The Blessed Damozel

The Blessed Damozel

The poem is one of Rossetti’s most famous poems. Though different meanings have been concluded by different people, they all revolve around the same idea and themes. The theme of Rossetti’s poem is on the basis of separated lovers being rejoined in heaven. His young vision of idealized love was very picturesque. Through the poem we understand the purity with which he views women. There are so many associations in the poem where the damozel has been likened to one of God’s angels, who are virginal, pure and innocent.

The damozel has been “blessed” to live in the house of God. She leans out “from the gold bar of heaven” to look down to earth below, where her lover is. She held “three lilies in her hand” and “seven stars in her hair”, symbolizing innocence and chastity. Though she has been in heaven for ten long years, it seemed to her “it had hardly been a day” since she became a member if God’s “choristers”. But to her lovers each day that passed seemed to be as painfully long as ten years. In his loneliness he could have sworn that she leaned over him as he says “her hair fell all about my face.”

“It was the rampart” of God’s house that she was standing on”. God has built this castle “so high” that one wouldn’t know where space begins and it is to such an extent beyond the sun, one could hardly even see the sun. All around her “newly met” lovers amidst the “acclaims” of “deathless” love. These acclaims are eternal. Death does not negate the feelings of love and thus love is immortal. The souls of these separated lovers rush by her as “thin flames” to reunite in eternal love. She was leaning on the “golden bar” for a while because “her bosom must have made the bar she leaned on warm.”

“The sun was gone now” and the “curled moon was like a feather fluttering far down the gulf.” Her lover hears her “sweet” voice in the “bird’s song”. He feels she is talking to him through the eagerness in which the bird is singing.