It is, of course, impossible to go so deeply into all Rossetti’s poems as into the _Blessed Damozel_; but it is also unnecessary, since we should everywhere meet with the same mixture of transcendentalism and sensuality, the same shadowy ideation, the same senseless combinations of mutually incompatible ideas. Reference, however, must be made to some of the peculiarities of the poet, because they characterize the brain-work of weak degenerate minds.
The first thing that strikes us is his predilection for refrains. The refrain is an excellent artistic medium for the purpose of unveiling the state of a soul under the influence of a strong emotion. It is natural that, to the lover yearning for his beloved, the recurring idea of her should be ever thrusting itself among all the other thoughts in which he temporarily indulges. It is equally comprehensible that the unhappy being who is made miserable by thoughts of suicide should be unable to free himself from an idea which is in harmony with his mental condition, say of an _Armensünderblum_, or ‘flower of the doomed soul,’ which he sees when walking at night. (See Heine’s poem, _Am Kreuzweg wird begraben_, in which the line _die Armensünderblum_ is repeated at the end of both strophes with peculiarly thrilling effect.)
Rossetti’s refrains, however, are different from this, which is natural and intelligible. They have nothing to do with the emotion or action expressed by the poem. They are alien to the circle of ideas belonging to the poem. In a word, they possess the character of an obsession, which the patient cannot suppress, although he recognises that they are in no rational connection with the intellectual content of his consciousness. In the poem _Troy Town_ it is related how Helen, long before Paris had carried her off, kneels in the temple of Venus at Sparta, and, drunken with the luxuriant beauty of her own body, fervently implores the Goddess of Love to send her a man panting for love, where or whoever he might be, to whom she might give herself. The absurdity of this fundamental idea it is sufficient to indicate in passing. The first strophe runs thus:
‘Heaven-born Helen, Sparta’s Queen (O Troy town!), Had two breasts of heavenly sheen, The sun and the moon of the heart’s desire. All Love’s lordship lay between. (O Troy’s down, Tall Troy’s on fire!)