Poetry Revisited: On Leaving Bruges by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Huidenvettersplein in Bruges via Wikimedia Commons

On Leaving Bruges

(from Ballads and Sonnets: 1881)

The city's steeple-towers remove away,

Each singly; as each vain infatuate Faith

Leaves God in heaven, and passes. A mere breath

Each soon appears, so far. Yet that which lay

The first is now scarce further or more grey

Than the last is. Now all are wholly gone.

The sunless sky has not once had the sun

Since the first weak beginning of the day.

The air falls back as the wind finishes,

And the clouds stagnate. On the water's face

The current breathes along, but is not stirred.

There is no branch that thrills with any bird.

Winter is to possess the earth a space,

And have its will upon the extreme seas.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882)

English poet, illustrator, painter and translator