 1870. The following year Robert Buchanan, in an article entitled The Fleshly School in Poetry, savagely attacked the alleged immorality of Rossetti's poems. Although Rossetti stoutly resisted the assault, it aggravated the mental depression which had begun with the death of his wife, and which persisted until his death. The last ten years of his life were tragically clouded by mental weakness and by the habit of taking chloral. Even during this period, however, creative flashes of his mind resulted in both poems and paintings of great beauty.

Poems (1870), Dante and His Circle (1874), and Ballads and Sonnets (1881) contain substantially all of Rossetti's poetry. The volume of 1881 brought out The King's Tragedy. and added sonnets to complete the House of Life, the first sonnets of which had appeared in 1870. Rossetti's only imaginative work in prose is Hand and Soul (1850). His poetry, often subtly mystical in thought, has been called, significantly, painter's poetry,' from its delicate picturesqueness and visual beauty.

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